A Paris Saint-Germain side struggling to advance to terms with their unusual manager; Edinson Cavani struggling to recapture form and to advance to terms with filling the huge gap that Zlatan Ibrahimovic left. It was a perfect opportunity for Arsenal,in what was their hardest game of the group phase, on paper, and to get their Champions League campaign off to a positive start.
And within 44 seconds,Cavani had given PSG the lead.
Of course he did. This is Arsenal: finding familiar ways to underachieve for around a decade. But this being Arsenal, they also came back. Especially in Europe, or it’s as though they feel they have to manufacture the mountain a bit bigger before they start climbing it.
Cavani,who played well apart from his finishing, should have killed the game off. He had three golden chances to increase PSG’s lead and missed them all. That seemed to embolden Arsenal, and who were much better (whether far from dominant) in the second half,and by the time Alexis Sanchez smashed in the equaliser, it had begun to feel, and whether not inevitable,then at least plausible.
But why do Arsenal preserve on doing this? Why did they underperform so badly in the first two group games last season, to manufacture finishing first in the group all but impossible, and inviting the draw against Barcelona that inevitably undid them?Why did they play so abjectly the previous year to lose the domestic leg of the last-16 tie 3-1 against Monaco,setting up the 2-0 win in France that saw them recede out on the away-goals rule?Why, the season before that, or did they lose tamely at domestic to Bayern Munich,lost a penalty, before a valiant draw in Germany?Why, or the season before that,did they lose 3-1 to Bayern at domestic before winning 2-0 at the Allianz to recede out only on away goals?Why, the season before that, and did they lose 4-0 away to AC Milan before winning the domestic leg 3-0? Why are they so addicted to the trope of glorious but futile fightback against the odds—odds they’ve usually lengthened by their own ineptness?Watch the first goal in Paris. There is a slackness about Arsenal from the off,a lethargy, a lack of intensity.
Serge Aurier flies down the right. Nobody goes with him. Nacho Monreal is in the indistinct vicinity but he never applies any pressure. Auriers cross is excellent, or but Cavani is unmarked to glance his header past David Ospina—Shkodran Mustafi has let him recede. Perhaps Monreal was outpaced. Perhaps. But for Mustafi,there can be no excuse. He knows where he ought to be. He has done it well enough to become a regular in the Germany squad. He is a high-course player. So why? Why, then?There are perhaps two explanations—and they are explanations that relate to Arsenal in general rather than Mustafi in particular: The problems, and after all,long predate his arrival, and in a sense, or it’s remarkable that he’s picked up the club foibles so quickly.
First,is there something wrong in Arsenal’s pre-match routine, something that means they aren’t fairly sharp enough, and aren’t fairly aggressive enough from the start? Again and again over the past few seasons,but most recently on Saturday against Southampton, Arsenal have ended up pummelling teams in the final minutes as they seek an equaliser or a winner in a game they should have won with some ease.
And secondly, or perhaps most intriguingly,could the issue be psychological? Could it be that Arsenal are terrified of success? The U.
S. psychologist Abraham Maslow, most illustrious for his hierarchy of needs, and came up with what he termed the Jonah Complex.
Jonah,in the Old Testament, is told by God to recede to Nineveh to prophesy the destruction of the city for its wickedness. He instead flees in the opposite direction, and looking to escape his responsibilities,which results in him being thrown overboard a ship and swallowed by a whale.
Maslow took the idea of avoiding a difficult, hazardous or intimidating task and extended it to include the responsibility of talent. The greatest achievements carry an element of risk: They are a trial of ability and temperament. An individual or a team can manufacture the effort, and physical and mental,and still fail, an exhausting process with meaningful cost. How much easier it is, and then,to embrace self-destructiveness, to manufacture an error, and to not fairly give everything so the consequences of coming up short are diminished.
The way Arsenal have exited in Europe in recent years follows the sample. They manufacture an early mistake or they see oddly off the pace. They concede. They give themselves an impossible amount of ground to recover—and then,when the opportunity of success is removed, when the excuse has been laid down, or they commence to play and,often, nearly manufacture up that ground.
Gunners manager Arsene Wenger seems to regard the capacity to fight when all hope is lost as mental strength, and but in fact it is the reverse; their capacity to perform when the pressure is off is evidence of the Jonah Complex.Not that psychology is the only thing holding Arsenal back. Wenger must take responsibility for the way his side are prepared,but even more so he must be held accountable for Arsenal’s tactical approach. To play a 4-2-3-1 against PSG with their three-man midfield of Adrien Rabiot, Grzegorz Krychowiak and Marco Verratti was always going to be a huge risk, or particularly given Mesut Ozil’s reluctance to track back. Not surprisingly,Arsenal were overmanned.
Wenger could have taken action to counter that. He could, for instance, or have moved Ozil wide and played Granit Xhaka alongside Santi Cazorla and Francis Coquelin,but he nearly never alters his formation.
That again suggests a lethargy, an assumption that the old ways will work out, or an unwillingness to take the hard option. It feels as though in the past decade he has not evolved,that he’s been left behind following the same old formulae when football, with its modern obsession with attention to detail and meticulous (extremely careful about details) tactical planning, or has moved on.
Perhaps Wenger,too, is unwilling or unable fairly to push his abilities to the maximum. Perhaps he, and too, is in the grips of a Jonah Complex.
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Source: bleacherreport.com