The big project

The good year with the questions

We are in May 2004. Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal is crowned champion of England. Probably the best champion the league ever knew. Wenger has a strong army with lot of weaknesses at hand and at sight. The squad did not have much debt as highlighted by the cup exits, the team is building a new stadium while loaning heavy debts and consuming a big part of their every year incomes as the sponsorship deals were front loaded. I will use the economic situation but I mostly want to talk about the football. Wenger had Lehmann, Lauren, Campbell, Cole, Kolo Touré, Gilberto, Edu, Vieira, Parlour, Ljungberg, Pires, Bergkamp, Henry and Reyes as reliable players. That’s fifteen players plus the likes of Cigan and Pennant, Clichy or Aliadière, but fifteen! You don’t have money, your squad is thin, your players overachieved both physically and mentally and your fans are accustomed to success and greatness. What do you do?

The start of the project

Le Prof chose to go the young way. The likes of Van Persie, Eboue and Flamini joined the likes Cesc, Reyes, Clichy and Aliadiere. And the youth experiment began. With the inflated transfer market the big wages for players and the success of Fabregas things got accelerated. At start of 2004/2005 campaign, Cesc and Reyes delivered beyond expectation. With the development of Cole and Anelka at Arsenal and the likes of Trezeguet, Thuram, Weah etc at Monaco, Wenger knows he is in a field he masters. The 2004/2005 finished in disappointment but in no mean was it a bad season. The defeat at home against ManU and the CL exit against Bayern aside, it was a great season with the youngsters seemingly showing they can be trusted. And trusted they were when Vieira got sold following a rather average season and on a huge wage but most notably following the explosion of young Cesc.

The leaderless team

By losing Vieira the team lost a big leader and strong character on and off the field. There were still people that could be called to help out on leadership and mental strength with the likes of Campbell, Lauren, Bergkamp, Ljungberg, Cole and to a lesser degree Henry and Pires being around. But the 2005/2006 season was known for the injuries the old heads suffered Campbell was injured physically and mentally for good parts of the season, so were Cole and Lauren. Without those, the Vieira loss became even bigger. A bad league campaign was saved by a great CL campaign the best we ever had in our history setting a defensive record on the way with Eboue Senderos Toure and Flamini in front of Lehmann.

The new home

The 2006/2007 was the first season at the Emirates. The start was marred by the departure of Cole for money with Pires and Campbell leaving as well while Denis Bergkamp had retired. Henry was the only one the youngsters could look up to and he is not such figure and was injured for most part of the season. Van Persie who was showing tremendous form was also injured and we finished without any good striker. Adebayor was clumsy at best but Gilberto step up and saved the day in many occasions. While the season was not great at all, the only source of joy came from the younger guns who reached the carling final and gave Chelsea a real game of football. That also meant they deserved more trust and some chances to make it here.

The almost year

Although a couple experienced signing have been made (Hleb, Eduardo and Rosicky), most of the Wenger buys since 2005 are very young to say the least. With Henry and Ljungberg gone, Gilberto relegated on the bench alongside Lehmann, Touré was the only survivor from the invincibles. 2007/2008 is the year where the youngsters are all alone exposed in front of the world to show what they can do, trusted as they are by one the best managers of the game. And from august to march it seemed they would deliver they exploded. Some injuries some luck or lack of it and some weaknesses all coming out at the very wrong time meant the greatly announced year was another disappointment at the end.

The failed year

After coming so close to clinching success, Wenger saw again the core of the team slipping through his fingers losing almost the entire midfield of the team. If Hleb Diarra Gilberto and Flamini left, Rosicky injured the whole season, Cesc missed four month along with Theo Walcott. Sagna Clichy Cesc Flamini Adebayor and Hleb were the top performers of the “almost year” but they all disappointed through their absences or poor form or combination of the two. Because we were so closed the previous year and fell away from that level the sentiment of failure is zoomed to maximum. Some players become scapegoats (Adebayor, Silvestre, Denilson, Diaby, Eboue etc) and Wenger becomes subject of strong criticism from pundits and fans.

What next?

When you work so hard and come so close to success but fail what do you do? You need to take some distance and assess the situation. You need to know what went as planned and what did not go so well. They say experience is the sum of someone’s failures. Though we have failed quite a lot since the invincibles but you can’t deny the fact that we are learning and the reasons of our failures seem to be the same, they sure are very different. I still believe like many that this is the make or break season for this project, I think even if we failed and have to rebuild from scratches every gunner should be proud of it. A lot of great projects have died but that does not take away the fact they were great project indeed!