It’s a year now since I first wrote for Arsenal-Mania. My first article was a comparison of the relative strengths of Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United, and twelve months later, with Nottingham Forest’s 42 game unbeaten streak finally broken with last night’s 3-0 defeat of Blackburn Rovers, it seems fitting to go back to the same topic again.
Because now that record is ours, Arsenal really must face up to the hard road ahead of them. The glory’s ours, but this season more than ever holding off the threat from Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford (and maybe Anfield) is going to test us to the limit.
It’s too easy to revel in the brilliant way we’ve opened the season, and, as José Mourinho has said, it’s too easy to contrast Arsenal as a ‘team from the moon’ with the more pragmatic Blues as ‘the team from Hell’, and think that that is the story of this season. Attacking football against defence-first brutalism.
There is much much more to it than that, and both teams have a lot to teach one another. At the same time both need to learn from Sir Alex Ferguson and the winning machine that has been Manchester United over the last eleven years. Whichever team learns best from the others attitudes will take the title. If they don’t, they will end up empty handed.
With Wayne Rooney seemingly destined for Old Trafford, a casual glance at the three squads suggests the real power is still split between Arsenal and United. Both headed by strikers of undeniable brilliance in Van Nistelrooy and Henry, there is talent at the core of each team with which Chelsea cannot quite compete. Where Arsenal can call on Henry, Vieira, Campbell, Cole, Bergkamp and Píres as their players at a level of undeniable world class; and where United can call on Keane, Scholes, Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs and Van Nistelrooy, Chelsea are always second best. For all of the talents of Kezman, Duff, Drogba, Lampard, Terry and Carvalho, theirs are still careers that await fulfilment. Arsenal and United’s key players have nothing to prove to anybody – theirs is the body of experience and ability that brings home medals, as one look at the record books show.
But Chelsea have more total strength in depth than either, more evidently very good players throughout. £200 million pounds worth of transfer fees alone should guarantee that.
That breadth gives Chelsea a real advantage, which may well become apparent come winter, when graft usually replaces guile in forcing results.
But what Arsenal have, and what United will have when Rooney arrives, is something Chelsea may be lacking. And that is a brilliant young figurehead who can change something quite fundamental about how the team plays; remould it to take the group on another step.
Everyone knows about Rooney. Everyone saw what he can do at Euro 2004. He will make a massive difference to United – for all the merits of Alan Smith and Louis Saha, both lack what he can provide, which is the genius to shape games from the front that they have lacked since the departures of Dwight Yorke and Teddy Sheringham, who were themselves only a shadow of Eric Cantona’s major talent. With Rooney on board, United will confirm that they are a true thoroughbred. Arsenal should be wary. Wenger – a confessed fan of the Scouser – certainly will be.
If United will be stronger for the addition of Roonaldo, then Gooners can still be confident of Arsenal’s ability to hold them off, because I feel very confident that in the shape of José Antonio Reyes we have a player of even more destructive ability. And we can see, right now, what kind of impact he is making.
After a long hard summer in the gym, Reyes has emerged this season as a player who can be our matchwinner when times are hard. If Henry, Píres and Bergkamp all suffer sometimes from attacks of ennui in the toughest situations, then Reyes – as rough, tough and enraptured by the sheer pleasure of playing as anyone I’ve ever seen – seems like a guy who will fight on regardless. That could make all the difference in the world to us. In the game against Middlesbrough particularly the infectious character of his enthusiasm was a large part of what got us back in to the game. Like Charlie George in 1971, Brady or Ian Wright, he has made himself the impish spirit of the team, a fighter and a winner. And like those three, blessed by an explosive genius.
Football is driven by such explosions of talent. One need only look at Kaka’s impact at AC Milan last season; at the emergence of Ronaldo or Raul, and see what coherence young talent can give to teams.
Can Chelsea match that? Much emphasis will be on Joe Cole this season, who will be handed the opportunity to come of age as playmaker. As Mourinho’s new Deco. If he can step up, then they can.
But the real player to watch at Stamford Bridge might actually be Tiago. As his goal against Crystal Palace the other night suggested, he’s a clever, constructive player. He could well become an extremely good one. He is Mourinho’s real risk in the transfer market, and could well be his greatest success – more so, I think, than Drogba and Kezman, who are both very good, but lack the instincts and the first touch of strikers of the highest class.
However you look at it, this season has all the potential to be the best there’s ever been in the Premiership. There’s brilliance across the top three clubs – and Liverpool, with Alonso and Gerrard forming a hugely exciting prospective partnership in midfield should not be entirely discounted.
I hope we will come out on top, but there should be no guarantees. Chelsea will often defend better than we do, United will fight for every game. We have enormous strengths, but with the record for games unbeaten ours, everyone should be aware that it is now when the hard work really begins.
It’s going to be a good year.