The whole is sum of the parts and it doesn’t matter if a few parts are rosy, ideal, like sand and cigar overlooking the most beautiful sunset over at Port Louis, where sails and masts, and giggles and laughter seem to transform it into physical hues spreading like pink champagne stain on white linen.
While the majority of the Arsenal fans wake up and read of the accomplishment of another season, that fourth position, which not only makes your mid week as special as your weekends, but also adds a few fat entries to your balance sheet, I always wonder of what could have been. I almost always ask the question, why and why-the-hell-really-not can performances, satisfactory or visional, be spread to the other parts, to make the whole perfect. Why if there was more of the urgency and less of the erroneous decisions, wouldn’t the Gunners in its sprawling stadium be the ones getting the guard of honor rather than giving them?
The last ten games have been perfect. Yes, it cannot be better. Forget close shaves and battles with results resting on pure luck. If points are that only which matters, it has been but perfect. And if those ten games represents more than a third of the season, the alluring whole, why has the crack of the whip not handed out from the start.
Many questions come into my dressing-room-inexperienced mind. I have not been subjected to hair driers and French insults. But if motivational skills is also one of the key job requirements of the modern day manager and if the results and hence the employment status of a manager depended on it, why has it not been used for entirety of ten months and only for the last three. I often think it is the survival of dreams and aspirations, and the meaningful end to one’s sweat and brow that has brought about a phenomenal push for points for the Gunners. So I concur then it must be the setting up of a goal difficult but still attainable with the resources in hand. Giving the space to err. As much as the position in a league table depends on external parties and how they perform; can you not hold your end true? Is the Board’s decision to just make profit and set a goal for the year that ensures a positive spin on the spreadsheet actually allowing human to be human and to err.
Maybe what is required is a change of tact. Winning a league, now super competitive, due to the airplanes landing on wet tarmacs, full of money sent out by super wealthy egos without a flinch, will get more and more difficult. Then to win such a league you cannot err because a single err, a single defensive line not held, a single half-hearted flap will result in a single point or even a goal that makes all the difference. So maybe next time you send out the Arsenal team, it is time to tell Monsieur Wenger, that fourth will not do, a cash flow surplus will not do, players so good sell-able at a three digit percentage mark up but surprisingly inconsistent will not do, and what will only do, is that trophy that’s forgotten it’s way to the Emirates. I do believe the Frenchmen will have but no choice to deliver and deliver he will because he can.
