A rebuttal: Arsene Wenger – World Class Motivator, Tactician or Both? It has to be both

During the week I read interesting response to my piece, posted on this site here, in which DAG quite rightly points out that Arsene Wenger’s abilities as a coach enable him to perhaps get more out of players than his contemporaries, which accounts for our consistency in reaching minimum last 16 of the champions league. He also acknowledges that far from being a bad tactican, Wenger is actually pretty good, but contends that tactics are not his main strength and can often be a weakness.

Now we all know that Arsene is often extremely stubborn in his approach to games. To the author’s mind, a major tactical shortcoming is that he rarely shows the flexibility to change formation when we hit a defensive brick wall. While I agree that he rarely makes large structural changes, I feel that there are areas in which he is quite a way ahead of ‘mechanical’ tacticians, and  his philosophy in my opinion more than compensates for what onlookers call his ‘rigidity.’In this piece I’ll go further than I did last week, to hopefully explain why I still feel he really is one of the best tacticians in the modern game, and why I feel that his abilities as a coach complement his tactical approach, but do not mask his deficiencies.

Before I continue please note that I have acknowledged that Wenger has deficiencies. He is not infallible by any means, and as pointed out on You Are My Arsenal, his stubbornness in his approach can hurt us at times.

In my opinion however, that doesn’t stop him being one of the best. Personally I think he’s been wanted by the best clubs in world football not just because he’s a great motivator, but because within his system the best players in the world would be formidable. I think we can all agree on one thing: overall, he is a fantastic manager and his record shows just that. But what makes him so good? Is it his tactical approach or his ability to get the most out of his players?

To me they’re not mutually exclusive.

There’s no doubt that Wenger is one of the most prolific coaches in the game. He’s known for improving most of the players that he manages, certainly over a period of two or 3 seasons he has managed to turn plenty of promising talents into top level performers at Arsenal. But when they leave they rarely replicate their form at other clubs. Alex Song, Samir Nasri, Emmanuel Adebayor, Alex Hleb, even Mathieu Flamini, Kolo Toure and Gael Clichy. They may have won trophies but none became better players.

The reason I included this fact in last week’s piece is because for me it’s the proof that they’re being deployed in a way that gets the best out of them during the match. That’s a really important point because most of them have gone on to join world class squads, with top level managers and world class coaches, to play in a 4231 system with what one would assume given Arsene’s shortcomings, is greater tactical flexibility. It shouldn’t be that different to their roles at Arsenal yet aside from Fabregas and Van Persie, who were in my opinion proven world class players when they left, none have found the same inspiration, not even around better players. You have to ask yourself whether even an above average tactician can get the most out of a group of well-coached players on the field. In my opinion he’d get more out of them than an average tactician, but he won’t get more out of them than some of the best managers in football at the highest levels of the game: the types that our departing players usually end up with.

I don’t believe they become worse players overnight, or that somehow the meticulously planned and expensively maintained coaching systems at Barcelona and Man City are somehow sucking the talent out of them… their teammates seem to flourish.

My humble opinion is this:

Wenger somehow gets the best out of them on matchday, even while they’re still incomplete players. When playing with freedom, Arsenal’s on-pitch leaders became extremely attractive to the biggest teams in Europe. Some of them (Nasri, Adebayor) even looked world class for a while. They expressed their strengths superbly within Wenger’s tactical framework but it was also designed to balance out the deficiencies in their game, which he was still coaching them out of. They didn’t stay long enough to perfect their art, and they got found out having moved for massive fees to join squads with actual world class players.  Yet no matter how many leaders we lose, the system finds new leaders every year as supporting players grow into their roles and learn how to express themselves fully.

It’s the formation, instruction and blend that gets the most out of the team. It’s the tactics.

Our quality movement that is constantly referred to, could also be described as  constant change in formation. When the opposition can’t seem to own the ball with any authority and get pegged back, it’s because they can’t follow our shape so they can’t adjust. They back off to protect as much of the goal as possible and invite us on to them, so they don’t have to follow our patterns and make themselves vulnerable.

Arsenal’s formation depends entirely on where we win the ball and what shape we have at the time we do. 4231 is purely for defensive shape as its the most efficient for covering space. You leave 1 man high, and everyone else concentrates on getting the ball back. In attack, it is 433, 442, 2323, 352, 451, 424, you name it. I’ll try and illustrate the point In this regular scenario:

We win the ball on the edge of our 18 yard box through Kos who works it back to Szczezny. At this point we’re in a 4231 since we’ve been defending. The team move upfield, with Theo wide on the right. Per takes the ball and feeds Sagna. To make space for Sagna, Theo makes a darting diagonal run inside the fullback and looks to receive. The fullback backpedals 20 yards to shut off the pass to Theo, and Sagna advances into the vacated space. Theo is now occupying the space between cb and fullback, facing Sagna to figure out what to do next. Ramsey has come from centre towards the right to offer support.

