Arsenal's young guns set the standard

Arsenal are a rather special team, for many reasons. Manager Arsene Wenger has been in the job for more than a decade, which is an achievement in itself. In a day and age whereby managers come and go like candidates to be Sir Alan Sugar’s apprentice, 10 years in the job deserves a gold medal.

Secondly, the players he possesses in his vastly-talented squad. Down the years Wenger has constructed a young, agile, attacking side and has received a lot of criticism for not having a big ball-winner in the ranks. Especially since Patrick Vieira left. However, evidence this season suggests that Wenger knows exactly what he is doing.

Arsenal won the FA Youth Cup last season, which goes a long way to underlining the enormous potential that the next generation at the Emirates possess. Now, most of those players have gained some form of first-team experience, whether as a late substitute in the Premier League or even Champions League, or maybe starting in the early rounds of the Carling Cup. At some stage, that potential has been on show, and boy have people been impressed.

The recent 2-1 victory over Liverpool in the Carling Cup completely emphasises where Arsenal stand in relation to other sides in the League when it comes to their ’second string’ team. Compare the likes of Craig Eastmond, Kerrea Gilbert, and Kieran Gibbs to Liverpool’s Damien Plessis, Philipp Degen, and Emiliano Insua, and the Arsenal guys are streets ahead in terms of talent and ability. Even though Degen and Insua are full Internationals, the standard of Arsenal’s teenagers is far higher than that of Liverpool’s.

Throughout the age groups Arsenal’s youngsters are taught nothing but how to keep possession of the ball. There’s very little on anything else. Credit must be given to the backroom staff and Academy coaches at Arsenal who clearly do a wonderful job of improving these youngsters and making them exceptional footballers. At times during the Liverpool match, they kept the ball for 20+ passes whilst playing one and two touch football; just an incredible thing to be able to do at the age of 17/18/19 against Premier League opposition.

Arsene Wenger is without doubt the best in the world at getting the best out of his young guns, and inspiring them to play out of their skin. Year after year more talent is brought in from abroad, and brought through the youth ranks to compete at the highest level, and year after year they impress. It’s like a conveyor belt of outstanding talent.
So Arsenal have set the standard when it comes to their Youth development system and the players they bring through. The question is, will anybody be able to compete with them in 5/10 years time?

The fact that Arsenal haven’t won any silverware in the last 5 years may suggest that all the hard work pumped into the academy is going to waste. However, it takes time to develop a side of such raw talent into one that will become world-beaters if you like. Take Cesc Fabregas for example. A couple of years ago he was an outstanding player, but there were still aspects to his game that needed improvement and honing. Now he seems to be the complete player. With several players of similar potential to Fabregas coming through, if they can reach maximum potential in the next few years then Arsenal have a team full of superstars in the making. 5 or 6 Cesc Fabregas’ in the side makes for a cup-winning generation.

It’s worrying for the other sides in the Premier League that they don’t have the same potential. It’s unquestionable that Manchester United have a world-class youth setup, and the same goes for Chelsea, but neither side has brought through the kind of talent that Arsenal are showing off, perhaps with the exception of Federico Macheda. As for Chelsea, well their side is made of over-30’s with very little youth being filtered through. Roman’s billions have obviously blocked the route for youngsters through to the first team. That’s probably another area that Arsenal have got right.

The Gunners have spent money on recruiting players from around the world (e.g Andrei Arshavin, Thomas Vermaelen) but they’ve also left plenty of room to enable them to filter through their youngsters in order to give them invaluable experience at the top level. It’s an area that other teams can take example from in order to progress their homegrown footballers.

One thing that will be interesting to see this season with Arsenal, is that if they make it to the final of the Carling Cup or FA Cup with the youngsters they’re putting out, will Wenger stick with them for that crunch game against, say, Manchester United with the Rooney’s and Berbatov’s? One thing’s for sure; Arsenal will be a side to look out for in the next few years, and they’ll have a few players who make it very big in the footballing world.

From where I was sitting, I saw nothing!

