Boring, Boring Arsenal?

By: Daryl | January 2nd, 2008

Gael Clichy plays some long balls For the second game in a row yesterday, Arsenal scored from a long ball. Now I’m not suggesting Arsene Wenger has thrown out his big book of pretty passing and picked up the George Graham guide to football. Arsenal are still widely acknowledged as the most attractive team to watch in the Premier League. But the two recent goals from Eduardo vs Everton and Adebayor vs West Ham were both the direct result of long balls from the back and evidence that Arsenal are now prepared to mix it up and play the ball over the top, thus eliminating the perceived weakness that they wanted to do the impossible and walk the ball into the net every time.

In hindsight, it was never as cut and dried as all that. Yes Arsenal overpassed it sometimes (most times?) but it’s probably unfair to to paint Arsene Wenger as some kind of passing puritan who banned long balls. Instead I’d argue that the key to this recent Arsenal evolution is the rise to prominence of two young players: Emmanuel Adebayor and Gaël Clichy.

Adebayor has pretty successfully filled Thierry Henry’s goalscoring boots, but his height and strength also offer Arsenal a more direct physical threat that - for all his va va voom and talent - just wasn’t Henry’s style. And Clichy’s performances are making a mockery of all the fuss over Ashley Cole. The Offside’s Arsenal blogger Dan described the French left-back’s performance against West Ham as “flawless.”

He oozes confidence and though his forays to the attack were toned down, every cross he made was perfect. He delivered another assist with a long ball, and his defensive play is stunning. I can’t thank Ashley Cole enough for leaving and letting Clichy take his spot.

Worth noting that the two goals from long balls that prompted me to write this both came from Gaël Clichy’s left foot. In both cases, Clichy collected the ball in his left back position and was given a bit of time on the ball. But instead of looking to play the usual ball into midfield to Fabregas’s feet, Clichy looked up, saw a striker making a forward run and banged a perfect ball into their path. My theory is that young Clichy finally feels comfortable enough in an Arsenal shirt to break the relentless short passing pattern at Arsenal and play these direct and effective balls, giving Arsenal an extra weapon going forward. It’s (hopefully) not the return of George Graham’s “Boring, boring Arsenal” but maybe Clichy’s left foot will offer Arsenal fans an occasional and much needed change of pace.