At this point, we’re in a 352 with Per, Kos and Gibbs at the back, Arteta and Ramsey in the middle, Cazorla on the left, Rosicky looking for spaces in behind Giroud and Walcott, and Sagna wide right. That’s how we have set up for this attack because it’s the easiest way to protect the ball in the context of the game. Sagna has space to join midfield. As the deepest player wide of our goal, he was the most protected, so it’s logical he carries it forward. There are times when Theo receives the pass, and if he slows it down from there, players go to support him, the emphasis shifts and we morph into a different shape. When Cazorla goes high and wide, he’s unlikely to run in behind so our shape and point of attack changes again etc etc.

Because of the fluidity of our shape, if executed correctly there are always options and ways to work a player into space. Understanding this collective movement is what enables Wenger’s players to express themselves with freedom. It’s how he raises their level… remember: they rarely replicate their Arsenal form elsewhere.

Consider the level of tactical understanding that a manager must have, to be able to put a system like that together. It’s far beyond above average. The promise was to develop a unique and exciting brand of football that sets Arsenal apart in the modern game and brings success.

At present, the way we play sets us apart in the modern game but it hasn’t brought success. You can point to tactical inflexibility but given the reasons I’ve stated above, I think that’s unfair. To my mind the issue has been entirely about personnel. We have come excruciatingly close to success in the premier league on 2 occasions, only for our rivals to pick our squads apart the following summer. I don’t think it’s an accident that both Chelsea and Man City attempted to plunder our squads and secure our targets as soon as they wanted to compete with us. It made sense to weaken a team that looked like they could win the league given another shot.

The 10/11 squad lost momentum after Fabregas and Van Persie were both sidelined with injury, the latter during a particularly soul-crushing cup final defeat. The way the team ended the season was a massive shame… at one point they were fantastic. That also applies to 07/08… that team had only lost 1 game by Christmas, but then fell apart when they lost confidence following Eduardo’s harrowing injury.

So did 02/03, the year before they became invincible.

That team was unplayable for a large part of the season before they lost confidence and momentum…so unplayable that Wenger had already seen the potential in them to do the impossible and go unbeaten, and they did it the following year. The difference was that the leaders in 02/03 squad stayed together, regained momentum, and didn’t lose it again for 49 games.

I also think that when assessing Wenger’s tactical performance over a season you have to understand that losing your leaders every season would ordinarily cause a philosophy, especially a unique one that’s based on the talent available, to collapse pretty quickly.

When we fans talk about needing leaders on the team, we’re talking about players that can do what’s necessary: the ones that make the good choices and put us on the front foot when we’re floundering. We have traditionally lost those players, and over the course of subsequent seasons have had to work up the understanding within the system, and let new leaders emerge.

When the emphasis on our attacking chemistry is clearly not going to get us over the finish line, Wenger is not scared to revert to a more solid, less expansive system in order to win matches and secure our position amongst the elite. Twice in recent years we’ve lacked the fluidity and cohesion and looked like falling away from the top 4. Twice we’ve adjusted to a more solid, functional shape, become the form team in the league and forced our way in.

Until that critical point, to maximise the creative potential of the group it was important to allow his players to try and work out a balance between them. When it became evident that they were struggling to find regularly effective patterns and remain solid, he switched to a style that managed to outmanouvre our opposition in a different way. I talk a little bit about that in this piece here on Gunnerstown.

He’s that tactically aware, that he has a failsafe ‘Champions League guaranteed’ formation in a league where everyone is outspending him. Once he gets us over the line he can look to add in the areas that we were lacking, and we can always count on natural improvement if the squad stays together.

Now I’m not saying he’s a perfect tactician by any means, but you don’t have to be perfect to be one of the best. My assertion last week was that Wenger is one of the very best. In the modern game he has found a unique approach that gives his team fluidity and freedom of expression. It helps them to come together and be stronger. It helps them all to be the best players they can be. It keeps us ahead of any club that doesn’t have a spare 500m, and ensures that with a net profit on players during our austerity years, we never failed to reach the last 16 of the champions league.

@goonerdave66 on his blog 1NilDown2OneUp posted a wonderful blog yesterday here,  which emphasizes the fact that Arsenal are finally building from a position of strength since we haven’t lost any players this summer.

I completely echo that sentiment, and would go as far as to say that we haven’t been this strong going into a summer since 02/03. A couple of world-class decision makers in the lineup, and the strength of our squad at the beginning of the season will finally give Arsene Wenger the opportunity to test the Arsenal way from a level playing field.

Given the results he’s managed vs the quality and experience in his previous squads, if he has top class players playing the Arsenal way, I wouldn’t bet against him.