We're getting that usual sense of deja vu at the
Emirates. Arsenal lose their home opener, as
they've done in three of the past four seasons,
and Arsene Wenger is back under the spotlight.
It's the usual story: Arsenal are flush with cash,
he chooses not to spend it and the team as a
result aren't as good as they could (should) be.
But there's probably more to it than that after the
Gunners' 4-3 home defeat against Liverpool.
For a start, the Arsenal side that went out there
may not look much like the Arsenal side that will
play most of the season. Wenger's top three
central defenders (Laurent Koscielny, Per
Mertesacker and Gabriel) were all out. So too was
his most creative (and, arguably, his best) player,
Mesut Ozil. As well as his top goalscorer from
last season, Olivier Giroud, and the guy who, in
Wenger's mind, is his first-choice back-up at
center-forward, Danny Welbeck. His big summer
signing was in the squad, albeit on the bench --
though, to be fair, when Granit Xhaka did come
on, he was far from impressive.
You can make the point that Wenger should have
planned better and have more depth in his squad,
and we'll get that in a minute. But it's tough to
spot that much quality to the opposition and get
away with it.
The other aspect is that it was an odd game
which Arsenal dominated the first half. But for
breaks that didn't go their way, namely Theo
Walcott missing a penalty and Philippe Coutinho
turning a soft foul into a magisterial free kick goal,
they could have been leading 2-0 at half-time.
And we might be having a wholly different
conversation right now.
Of course, Liverpool came out at halftime like a
bat out of hell, scored some tremendous goals
and went up 4-1 and at that point, the damage
was done. Those late goals from Alex Oxlade-
Chamberlain and Calum Chambers did little to
alleviate the Arsenal fans' disappointment. But the
fact remains that for 45 minutes, plus the stint at
the end when they scored twice, Wenger's side
looked good, despite all the absences and despite
that makeshift Chambers-Rob Holding centre-
back partnership.
That doesn't exonerate Wenger from blame, but it
does suggest that even with second stringers in
the lineup, Arsenal aren't the horrendous sinking
ship some people think they are.
That still leaves the question of why you go into
the season the way you did. Wenger knew that
Koscielny would be coming back late from the
Euros and that it would affect his preparation. He
knew in early August that Mertesacker would be
out for a while. And he knew a week ago, when
Gabriel suffered his ankle sprain, that the Brazilian
would reportedly be out until late September.
Should he have signed that additional centre-
back the minute the extent of Gabriel's injury
became clear? Social media is full of folks calling
Wenger a fool for not immediately pulling the
trigger on Valencia's German international
Shkodran Mustafi, but you can also see the
counterargument for not doing so.
Wenger is the type of guy who tends to be loyal
to his players, believing that they can come good
even if they go through a rough patch.
Sometimes he's vindicated (think Nacho Monreal
and Aaron Ramsey), sometimes less so (Jack
Wilshere and Walcott come to mind). But that's
just the sort of manager he is. Signing Mustafi,
for a reported fee north of $30 million, would have
pushed Mertesacker and Gabriel down the depth
chart. And it would have left Holding to play in the
League Cup and lay out the cones in training.
The benefit of hindsight says Wenger got this one
wrong; he may panic buy and yet pick up Mustafi.
But there was a logic to his thought process and
in a game of slim margins, he nearly got away
with it.
This is how he operates. This is what he does.
And he's honest about it. If he's still there, it's
because his employers are evidently OK with it.
And if that's the case and you're unhappy with it,
rather than hammering Wenger and expecting him,
in his late sixties, to turn into somebody else, take
it up with the owner instead.
But remember what happened the last time fans
tried to stage a public protest against Wenger.
Those who held up the white "Time for Change"
signs were drowned out by those who sang
Wenger's name. Until you get some consensus,
you won't stand a chance at pushing the owner's
buttons.
Guardiola rings the changes at Man City
Pep Guardiola certainly offered up a host of
talking points in his first "real" game as
Manchester City boss. The overall result -- a 2-1
victory over Sunderland, marked by a late winner
-- is less important than the performance and
Guardiola's choices.
Two moves stand out. The defensive organization
was something we simply haven't seen in
England. Nicolas Otamendi was on the bench and
Aleksandar Kolarov (usually a left-back and more
of a ball-player than a speedster) partnered
newcomer John Stones at centre-back. Bacary
Sagna and Gael Clichy were at full-back while
Fernandinho shielded the back four. But that was
out-of-possession: When City got the ball, Sagna
and Clichy effectively advanced into central
midfield while Fernandinho dropped between the
centre-backs. This meant the two French full-
backs were tasked with all sorts of playmaking
duties, with decidedly mixed results.
