Arsenal Fans Should Be Optimistic, but They’ve Failed from This Position Before

“It’s not me, me, me, it’s one-two-three.” Arsene Wenger’s almost musical summary of his football philosophy—one with which we are all now more than familiar—at the end of Arsenal’s 3-0 demolition of Chelsea was pleasingly rhythmic, just like the perfectly cadenced job his team had just done on their bewildered rivals.

The crux is that it’s not all about one player in his Arsenal teams; it never has been, not even when Thierry Henry was shredding teams at will with the Invincibles. Wenger’s dream has always been to rip opponents up not with one player but with 11. 

“That is based on pressure on the opponent, playing with connections, with pace. That is what football is about. It’s not about one player,” the Frenchman added, per Jack Pitt-Brooke of The Independent.

That’s the metrical perfection which Arsenal can drum up on their day, that ruthless, ceaseless beat; one-two-three.

After the win over Chelsea, the metronome seems to be set for a sustained run, not just in terms of results but perhaps even regarding that electric verve that once saw Arsenal celebrated as one of the world’s best.

For much of the early evening on Saturday, they looked to have rediscovered that swagger. But if Arsenal’s football obeyed a strict set of rhythms, then it also evoked a similarly predictable narrative.

Throughout the long 12-year stretch that has seen the club finish second in the Premier League only once and no higher, there have been more than a few new dawns that have stubbornly failed to break, and new eras which have never quite dawned.

When a club’s fortunes slip into recession, it’s natural for fans and sympathetic parties to see, in the smallest chinks of sunlight, the potential for a great heatwave to rage.

Arsenal have been here before, and while the emphatic nature of the win over Chelsea will rightly ignite fresh flames of optimism beneath the Emirates Stadium, there are warnings still to be heeded if this is to prove anything other than a pleasing memory before a familiar midseason implosion.

The Chelsea game marked just shy of a year since Wenger’s team blew Manchester United away in a similarly explosive first-half display of direct movement and ruthless finishing.

On that day last October, the Gunners led United 3-0 after 19 blistering minutes at the Emirates and saw out the win comfortably, despite—as on Saturday—missing enough chances later in the game to turn a statement victory into pure humiliation. It came early in a run of eight wins in 12 games which took Arsenal to within a point of the top at Christmas. Then, familiar sinkholes opened up.

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