EN(title)MENT

This is a guest post from longtime Le Grover reader and commenter Jamil Alessandro.

Okay, I'm back. I've been forced back into writing because some of you are being utterly insane online.

En(title)ment (1/2)

In 1997, Bayern captain Lothar Matthäus accused Germany teammate Andreas Möller of being a Heulsuse, a cry baby, making a provocative gesture that saw his Dortmund rival reach for his face to dry those tears… with his palms. Although referencing a horrific dive in the box two years earlier, his anger boiling over was actually a symptom of growing Bayern frustration at being unable to prevent a resurgent Borussia Dortmund winning two Bundesliga titles back to back.

The Bavarian giants have a petulance unrivalled in the footballing world. Anything other than winning the Bundesliga by a handsome margin is a personal affront to the dignity of the entire region.

Losing out on two titles in a row?

As utterly unacceptable as asking to order a lukewarm ale straight from the bottle during the height of Oktoberfest. (After losing out to Leverkusen last year, the German table-toppers are showing a hunger so vengeful this season, it looks set to break one of the strongest forces in football - the Harry Kane trophy curse.)

Back in the 90s, Bayern also believed their stature alone meant that they deserved to win the title every year. But of course, that in itself meant nothing.

The tables quickly flipped around again - Bayern remained one of football's unique ever-stays and the second-most decorated side in German football history.

Perennial challengers, Dortmund, have won the league three times in as many decades.

In case you think we're unique in not getting over the line against a financially dominant mega-rival.

Twenty years earlier, a game that was pretty standard for Bayern, in a competition they probably thought was beneath them, marked the terminal demise of another giant - The death-agony of a footballing royal:

Two-time winners of the Champions League under the unvanquishable Brian Clough, Forest lost to Munich in the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup. It was to be their last outing in Europe's premier competition.

For a while, I'm sure Forest fans complained at how the poor results and poorer football were not deserving of a side of their status. #CloughOut would no doubt have been trending on 90s Twitter as a side containing Roy Keane slid into a sorry relegation.

But then the slow passing of time, a brief foray back into the newly-crowned Premier League was to be but a tempting glance of the new footballing riches.

Now the only gloried glimpse they get into their golden past is the Brian Clough Trophy - competing with Derby, who when they popped their heads back into the top flight in 2007/2008 had their memories of being English league champions brutally extinguished - by the most unforgiving season in Prem history - finishing with a pitifully pathetic 11 points.

The big teams are not immune. United are lucky that their heyday coincided perfectly with the sky-rocket of 1992's big television deals - the biggest club in the world with an indomitable share in the world's largest market - they're probably too big to fail.

All the same, every football fan has enjoyed the much-parodied 'this is Manchester United' refrain from Gary Neville as United have become the club that makes top 4 look like it really is a trophy.

A desperate plea to history in place of strategy has left them in a permanent rut. Occasionally stopping the bleeding - but too afraid for the noise to take the necessary medicine, or perform the required surgery, or… *insert medical analogy about invasive procedure*.

This has led to farcical and short-term decisions, which up until Amorim (and the jury's still out on him) have been disastrous.

Consistency in the Champions League seems light-years away. Let alone the Premier League. Let alone season-by-season dynastic dominance. Something that was expected under Ferguson.

And that's my point with all of this - there isn't such a thing in football as where you ought to be. There are smart decisions - in the long term more significantly on the spreadsheets than on the football pitch.

There are even starker and surer falls from grace than Nottingham Forest's. Maybe as fans of the only team to have never been relegated, we're immune from some of that contingent thinking. But we sure can see the delusion in others.

(Incidentally - I found out writing this that the reason Arsenal wear red is because our first ever kits were donated by Nottingham Forest…)

Aston Villa wanting to put a star to symbolise the European Cup on their kit seems an act of almost pitiful senility; a navel-gaze into the halcyon days that barely beggars belief. This history alone didn't do anything to help them get back. There are West Ham retirees who can hark on about the Cup Winners' Cup. It won't get them back to winning the Europa League. That would be only marginally less delusional than their goading chant to us last year - 🎵 'Champions of Europe, you'll never sing that'🎵

(We won the 1994 Cup Winners' Cup, I'll have you know.)

Sometimes it's sudden. Sometimes it's a slow decline. The Championship is full of rotting former greats: Title-winners, once UEFA Cup sides.

Now there's a big difference between fallen giants and teams that got some of that post-1992 Premier League rebrand sweet, sweet Murdoch money.

But if we're looking with a sober lens, we're (financially speaking) a league below City, Chelsea, and United. We're actually also punching above Newcastle right now, and at times other clubs (um… Everton) based on spending.

Liverpool are the only club on a similar level to us. Who after the best start in Prem history, during a COVID lockdown - have a solitary league title.

After never having won the Prem, very few Liverpool fans felt like it was owed to them. Especially after Gerrard's infamous Freudian-made-very-real slip.

