Named the Avenell Club, this new haunt will surpass the ‘cheese room’ at Tottenham’s rumoured new stadium by including a cocktail bar and a “live chef station” where you can watch your prawn sandwiches being crafted. Not long now until they are rebranding your half-time Bovril as ‘beef jus’.
And yet, on the field, there has been a welcome and long overdue shift in the opposite direction.
Despite a few instances of Petr Cech struggling to play with his feet, Unai Emery is actually beginning to deponce-ify the Arsenal.
After Sunday’s win over Everton it was Cech himself who voiced the truth that dared not speak its name during the second half of Arsene Wenger’s reign — that Arsenal were all style and no trousers.
The keeper, who won four titles with Chelsea, said: “In the past, I would say playing the ‘Arsenal way’ was more important than the points. But that’s not how you win the league. Sometimes you need to make sure you win ugly when you are not playing well, to dig deep, close the back door and win no matter how.”
Everyone outside of Arsenal could tell that Wenger’s obsession with an artistic philosophy had skewed his thinking and it seems even his own players were well aware. Or at the very least, it was obvious to Cech, who played under Jose Mourinho during his peak years and therefore knew all about winning.
It is clear from Cech flapping as Emery’s Arsenal try to play it out from the back, that the Spaniard is hardly serving up route-one football.
POG OFF Beginning of the end for Pogba after latest Jose row
It won’t horrify the Avenell Club gents, should they look up from their Sex On The Beaches and catch a glimpse of the football.
But Emery is a coach who clearly understood what was wrong and is going the right way about rectifying things. It is a long-term project, vanquishing Wenger’s ghost from a club he dominated for so long.
Five straight victories don’t prove a lot in themselves. And it will need a few more transfer windows before Arsenal can even think about winning titles again.
But Uruguayan Lucas Torreira is the sort of savvy, safety-first holding midfield player Arsenal have needed for years. He is a Mourinho player rather than a Wenger one. Cech also admitted that “the place has become much more demanding in every way” under Emery.
Again, it was a public outing of something we long suspected — that Arsenal was being run like a holiday camp compared to their rivals, with Wenger acting more like a red coat than a manager.
Mesut Ozil, over indulged more than most, has had his feathers ruffled by Emery both publicly and behind closed doors.
There are already signs that he is beginning to get a tune out of his most gifted player. Even if that experiment fails and Ozil has to be moved on, you still do not win Premier League titles by putting stars in cotton wool. Emery had enough of that caper with Neymar at PSG last season. At Arsenal, he gets to manage how he wants.
Eye-candy football and exacting levels of discipline are not mutually exclusive, as Pep Guardiola has proved at Manchester City. And of course there never was an ‘Arsenal way’. Certainly not when it comes to playing style.
Before Wenger, there was George Graham, who could not have won his titles in a more starkly contrasting fashion. It was rarely beautiful, sumptuous football.
The ‘Arsenal way’ which Cech refers to with a sneer was actually just the Arsene way — and it stopped working at least a decade ago. But under Emery, a balance is finally being restored to their football.
So stick another prawn in the sarnie, chef. This is about to get interesting.
SHAQ ATTACK
GIVEN that ‘assists’ are no longer just discussed by children playing fantasy football but are actually used by recruitment personnel to rate a player’s worth, surely the definition of an ‘assist’ needs to be broadened.
Take, for instance, poor old Xherdan Shaqiri.
On Saturday, the Liverpool man had one shot deflected in off two Southampton defenders, then crashed a brilliant free-kick against the underside of the crossbar for team-mate Mo Salah to bundle it over the line in the 3-0 win over Saints.
And yet Shaqiri was awarded with an ‘assist’ for neither goal, despite everyone understanding full well that he had made both.
TROY TOO COY
WHEN Timothy Fosu-Mensah committed a reckless studs-up challenge on Troy Deeney last Saturday, the Watford striker had the decency not to roll around, sparing the Fulham defender a red card.
Then when the Dutchman apologised on Twitter, Deeney accepted in good grace like the salt-of-the-earth, old-school pro he is with a “no hard feelings bro” tweet, wishing him the best of luck. Yet Deeney probably cost his team two points by not over-reacting and actually did the game as a whole no favours by letting referee Martin Atkinson off the hook.
Premier League refs seem to revel in the fact that they police the game by a different interpretation of the rules. And it’s a dangerous nonsense.
TRUST BUND
THE number of English teenagers who played for English clubs in the first round of Champions League matches? One, Trent Alexander-Arnold, 19, of Liverpool.
The number of English teenagers who featured for German clubs in that same round? Two. Jadon Sancho, 18, of Borussia Dortmund and Arsenal’s Reiss Nelson, also 18, loaned to Hoffenheim.
A Bundesliga move is a good option for English kids — don’t imagine Gareth Southgate is not telling them as much.
BRAVO CHAS
THE late Chas Hodges, one half of Chas & Dave, was so much more than just a singer-songwriter of novelty records.
He influenced many more fashionable musicians, who revered him. But here on the sports pages, we must raise our hats to a couple of the greatest rhyming couplets ever written.
The classic ‘Ossie’s going to Wembley, his knees have gone all trembly’ and, better still, from Snooker Loopy, ‘old Willie Thorne, his hair’s all gawn’. Rest well, Chas.
BALE OUT
IF a goal’s greatness is measured by its ‘wow’ factor multiplied by its significance, then Gareth Bale’s magnificent overhead kick to win the Champions League final ought to have won the Puskas Award for goal of the year by a country mile.
Only that would be assuming that Fifa know anything much about football.
DEFLECTING
FUNNY how the publicity around Kevin Keegan’s new autobiography seems to be focusing on Mike Ashley’s dreadful ownership of Newcastle — rather than his own dismal management of England, which ended with the over-excitable twerp quitting in the Wembley toilets.
Source: Read Full Article