Who would be a manager, eh? Not only do they have to control a group of mischievous, binge drinking, gambling addicted idiots but from what we gather from post-match interviews, they have a severe case of missing the most crucial incidents and decisions, UNLESS they go against their team. It’s usually because a steward was standing in their way, or they were on the phone to the Mrs, or some other really valid excuse.

However, as if we didn’t know already, Mr. Arsene Wenger of Arsenal FC has admitted that he faked it all. Well I never. I’m not being funny, but Arsene didn’t really need to ‘admit’ that for us all to believe. It was as clear as daylight.

Speaking ahead of his side’s League opener against Everton at the weekend, Wenger stated that loyalty to his players is far more important than answering questions from the media. (I’m sure a few media personnel will have a word or two to say about that).

Asked whether Wenger had ever been economical with the truth, the Frenchman replied: “Yes, because you are thinking ‘why has he (the player) done that?’ and you know you cannot explain”. So why not just say he’s a cheat then? We can all see it, we all know what’s happened – the hundreds of camera angles take care of that.

“From where I was sitting, I couldn’t see it” is now code for “yes, he dived – he’s a cheat”. However, you can understand where Arsene is coming from – it’s his duty to protect his players from criticism and such like – but for years now the FA and all other major governing bodies have been trying to clamp down on foul play such as diving and manipulating the referee into making decisions. Surely these acts of protection and denial give encouragement to players to continue doing such things, as they know that they will get the backing of their gaffer.

It’s a different story when the bad refereeing decision, or a dodgy offside flag goes up AGAINST Wenger’s team – he’ll give it some after the match, claiming the referee is biased or not fit to officiate a PL match, or the linesman wasn’t doing his job properly – but when the rub of the green is going his way, he’ll keep quiet and act innocent. I think it’s wrong that they are allowed to behave in this way. We know that in Football, and in Sport in general there are going to be some bad decisions, and it’s tough to accept them, especially in such high-pressure arenas and situations like you get in the PL. But berating officials when they get something wrong against you, and then turning a blind eye to something that happened for your team isn’t the way to go about it.

Sir Alex Ferguson is arguably the King (it pains me to use the word ‘King’ in the same sentence as Fergie) at manipulating referees to such an extent that they are influenced during the match. Then when the rare occasion of a bad decision goes against United, you see him parading onto the pitch post-match and giving Howard Webb, Mike Riley, Steve Bennett a complete earful. It’s not fair on officials to be treated like that, and it’s not fair on opposing teams who have to be on the receiving end of a Ferguson tantrum – they ultimately affect a referees thinking.

Rafa Benitez received a lot of criticism when he spoke out against Ferguson’s influencing tactics, but none of that criticism was justified. He was 100% right in what he said, and I was so glad to hear about it – it was about time someone stood up and said something, and stopped letting Fergie get away with it. Benitez is a good one for staying quiet on the subject of criticising match officials. Seldom do you hear the Spaniard ranting Kevin Keegan style on TV after a bad match, and seldom do you hear about him getting involved in pre-match disputes about the men in the black.

The FA keep claiming they’re putting measures in place to give the referees more protection, but from where I’m sitting, I can’t see anything happening. Or perhaps that steward just got in my way. But seriously, last season a ‘rule’ came into place which allowed only the Captain of the team the right to speak to, challenge, whatever you want to call it, the referee, but on more than one occasion, much more than one occasion, did we see a mass of players aggressively approaching a referee. Chelsea are the main culprits – an Old Trafford Tie of the Avram Grant era springs to mind, when John Obi Mikel was sent off for a late lunge on a Utd player (prizes for naming that player). I’m looking forward to seeing if the FA’s latest attempt to give the referees some protection will actually work – I’m not 100% sure what they’ve actually changed, but we’ll see I guess.

It’s time that Wenger & Ferguson get a grip on their emotions, and be real here. It’s Football – you’re going to get done out of a few decisions – but deal with it. There are 20 teams in the PL all experiencing the same referees/linesman/officials – the World is not against YOU. I’m fed up of the words “I didn’t see anything”. I want managers to clamp down on cheats, and not protect them, and I want them to stop moaning about ‘bad’ referees.

Bring on tomorrow.