Having watched Arsenal meekly succumb to Chelsea in the League Cup last week, I can only conclude that the club’s lofty place at the summit of the Premiership has given Arsene Wenger a bit of altitude sickness.
I can think of no other conceivable reason why he would otherwise effectively throw away his team’s best and most realistic chance of silverware this season. Can you?
I understand, of course, all the old excuses about squad rotation and resting players. And some of those may actually be valid in an era when games come thick and fast.
But Wenger, after going so long without a trophy, desperately needs something to stick in the trophy cabinet to prove he is on the right track. And the League Cup undoubtedly represented his and Arsenal’s easiest route to achieving that goal.
Yet, instead of embracing a competition that would only have taken a few more games to win, he fielded a weakened team that was no match for Jose Mourinho’s second string. (Chelsea have some serious strength in depth, don’t they?)
Wenger even gave Nicklas Bendtner a starting role. Can there be any clearer indication to your opponents that you don’t want to win a game than putting the not-so-great Dane in the first 11? It’s the selection equivalent of waving the white flag.
I appreciate that being top of the league may give you delusions of grandeur and, as a consequence, make you believe it’s time to change your priorities. But winning the title is going to be incredibly hard for this young Gunners team.
The season is still in its early stages and Arsenal have hardly had an overly difficult start to the campaign. When the going gets a bit tougher there is serious danger they will start to fade away. I’m not saying they can’t win the league, but they are going to have to put in some miraculous performances over the next seven months in order to do so.
Likewise, the Champions League is all but certainly out of this Arsenal squad’s reach at the moment. They may have a stronger team now than last season, but I still don’t really think you can expect them to compete with the likes of Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Dortmund and Real Madrid.
So if you discard those potential avenues of success, it leaves the two domestic trophies as Wenger’s most likely sources of silverware. And he has now thrown away one of those in rather disappointing fashion.
I can’t blame him for following his Premiership dream, but equally, I can’t help but suspect he will live to regret his decision come next May.
Don’t blame the messengers
Andre Villas-Boas is either very clever, very brave or very stupid.
If there is one thing football fans don’t take kindly to, it is being blamed for their team’s failings.
Yet the Tottenham Hotspur boss did just that after the far from convincing victory over Hull City last weekend. A win that only came about after dodgy refereeing handed them an undeserved penalty.
In comments that may well come back to haunt him, Villas-Boas said the 1-0 win “belonged to the players” because the game was “played in a very, very difficult atmosphere with almost no support”.
He added: “The fans can do better and they know they can do better”.
Fair enough, the White Hart Lane crowd may not have been at its most passionate on Sunday. But is there not a chance that was because they were watching their expensively assembled team struggle to break down incredibly average opposition?
Gareth Bale may have moved to Real Madrid, but that doesn’t change the fact that Villas-Boas has spent over a hundred million on new players this season, more than enough to compensate for the loss of the Welshman.
In fact, considering the cash he has splashed and the quality of the players that have arrived, you would expect Spurs to be a far, far better overall team this season than they were last.
Wenger even gave Nicklas Bendtner a starting role. Can there be any clearer indication that you don’t want to win a game?
But that hasn’t proved to be the case so far. At the moment they are putting in performances that are not befitting one of the biggest-spending clubs in the Premier League. Yes, the new players may still be settling in, but there is only so long that excuse will hold water.
If Villas-Boas wants the crowd to get behind his players then he should focus on his job, which is to ensure the team is actually worthy of the fans’ unconditional support.
His problem is that during his time in charge of Spurs he has continuously built up his own skills and the team’s potential. He has, almost single-handedly, raised expectations among the Tottenham fans to dangerous levels.
And that means the fans expect, and rightly so, their new, improved and lemon-scented team to be able to dispatch the likes of Hull without breaking into a sweat. Not labour to an unconvincing and lucky victory.
If Villas-Boas can’t live up to the standards he has promised, then he should be blaming himself and his players, not the hard-working people who pay large amounts of money to watch their team.
At best, his comments were naive. At worst, they were the deluded ramblings of a man who is struggling to live up to his own hype.
Much hairdo about nothing
I’m not one to stand up for Sepp Blatter, but the fuss being made about his comments at the Oxford Union last week is way out of proportion.
Blatter was taking part in a discussion with students and answering questions from the floor. One person asked him whether he preferred Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi. His answer was rather long-winded but equally light-hearted.
He described Messi as the sort of boy “every father and every mother would like to take home” and Ronaldo as more of a “commander on the field of play”. Blatter then had an innocent dig at Ronaldo’s hair: “One has more expenses for the hairdresser than the other, but that doesn’t matter”.
He concluded with: “I can’t say who is the best. I like them both, but I prefer Messi.”
All rather innocuous and frivolous in my opinion, but not according to Ronaldo and his allies.
The Portuguese FA, Real Madrid and Ronaldo himself all demanded apologies from Blatter. The player himself posted a video of Sepp’s comments and said: “This video shows clearly the respect and consideration that Fifa has for me, my club and my country. Much is explained now”.
Fair enough, it probably wasn’t right for Blatter to pick a favourite. He should, as the head of world football, remain as neutral as possible on all football-related subjects.
But were his comments so outrageous and hurtful that they needed official letters from club and country and for the player himself to throw his teddy out of the pram? I think not.
Wouldn’t it have been easier, and far more in keeping with the spirit of the situation, if Ronaldo had just tweeted something like “well, at least I know what a hairdresser is, Sepp”, and left it at that?
sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade