EXPERIENCE. Hugely under-rated by Arsene and the Arsenal, and we’re paying the price for it.
The recurring theme over the last few years has been experienced proven players leave, and young kids come in…
Just because a player reaches a certain age… it doesn’t mean he can’t contribute significantly to the team. Bergkamp, Pires, Vieira… these are class players who were solid contributors. Bergy retired, but he certainly had his moments in his last few seasons. Pires and Vieira made big contributions to the teams success as well.
You simply have to have some balance in the team. Scholes and Giggs is as far as you have to look. They have had an massive positive effect on ManU THIS SEASON. Something tells me if they were Arsenal players, Wenger would have ushered them out the door 1 or 2 years ago.
Giggs Scholes Neville Larsson - ALL over 30.
Rio Heinze Saha… ALL 28…
Who else are we chasing… Chelsea.
Let’s look at their make up…
Makelele(34) Schevy and Ballack are ALL over 30.
A large part of their CORE, are either 28 or 29 including Ferriera, Geremi, Lampard, Drogba, and Carvahlo.
These teams have players that have DONE IT. They have experience. They don’t cough it up when the pressure is on, or on those cold wintry road games versus lesser teams… that comes from experience. You can’t swap that out for youth and expect to win… not gonna happen.
We’ve got Gilberto at 30. He should probably be sent packing soon? Right? Can’t give him a 2 year contract?! Inter is already asking about him.
Other than that, Henry is 29, and has been hurt all year. Gallas is 29, hurt all year, and Freddie is 28, hurt very often.
Thats a LARGE part of why we failed this season. With only 4 seasoned veterans of 28, 29, and 30… and 3 out for prolonged periods of time… we had were probably lucky to have been in all competitions as long as we lasted.
The KIDS are only going to take you so far… at some point, against teams like Bolton, Blackburn, and the like, the other teams veterans out wit, out think and out play us too often. To me, its as simple as that.
When we’ve had PROPER balance in the team, we’ve been scary successful… hell, we’ve been UNDEFEATED.
(and note, I am not counting the keepers, you can add in Lehmann, but as usual, we’re probably going to lose him, at 37 he’s a dinosaur)
Bring in proper proven players with some seasoning at this level, and perhaps we can get back to the elite teams in football, otherwise, we’ll be watching until the kids get a few years of experience under their belt.
Arsene, as Black Sheep once said: “The Choice is yours, you can get with this, or you can get with that”.
Please … start getting a little more with “that”. (experience, that is!)
3 Responses to “A big reason for our failures this season…”
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April 11th, 2007 at 2:57 am
In addition to experience, I would like to mention a winning mentality.
Rosicky and Hleb, both have experience, but not necessarily a winning mindset. Most of the players you listed - Giggs, Scholes, Larsson, Makelele, Sheva, Ballack, etc. - have won before and have that winning quality.
Getting players with both experience and a winning attitude will neither be easy nor cheap. But I hope we can manage one.
April 11th, 2007 at 6:46 am
Look at the irony.
For the young - if you are good enough, you are old enough.
For the old - if you are old enough, you are not good enough.
It may have something to do with the high salaries of old players.
April 11th, 2007 at 8:39 am
the young players have burnt out mentally and phyiscally.
You can see the same in the youth and reserve set up.
They play too many games and Wenger needs to change his tactics, and that may mean another shake up of the squad.
Having four or five players out on loan now does not help, but look how well they are doing now. They are tired as well.