Goals (and stuff)

Morning all.

We’re heading into an Arsenal free weekend. I love Arsenal, but I feel like that might just be a good thing at this particular moment in time. It also gives Mikel Arteta a chance to figure out football’s biggest puzzle: how to get the ball into the back of the opposition net.

I know we all have our issues with forwards, strikers, and all that, but generally speaking goalscoring hasn’t been a massive issue for Arsenal for a few years now. There have been occasional games where we have been found wanting, and they have been costly – no doubt about it – but mostly we’ve been very good.

I was watching Match of the Day yesterday, enjoying Crystal Palace slapping Aston Villa 4-1, and I thought ‘Oooh, I hope we don’t have to go to Selhurst Park any time soon’ – please bear in mind my memory is not what it was, and when I looked up the fixtures I saw we’d already made that trip. Saturday December 21st:

Simpler times. Happier times. We had two centre-forwards available, and they both scored. One of our wingers scored. A central midfielder scored. God, you’d love to go back in time and experience that whole thing again. Having players, scoring goals, what a time to be alive.

Now, with a goal drought that seems like it has gone on for a couple of decades at least (the reality is it’s just two games, but that doesn’t work for my mind), it feels like we will never score a goal again. There’s a line from the Coen Brothers film Raising Arizona, when Nicholas Cage’s character explains why his wife (Holly Hunter) needs him to steal one of the ‘Arizona quintuplets’. They are unable to conceive themselves, and he says ‘Edwina’s insides were a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase’.

That. But Arsenal and goals.

I don’t think there’s any great mystery to all this either. Tim’s column this week looks at some of the possible solutions going forward, but basically it boils down to a lack of options. Like, if we had a load of defenders out injured, I’m pretty sure we’d concede more goals than we usually do, so having a limited number of forwards is having an impact at the other end of the pitch.

I don’t even think there’s anything we can really do about it other than just, you know, score a few goals. Then the problem is solved. The manager obviously has to work on things, and try and get players into positions where they can make and take chances, but it’s not as if that’s something they don’t do anyway. Patterns of play that are worked on on the training ground are designed to work in in-game scenarios, but the reality is you have some players who are better than others at doing that final thing: putting the ball in the back of the net.

They are called strikers. Or forwards. We don’t really have any. Which, I realise, is a circular kind of problem as I write it down. But football is a bit of a mad game. In our last three fixtures, we are averaging 25 crosses per game (18 v Leicester, 30 v West Ham, 27 v Forest). Twice we’ve got a lad on the end of them in a dangerous position: Mikel Merino away at Leicester all those years ago when we knew how to score a goal. Eventually. Because the previous 80 minutes (which felt like three weeks), we didn’t at all. Until we did. If that makes sense.

If people ask ‘Can we do more to score goals again?’, my answer is, ‘Yes we can’, but then the rest of that answer is supremely unsatisfying right now because it expands on our need for the aforementioned strikers, supplementing them with other players who can do stuff which helps us make chances. Creative players, if you will.

Let’s say you build a chapel, for reasons best known to yourself. You just fancy having your own chapel. You get a load of lads who can dig the foundations, carry the bricks, do the plastering, the plumbing (you need a chapel crapper, let’s be real), the wiring, the roofing, get those slates on, and all that stuff. With all due respect, there are load of those lads – which is to take nothing away from their skills either, because I couldn’t do it. I’m absolutely rubbish at that stuff and I am in awe of people who can build things. One day there’s nothing, then there’s something. It’s like magic.

But now, having had the chapel fitted out with furniture or pews or a whatever you want (beanbags, for example, if instead of a religious chapel you want to run your Internet start-up in there). Then comes the most important part. The ceiling. You need an artist. Those lads who carry the bricks can’t do that bit. You’ve gotta go out and a Michael and an Angelo (one is not enough for this analogy to work in football terms), and let them express themselves with their paints and lo and behold you have a chapel that’s worth talking about. Simple (also please don’t ask me how the ‘strikers’ fit into this bit of the blog, I just don’t know – I’m making this stuff up as I go).

Which is to say, I think we’ve got great builders, the foundations are solid, the walls are good, the roof – Big Dec, you’ve done a marvelous job there – but there’s still a bit to finish. Finishing. Finishers. Artists. That’s the goal. Oh, goals. So precious, so rare. And that’s where we are.

Which is probably why a weekend off is not a bad thing at all. Especially for my brain.

Right, I think I’ll leave it there. Thank you all for the lovely messages about yesterday’s post, there’s a post-Forest Arsecast below if you haven’t had a chance to listen yet. For now, have a good one.

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