Both Liverpool and Arsenal’s seasons plumbed new depths last weekend as the crisis clubs lost more ground in the Premier League. For Liverpool, a 3-1 defeat at Crystal Palace was their fourth loss in a row in all competitions. Arsenal, meanwhile, lost 2-1 against Manchester United and this is their worst start to a season since 1982.
There were murmurs of “Wenger Out” among some sections of the Arsenal supporters after the tragic loss to United, while Liverpool fans must be wondering what is up with Brendan Rodgers, who has overseen such a dreadful start to the campaign after last season’s near miss.
Arsenal is in their worst start to the season since 1982-83: only four wins. They lost to a less dreadful Man United last weekend and they’re falling into self-caricature: several million shots and passes, very few goals. They seriously need to win and they’re in poor shape.
Liverpool is even worse off. They’re now 12th in the Premier League table: the idea that they almost won it last season seems absurd. Rodgers has spent the season unsuccessfully fighting the notion that without Luis Suarez, he’s an ordinary manager. The potential for embarrassment here is obvious enough for the Reds.
Arsenal lost their last two matches in the Premier League, Liverpool their last three. Both are performing below their supporters’ and their owners’ expectations.
Their shared problem is that football sees every short statistical run as a near-unstoppable trend. You can call heads and see the coin land tails six times in a row without getting a statistician excited. Lose two or three football matches and people believe you’ll never win another.
That, by the way, explains why the Manager of the Month award is considered a curse: you put a three or four good results together – call heads correctly – and you’re a genius. Then, with statistical inevitability, you get a few tails and you’re a disaster waiting to be sacked.
So once again it’s crisis time for Wenger, who’s seen it all before, and for Rodgers, who’s fighting to save his reputation as an upcoming talent. Both face a sack treat.
The prevailing mood in football is always of head-loss – and the one certainty in football is that they always blame the manager. In football it’s remarkable when anyone keeps his head, even for a minute. It’s all panic, over-reaction, emotional response, do what the fans want, do what the players want. Football believes that panic can only be reversed by an equal and opposite tidal surge of compensating panic.
The manager’s near-impossible task is to remain immune from all this – knowing that people are preparing not only to blame him but also to fire him. Wenger has been there a hundred times before: his policy of moderation, financial continence and quiet competence doesn’t excite the passions in everyone.
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The fact that you’ve been through bad stuff before doesn’t make bad stuff any fun, or any easier to deal with. But if you lack that experience, it can be hard to believe that you’re really the person you want to be. That’s why keeping your head is so important.
Newcastle United went through the crisis period earlier in the season: heads were lost, everyone blamed it on Alan Pardew and it was assumed that his sacking was inevitable. Somehow, the crisis misfired: Pardew stayed in his job, they’re now fifth in the table and have a winning run of five matches, better than Chelsea.
The problem with the small-sample panic is that everyone in football believes what it appears to indicate: that the manager has lost either his grip or the dressing room or both, that the players aren’t good enough, that further defeats are inevitable.
Those that manage to do so are the ones that survive. Alex Ferguson was close to the sack after an early crisis at Manchester United: it’s said that a single match, a single result, saved him. Would he have been a bad manager had he lost that match to a dodgy penalty and an injury to his best player? Because that’s how he would have been remembered.
As Liverpool nearly won last season’s Premier League title and Everton thrived under Martinez, what a difference six months can make.
Liverpool took a risk to get him. Kenny Dalglish is a club icon and replacing him with the manager of Swansea was frowned upon in certain quarters. That muttering had largely been silenced by an 84-point season but of course it’s back now and louder than ever.
It can only be a drastic decision to sack a manager in mid-season but no one can possibly know what might make the owners’ patience snap. They are the ones who handed him a transfer bounty unlike few others in the game; so such a far-reaching “solution” is bound to reflect badly on them.
It’s beyond dispute that matters have turned to dust in an alarmingly short time. Get rid of 10 players or sack one manager? The history of the English game suggests the easy option. Whether it would be the right one is another matter.
@AnthonyNlebem
ANTHONY NLEBEM
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