You wonder if it's sustainable: It's one thing to
ask Dani Alves to do that, quite another to push
Sagna (who turns 34 in February) in that role. As
for Kolarov, he's obviously much better on the
ball than Otamendi, but again, there's a reason he
hasn't played in central defence before this
season.
Guardiola's other big call was dropping Joe Hart
for Willy Caballero. Guardiola simply said that
"Caballero had a very good preseason." He's not
that naive; he'll need to offer a better justification
than that. The theory doing the rounds was that
Guardiola's system requires a keeper who is
comfortable on the ball and can do the "sweeper-
keeper" thing, which is hardly Hart's strength.
Caballero isn't exactly the second coming of
Manuel Neuer, but he's better at it than Hart.
If that's the case, though, you wonder why this is
only happening now, in mid-August. Surely it
didn't take that long for the club to figure out
what Hart could and could not do? At this stage,
securing another keeper won't be easy and you'll
pay through the nose. Given his wages, finding
Hart a home won't be straightforward either; it
means that if he's dropped, he's facing time on
the bench which, politically, isn't great for a new
manager.
Guardiola has achieved more than enough for City
fans and the critics to trust his judgement. At the
very least, he's shown that he's confident and
unafraid when it comes to following his
philosophy. To paraphrase Billy Joel, if he keeps
this up, he'll walk away a fool or a king.
Barca win but Sevilla full of intrigue
Barcelona beat Sevilla 2-0 in the first leg of the
Spanish Super Cup, which suggests Luis
Enrique's eighth trophy (counting the piddling
ones) is just around the corner. Without Neymar
(who is busy with Olympic pursuits) and
newcomers Samuel Umtiti and Andre Gomes on
the bench, Barca showed a bit of ring rust in the
first half, but it's nothing to really worry about.
Playing against a Jorge Sampaoli team can be a
shock to the system and, indeed, by halftime
possession was roughly even, which doesn't
usually happen when Barcelona are on the pitch.
The problem with Sampaoli's brand of football is
that all that running and high press can
sometimes rob you of lucidity in the final third.
And when you lose the ball, a good passing side
can cut you open with two or three passes, which
is what ultimately happened as Luis Suarez and
Munir struck twice in the second half.
We'll get a better sense of Barcelona and how
Luis Enrique integrates the newcomers in the next
few weeks. But, in the meantime, Sevilla under
Sampaoli promise to be one of the most
interesting and entertaining stories in Europe this
season. Watch this space.
Mourinho gets off to a winning start
Jose Mourinho's Manchester United got out of the
blocks with a win, Zlatan Ibrahimovic scored on
his Premier League debut (just as he had done on
his La Liga, Serie A and Ligue 1 debuts), whatever
tension there might have been with Juan Mata
was either overblown or forgotten, and
Bournemouth were never a threat in a 3-1 away
victory.
Bournemouth were awful, but it's encouraging to
see United play with the sort of bravado and
confidence that was often missing last year.
Seeing Wayne Rooney operating closer to
Ibrahimovic -- it often was effectively a 4-4-2 --
was a good alternative solution and you wonder if
it might be something we'll see more often when
the likes of Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Paul Pogba
start getting into the lineup. Rooney will continue
to divide opinion in some quarters, but he's more
useful up the pitch than in a central position
where he can clog the playmaking channels.
That's just one of many solutions available to
Mourinho. At some point, he'll need to figure out
how all his pieces fit together and it may not be
as simple as some expect. What's unlikely is that
we'll see what we saw in the Louis van Gaal era: a
constantly changing lineup. Once Mourinho finds
what he likes, he tends to stick to it.
Don't read much into Bayern vs. Dortmund
Bayern Munich won the German Super Cup with a
2-0 win over Borussia Dortmund in what was the
first look at Carlo Ancelotti's team in a
(somewhat) competitive game. You have to call it
that because neither team looks up to scratch in
terms of fitness at this stage. And while Ancelotti
played something close to what you'd expect his
first XI to be (minus Douglas Costa, Jerome
Boateng and Arjen Robben), Thomas Tuchel left
out everyone who was involved in the Euros this
past summer. Raphael Guerreiro, Lukas Pisczek,
Julian Weigl, Andre Schurrle and the injured
Marco Reus all missed out.
That's why you don't read too much into it. But
what we saw was a Dortmund side that was all
over Bayern in the first half and could have scored
several times. Then, when Tuchel's crew began to
understandably run out of steam, Bayern put the
game away with Arturo Vidal and Thomas Mueller.
Still, I can't wait to see these two line up again at
full fitness and with everyone back -- particularly
Dortmund. Not many sides in Europe are as
packed with young talent as Tuchel's crew.
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