In their half-decade slugfest against City, I'm sure Liverpool thought they were 'in it' every season - that they maybe even had the edge. That various things were holding them back. But invariably, whatever specific reason - the general trends, the slightly favourable decisions, the bigger squad depth, the marginal advantages in certain positions… always came back to bite.

The outlier always falls back to the trend.

Towards City.

Money alone isn't enough, of course. Leicester miraculously proved that there is a route for outsiders to win - and if they could do it, we always have a chance. But we're in a different category to our rivals, just like the mid-table teams are in a league below us. Our net spend was pretty similar when Don Raul was making Mafia moves - a drastic rebuild that even the best of us long lost patience with.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't focus on what we can do better - where we could have picked up a healthy lead, made our advantage pay, etc.

But looking at the history of the Prem - very few times have ever really been in a title race. Media darlings Spurs never 'got over the line', they weren't even really ever in a title race. With the exception of Leicester and Liverpool, the arc has tended towards biggest club in the world, then Russian tycoon vanity project Chelsea, then City.

Entitlement is a laughable commodity in football. It's only by being humble that the seeds of the current project took root.

If it's just trophies you want, rather than sustained competitiveness, well we won 4 FA Cups in the final days of Wenger. But sustained success in this day and age needs something else - if it's even possible against City, Chelsea, and even United.

*Again, my point with all of this, is saying we should be PL champions means fuck all.*

We don't have a recent history of winning titles. Arteta has presided over the best ever points tally in our history. To say he's somehow holding us back…

We need to be ruthless. We need to be strategic. We need to not make excuses.

If only we had a manager who valued those things…

'Arteta's a good manager, but he's not going to get us over the line'

Wait…

Arteta: 'Thanks for the memories, but it's time to…'

What am I reading right now!?

I'm sorry, but we genuinely wouldn't even be able to see the line if it wasn't for Arteta.

In those dark and dreary lockdown December days, I was, I'm ashamed to say, one of those calling for his head.

Getting over the line then was top 4, and we couldn't manage that when a draw against Crystal Palace would have secured it.

But we turned a corner and suddenly went from Europa League hopefuls to one of the best teams in Europe.

I remember talking to a friend who's a Liverpool fan about the unexpected joys of our first series title charge since before the iPhone existed… (Jesus (yes, the very same!) was scoring from anywhere, a teenage Saliba had nonchalantly stepped across the channel as the best young defender in the world - Arteta was suddenly a world-class manager out of nowhere, 🎵Saka and Emile Smith Rowe🎵 chorused around the North Bank, newly in one voice, for the first time since the Emirates opened, as the sun shined on the carpet… so to be honest, I wasn't really listening to what he was saying).

I was simply hoping we had replaced Liverpool. For a season or two, it didn't matter. The good times were back after so much COVID bleakness.

But what my friend kept talking about was the psychological damage of being so close to the quadruple. Rather than Klopp suddenly being bad, or a random dramatic decline, there was a specific sporting trauma that came from losing out so narrowly on immortality. There was a huge physical and emotional toll that had to be reckoned with.

The fact that the open-top bus parade went ahead anyway. The half-hearted parties on the street. The drunken denialism. These things couldn't cover the gap between an FA Cup/Carabao double and the bona fide status of being the best team in history.

That gap was a psychological chasm, even in the minds of the mentality monsters.

In fact, the pretending only made things worse. Liverpool were limboing somewhere in the bargaining stage; they met acceptance only in the form of having to completely give up on the title before Christmas.

Readjustment

Now what we're dealing with after last season isn't exactly the same, but we are definitely in the stage of necessary readjustment.

The poetry of the project is something we didn't have too much time to dwell upon when we were first thrown into it. Before Arteta, in the realm of private prayers and thoughts, each of us had made our peace with Arsenal might be for the next decade.

Turgid football and top 4. Spurs-style not so glorious failure? Rebranding as the most likeable team, the most unlikeable, counter-attackers, protagonists…?

Then suddenly we were in the mix for the big one. It was the prodigy against the Master, snaking City to come and bring us back to the big time.

Not only that, it was a Hale End stacked team, young players with a special bond. We took the league by storm. The elephant in the tree wasn't moving - whatever the memes said. We were winning with bit-part players from the academy, in the race thanks to late winners from Nketiah. There was a Granit Xhaka redemption arc. Ramsdale going from hero to villain. Wilshere was doing bits with the youth team. Per passing on the academy pros. Even ex-Invincible Edu was in place as technical director.

Winning in this way would have been special.

But even when we narrowly missed out…

It made sense somehow. We weren't ready. We were meant to win it twenty years after the Invincibles. In the gold kit. A CL double? After where we were, we still barely dared to talk about these things…

But in whispers we did.

It had seemed all over when Rob Holding (bless him) threw away our CL place the season before. Gary Neville said top 4 was our ceiling. But we grew after that. And we'd grow again.

