Ally
Active Member
My range as a writer is limited, hence why I've mainly stuck to match reports in my hacktastic career on this website. I delve occasionally into the shaky territory of indulgent essay and pretentious theory, because I enjoy it more. It's nice to have total creative freedom – take any topic, pull it all over the place in x thousand words, and reach a far-fetched conclusion with staggering and baseless self-assuredness. If I was any Arsenal player (Ha!), I'd probably be Luis Boa Morte from '97. I need time to work, and I'm uneasy with deadlines and pressure. I'm variable in quality (from slightly ridiculous to very ridiculous) – I repeat myself a lot. I tend to use the same techniques. One player I would most definitely not be is Robert Pires. Where we crucially differ in that respect is that, in a literal sense, one is a genius, and the other....is a sad bastard sitting at his PC for hours.
Pires' signing was low-key. It was known he had been a Wenger target for a timespan of years rather than a short-termist eye-catching, spur-of-the-moment flutter – a move to sign Pires at the twilight of his Metz career had failed to work out and he had moved to Marseille. In Myles Palmer's Wenger biography, a quote from Arsène pretty much sums up his intent.
“I wanted him when he moved from Metz to Marseille and I made a bid. I couldn't get him at that time. He has a good mixture between individual and team play, and he could play central as well” [This was of course, pre the van Bronckhorst experiment] “He's the closest I know to being a successor to Zidane. Unfortunately, he's too close age-wise to Zidane so that will not leave him much time. But I think as well they can play together. That's why I want him to play on the flank. Because he has shown one-on-one he can pass anyone. He's very quick. He doesn't look it.”
In the event, the deal was timed to perfection – a few days later, he landed a bouncing cross straight onto Trezeguet's instep and France won Euro 2000 on the Golden Goal. The other score, of course, was Sylvain Wiltord's hair-raising equaliser with virtually the last kick of the ball, slashed under Toldo from a speculative angle. This was, more or less, the same sort of position that Pires had crossed from, and was a fair indication of the differing personalities of the two forwards that Wenger brought in. One just wanted to have a shot (And in the circumstances, Wiltord's strike was sensational), and the other clearly was happy to look up and measure his delivery. This was definitely not selflessness; it was intelligence as opposed to instinct.
As a replacement for Overmars, Pires was a weird choice. His arrival was presumably an intentional shift away from a winger who wanted to get the ball to feet, get his head down and run at the full back, to someone with more patience and who could hold up the ball and provide cover to the man behind him. There were other options on the left, but they were not bona fide wingers – experimenting with Silvinho in midfield didn't really work, and he basically looked like what he was (A flair defender being played out of position), and Ljungberg was and is an attacking midfielder who avoids the corner flag as if Gary Neville had recently been in that general vicinity. The point of Henry was never that he operate on the touchline, but was given a roaming role without instruction across the forward line. The bias to the left in the current Arsenal lineup, depending on the opposition, can either be unstoppable or supremely unproductive. Ljungberg's presence when Pires was briefly dropped only resulted in absolutely nothing being produced, and Ashley Cole being given one of the most torrid examinations his career will ever contain against Ronaldo. That he came out so well was everything to do with the maturity of the young man, and essentially nothing to do with the player who should have been aware of the danger in behind him, but due to the nature of his attacking tendency did little to help.
Pires and Cole are as close to the 'Dream Ticket' combination as Wenger has anywhere in his team. A foot in both camps approach, but with both working towards the same aim. Without wanting to encourage unsavoury comparisons, back in '97 when the Blairites aimed to win over marginal Middle England zones to take the Tories out where they had been complacent for about a decade, they had the help of Prescott to maintain links with Old Labour while major internal reform was going on, thereby creating a rather artificial impression that socialist principles would be genuinely acknowledged. The traditional camp fell for it hook and line. If you can lure people into thinking you're something that you're not, without actually lying to them, you can go places. The two we have on our left [Arf, geddit? Arf, nudge, nudge] are a multiform pairing, who also look like they have no ability to engage in anything different than exchanging pretty passes on the touchline. This shifty disguise works against the best of them – witness the methodical switch of play from right to left against Chelski on Saturday, Cole taking the ball down with a flicked toe ender, and stroking a pass to Pires who advanced slowly on the rather good Glenn Johnson before taking him completely out of contention by a caress of his right foot straight to the by-line – the cross ended up with Gilberto taking a rather barbaric swing straight at Cudicini. Such inventiveness from a player with, relative to the opponent designated to shut him down, little pace brought back shades of 01/02.
