If anything summed Arsenal up over the last decade or so it would be their start to the current Premier League campaign.
The only matches they’ve lost have come against Liverpool and Sheffield United. One is a bustling team full of attacking and defensively quality and the other is a well regimented and unified outfit.
Unai Emery’s side are neither of those, however, and it’s extremely difficult to work out where the Spaniard is heading with this crop of players.
His style is dull and lacks fluidity, there is no personality and they’ve distanced themselves so far from the distinct philosophies that Arsene Wenger ingrained in the club.
In fact, Emery has gone so far back that he could replicate George Graham. That isn’t in a good way, either.
Watch Arsenal Live Streams With StreamFootball.tv Below
Graham is one of Arsenal’s most successful managers and in his nine-year tenure at Highbury helped take the club to eight honours. That included a European trophy and two First Division titles, as well as the FA Cup.
It also included some incredibly dry football and tough times, something we’re seeing to a similar degree in 2019 – over 23 years since Graham first walked through the doors.
As well as the Gunners did under him, they finished sixth, tenth and also 12th during his reign in north London.
That final placing was enough to see him walk out of Arsenal, eventually being replaced by Bruce Rioch. Wenger was his successor and the rest was history.
It’s been a topsy-turvy time in the life of a fan at the Emirates Stadium. Many were willing to give time to the new management – after all, things were never going to be sorted overnight.
But there have now been many nights since he entered London Colney and even if the former Sevilla manager still requires time to see where things go, the style needs to be improved. But is that time now running out?
The huge toxicity that surrounded him and Granit Xhaka during a draw with Crystal Palace says so.
Arsenal long for some more respected figures around the club, and how they could do with a duo that initially came together in the first year after Graham.
Ian Wright and Dennis Bergkamp are the two names in question and they recently spent some time together as some poignant words were shared.
The interview with the pair was fascinating as the flying Dutchman not only labelled his concerns about the current crop at the club, but gave an insight into what life was like when he first arrived. Rather remarkably, it’s something that can be linked back to the modern-day.
Despite Rioch arriving, they still couldn’t shake one of the most damning tags Graham’s sides had earned – ‘Boring Arsenal’.
Although it may have been enough to see them win the title as they ground out results, it wasn’t particularly pleasing on the eye.
However, if we cast our minds towards the present again, Arsenal are far from entertaining but they’re also failing to grind out good performances. That was evident against a bullish Sheffield United and Crystal Palace.
Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang was isolated and Alexandre Lacazette’s introduction failed to see the Gunners register a goal at Bramall Lane. Nicolas Pepe was also guilty of trying too much.
In the video below, we look at where it all went wrong for Arsenal’s former ‘saviour’, Mesut Ozil…
Funnily enough, what they’re missing is a Bergkamp. A number 10 capable of linking the midfield to the attack.
But what his words indicate, is that the scenario that played out when he first arrived in 1995 from Inter Milan, is being replicated now.
It almost feels as though those behind the front three are leaving it up to the forwards to do it all by themselves. With that comes a burden and considerable pressure.
Aubameyang has scored eight Premier League strikes this term but there is a lack of threat behind him. Lacazette and David Luiz have two but after him is a defensive trio on one for the season – Calum Chambers, Sokratis and Lucas Torreira. Pepe, meanwhile, is on the same tally.
It’s damning but it shows how dull the Gunners have been.
In Graham’s two title-winning seasons, Arsenal scored 73 and 74 goals respectively. In 2018/19, Emery’s team managed that first number but finished outside of the top four.
Football perhaps wasn’t as free-flowing back then as it is now and with the added quality and finances that Liverpool and Manchester City possess, it shows how far Arsenal have fallen behind and how the game has progressed.
If we reflect upon some of the dullest memories at N5 over 20 years ago, it was the 90s where it was particularly drab.
Via The Telegraph, they netted just 40 goals in 1992/93, a tally that stands at 1.86 per game. Incredibly, 15 of their games were 1-0 wins.
The season after that, they scored 53 times at a rate of 1.93 strikes per match. In Rioch and Bergkamp’s first season they hit the back of the net on just 49 occasions in the league.
In 11 top-flight matches this term, the Gunners have scored as few as 16 times. That’s at a record of 1.5 goals each outing.
If they carry on in the same manner, Arsenal will somehow become even duller than Graham could ever manage. No wonder Lucas Torreira was emotionally distressed during their performance against Roy Hodgson’s men.
Tactical comparisons can easily be drawn between the two. Emery’s deep video analysis is well documented while Graham had a similar fascination. Journalist Amy Lawrence recently detailed:
“George Graham, being a student of tactics, he used to read books from America about sports psychology and specialist things. He developed this thirst for knowledge and tactics that was quite a bit ahead of his day.”
Fortunately for the now 74-year-old, he had trophies to boast about and rather crucially he was respected by his players. After all, we are talking about one of the best to manage in N5.
Emery might be replicating the boring brand of football, but he is far from cherished.
Rather ironically, there are suggestions from one of the greats of the Graham era, Alan Smith, that his playing staff don’t understand him and that’s indicative of the current mess surrounding the club.
In some ways, the two managers are bound together, but at the same time, they couldn’t be further apart.
Something surely has to give.