We had the chance to win the League, with a fresh-faced Arteta, but now we had a season of steel too.

But then there was last year's heartbreak. It was our year. But it wasn't. We lost the league by 2 points. 2 points that PGMOL admitted they owed us. A few more if we were reffed like City…

Phase 5

When he first acknowledged we were challenging for the league, a downed and distant Spurs once again not even worth thinking about, Arteta knew how to further whet the appetite.

The team was very good. Its shortfalls were kind of obvious. (An injured Jesus, a kamikaze Zinchenko were still key to the whole thing!), Nketiah was our back-up striker, and we needed a healthy dose of hopium, praying for miracle spirits to ward off players from the injury table.

But Arteta then went and said that this was only phase 3(!) of 5…

The project was still to 'explode' in an even bigger way.

As we got better and better, scored more, conceded less, made it seem like we couldn't lose against the Big 6 🧿

Why wouldn't we believe him?

Things were just going to get better and better and better. A meteoric rise. Up and up smoothly and forever.

Only now we've hit a hitch.

A few dodgy red cards. A few injuries.

And in a broader sense, we've had to readjust -

We can't get by on shock tactics and the rest of the league not figuring us out. We've used up some of our good fortune. And more than that, there's the squad. A team that very nearly (and in my eyes did) win the league.

But whatever you want to tell yourself at night, we'll have to win the league when we do without Smith Rowe. The Nketiahs of the last days of Wenger don't have a part to play in our ultimate success. The last-minute winners from Reiss and Jorginho weren't the divine hand of fate our uncontrolled limbs said they were at the time.

The miraculous backline has a few cracks. The Marbella Maldini, Ben White, is out for a bit. Jesus/Zinchenko have run out of steam. Say it quietly, but maybe we even need an upgrade on Martinelli. Or at least him and Saka won't power us to victory by mere force alone.

The transition from Phase 4 to 5 might not be linear.

But luckily, all the supporting structures are in place. We're still going to end up with the strongest defence in the league. Trust.

We can put most of our losses down to freak red cards. We've still been catastrophizing draws rather than losses.

The call to throw the baby out with the bathwater, to start taking risks in-game. Well, it's a good job some fans don't run the club.

As a Wengerball purist, it was hard to accept building a solid foundation, collecting 6'5" centre-backs like Pokémon. But now we've done it, surrendering that for a few attacking tweaks that will be really hard to achieve even in a favourable market.

I don't want to be down 4-0 away from home against the Big 6 after ten minutes again. Now, our record against all of them is ridiculous.

I know I'm going to get slaughtered, but decisions also mean we're probably not really even in a rut at all.

Now some stuff has been bad, don't get me wrong.

To be honest, I think we're all so traumatised, it's easy for the bad days to return in our head. But the idea that we're fragile, prone to collapse, lack the bottle etc. It just doesn't bear witness to reality.

We should be about 6 points better off, having a bit of a wobble and not taking advantage of a City implosion (though I, for one, am making sure to enjoy it… Stay humble, eh?)

Short of a striker/winger/back-up for the best creative player in the world and not managing our injuries very well. That's it really.

We're the most consistent team over the past seasons, and for whatever's been amiss in our creative penetration, that's still clear in our domination of games.

The stuff that can be coached… for example, set pieces. Well, we're doing okay in.

And the idea that we have a manager who's not a winner, or best placed to sustain our rise to the top, is completely farcical.

As Matt says on the pod - he's a maniac.

A freak for winning.

He brought Jover to City and now he's trapped him at Arsenal, locking him up, and refusing to feed him until he has a new play that's guaranteed to work. (*disclaimer*)

Mikel's given us the most points in a season and not just the best defensive record in the league but the most goals scored in a season and a calendar year (beating the record set by… oh yeah, himself).

What really scares me is this.

The unluck surrounding the Emirates isn't tied to Arteta…

It's tied to us.

Even scarier?

I can see Arteta winning the league more easily than I can see us winning it. If I had to choose.

Thankfully, Haaland's "stay humble, eh?" curse has (alongside delivering the long-awaited decline of the Citizens) burned any bridges that might have been crossed on the way to a prodigal son-style return. (Hopefully.)

And here's the thing -

Even the hysteria over City is a bit much. They've lost their edge, but only after they won the treble and then four in a row… They're still performing well; it's just nobody besides Pep and Arteta look at the numbers, thinking it's the gods of football fate and the actual crazy in-game outcomes you can always control.

But City's underlying metrics aren't great. An age profile that's closer to a midweek afternoon bingo hall than the secondary school homework club run after lunch at London Colney.

For us, even finishing 3rd, winning a league cup, doing well in the FA and would not be terminal to a project whose best players are all under 27, who knows its weaknesses, who has one of the most innovative minds in the game.

Kinda just makes what's necessary for phase 5 even cleaner.

That said, we're still not out of the title yet, you melts - show a little heart!