It's not about Adebayor or Fabregas

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Date	Time	C	Opponent	F	A	R	S
12 Sep	3:00 PM	P	Manchester City (A)	2	4	Lost

The failure at Man City was nothing to do with Ade. In the same way the big question about Arsenal playing without Fabregas was shown at Man City to be a non-issue, it's not about Fabregas. It is about poor tactics, failure to bench favourites and persistent failure to pick the right team.

4-3-3 works really well for Arsenal. As a system it relies on high persistent pressing and the right players in the right places. If you play it and don't press you are asking to be punished. If you play the wrong three players in attack you asking for even more trouble.

Nicklas Bendtner arrived from scoring two crucial goals for Denmark over two international games playing at centre forward. He was not in the mood to be stuck out on the right while van Persie was falling over in the centre. Robin van Persie is clueless in the centre. It's a bit like playing him as a lone striker. It has never worked. van Persie is good at a lot of things but he is crap at a lot of things. Playing in a crowded box isn't for him. He cannot fight players around him without getting a yellow card.

Abou Diaby needs a lot of structure around him. I concede he is an ok player but he needs a lot of structure around him because (as one person put it) he doesn't know where he is on the pitch. He needs Andrey Arshavin and Tomas Rosicky and players that are experienced enough to create structure.

Bendtner, van Persie and Diaby have NEVER played together as far as I can remember in 4-3-3 yet they were played together after international week following our first loss of the season when we desperately needed a win. Why do that?

That was our front three. They pretended to press the ball high. How does that work? Well it's when you run to the player who has the ball but stay about 5 metres away and act like you are blocking the channel for passes instead of going to him and putting him under pressure. The effect is that the opposition is comfortable and play clean passes to an Arsenal midfield that is then only 3 players against 4 and then they arrive quickly against our defence. Everytime Gaël Clichy and Bacary Sagna went forward, we are even more exposed because of the joke execution of 4-3-3 by the front line. Everyone knows how fast Shaun Wright-Phillips and Craig Bellamy are.

After 15 minutes, my buddy turned to me and said: "If it were Mourinho, he would do his substitutions now because it is clear it's not going to work."

Fabregas has returned from a goal scoring fantastic Spain where he can play one-twos with everyone. After 10 minutes at Manchester City, Fabregas could only exchange passes cleanly with Song and Denilson. He could not play with the attackers. Even Fabregas gave up and just went through the motions for the entire first half.

The most telling silent indictment I have seen a manager receive from his team was what Wenger got from his team at the Eastlands. Nobody bothered to play in the first half because they all knew it would not work. Everybody waited for the substitution. Every Arsenal player knew it was not working and they all waited for the manager to see it and change it so they could play.

Rosicky arrived on the pitch and instantly, Arsenal players started playing. Rosicky did not even touch the ball much but the entire team started playing. The message to me was extremely loud "now we have at least a workable line-up so let's play". Remember that the player that changed this had barely touched the ball or done anything to wake the team up. He just came on the pitch. A few minutes later, he gave a difficult pass to van Persie who did a van Persie turn-and-shoot. van Persie only scored because nobody had played any hard direct pass all day so the Man City defenders were not expecting and van Persie had done nothing all day so they did not expect him to even turn successfully without falling over.

Then Wenger made a catastrophic mistake. In chasing the game, he brought on a joke defender for Sagna. That can be done with a slow team, not one that has Bellamy and SWP. Man City scored two goals they would never have scored with Sagna on the pitch. There was nothing wrong with the defence or its contribution to attack. Everything was wrong with the top 3 players. They could not play together and midfield could not play with them.

We noted here last week that 4-3-3 is very tiring on the midfield and attack. Pressing for 90mins against a good team is tough. If you do that, you also need players who can keep the ball so you can make the opposition work. Diaby, RvP and Bendtner are not those players. This means basically that if Arsenal doesn't win the first half then we're in trouble. We have to sort that out. Start with strongest team and substitute to a weaker team if necessary.

Jens Lehmann in the days when Arsenal's defence was extremely good, used to jog around and do exercises to keep himself switched on when nothing was going on. Almunia was great last season when there was a lot going on. Now the defence is good he is so switched off and gets surprised when a ball comes his way. We have lost 4 goals since pre-season to that.

The formation is fine. It works on many different levels. It works better than everything we have tried the past 3 years even though it is only young. The problems now are old problems. Problems that formations don't fix. For example:

Why is Eduardo on the bench? Eduardo is much better at tight spaces even if his team is doing poorly. We saw that against England. And he is a fighter and always hungry. He can play with anybody and is constantly mobile and dangerous. Why the hell is he on the bench ever?

van Persie scores nearly every game for Holland Playing on the wing. Why not play him there or bench him?

Why doesn't anybody shout at the players and wake them up when things are going wrong or when they are taking it too easy. Why moan at the referee instead of shouting at the players to wake up? Why is Fabregas not shouting and organising? Why isn't Gallas or Sagna? Who has power on the pitch? Why is Pat Rice or Wenger not on the touch line after 10mins talking to the players rather than bothering the fourth official?

Why do we always lose if we don't score first? What kind of team is that? Is it because nobody can pick the team up when they get down on the pitch? Why does this persist after so many years? Why is nobody shouting at the players to win games that they can clearly win?

We were beaten by a team that is only above average with a striker we know who showed the extremes of lack of class. But RvP should shut up about Ade and wonder why he wasn't up for the game or why he could not lead the line and change the game for us. Everyone should forget Ade and focus on why we lost a game, which like many, we could have won easily if we scored first – but what kind of a crazy team only wins if they score first?

Psychologically, something is wrong at Arsenal. Wenger is not picking the team right. This has to be fixed. A lot of players are comfortable and not hungry enough. This has to be fixed else we will not even survive the January transfer window let alone the summer. The formation has fixed some footballing issues but it has to be played right with the right resources and the team has to play like competitors.

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