As far as that 'Dream Ticket' assertion I just made, which is probably highly debatable, I'd say that Vieira and Gilberto still don't have the same interchangeable diversity as PV4 and Manu did. The Henry-Bergkamp institution looks at this moment as if it has slowed down, and will probably be stopped before much longer in favour of some new blood. Oh, it's not stale, because I'll bet it could still work if Bergkamp was playing every week. It's just too reliant on the same old technique, and can be seen to easily enough if a manager has done his homework. All three in last seasons Champions League evidentally had. Bergkamp has forgotten more about unlocking a defence than most equivalent players will ever know, but Henry is so enigmatic, so randomly explosive that Bergkamp is on a brief which involves picking out perhaps two or three moments per game when Titi gets the angle and timing of his run through the middle right. That TH14 appears to be a thirty-goals-a-season striker who is, perversely, far more content with laying on goals these days doesn't help, and this is obviously more geared to working with someone who can position themselves properly around the penalty area, and is not Sylvain Wiltord when he has other things on his mind.
Pires and Cole down the left are, to be honest, a joy to watch. The space they create, how the overlapping player can draw off at least one defender, possibly opening up options inside, (or if that defender stays put, working with what is often a huge amount of room in a square that extends along the edge of the penalty area all the way down to the touchline) and holding the ball up until the cavalry arrives in the middle. The diversity (that word again..) is breathtaking – take two examples of how Bobby can involve himself.
Example 1 – Assist v Middlesbrough - 24th August 2003. Cole, to Pires – Shimmy, pinpoint cross for Gilberto to run in underneath of. Counter attacking football, straight down the wing, partial cut-in, no nonsense, BANG. Just a direct approach of how to score a thumping goal with a left winger well aware of the conventions of his position, and who is not afraid to use them. It's all about options. Pires will chose the best one. If Henry hadn't been smothered by defenders who were unaware of about three different Arsenal players about to advance into clear scoring positions, Pires probably would have used a simpler cut back rather than a floated chip. He has no set ideas of what he intends to do. If he doesn't find anyone readily available, he just holds onto the ball, glued to his feet with exemplary control, and then picks the easy, simple option.
“Song about growing up, song about being in a band, song about being in love, song about all kinds of things...”
And then, you need that something which is different. To deviate slightly from the track of all this nonsense, I'd like to state (/Confess?) that my favourite record of all time is the Alchemy version of Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits. Fourteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds of elegant, sweeping, at one point totally orgasmic noise. It's not really fashionable, it's not really a generally acceptable source for a 'favourite record' accolade. But then this was before Brothers in Arms ushered in the CD generation, and Tunnel of Love, as Sultans of Swing from Alchemy is as well, is just a reworking of an old classic. Don't forget the non-corporate origins, the influences (JJ Cale et al) the raw and sweat-drenched initial sound when they were Live at the BBC. Dire Straits were better live – a more upbeat tempo. A more solid, enforced and defined sound (ToL was originally recorded sans rhythm guitar). The simply astonishing guitar solos - Sultans played as if Knopfler has a gun against his head with grave warnings to play like he never has before; ToL is, to take the previous comparison probably a stage too far, the musical equivalent of jacking off. Twelve minutes and fourty-eight seconds into the song – the most uplifting moment of any record, ever. And they can have a record like that in their repertoire alongside the moody, fundamental Six Blade Knife and two records well in contention for some award for poignancy bordering on categorisation as a depressant – Brothers in Arms and Private Investigations. That's the mark of a great band – if they can successfully record records so different from each other, but with equal adroitness. Needless to say, modern day examples are rather rare. Manics, yes (The Everlasting to You Stole the Sun), the Stripes, yes (Cold Cold Night to Black Math), but the list is small. Variation. Dissimilarity. It's rare. It nicely parallels football teams and individual players, I reckon. And seeing as I have referenced Dire Straits a number of times before, that's why I'll never be a journo. Same old. No creativity, me. Anyway, back to more 'interesting' business...
Example 2 – Goal v Bolton, 26th April 2003. No overlap here. Not even any support down the left. Cole is scrapping for the ball with Per Frandsen, and Frandsen's misjudgment allows Cole a break and some time to work with – again he gets lucky with a deflection as he tries to take on Mendy. Pires is still calmly standing about in a completely harmless area of the pitch, well away from both the penalty area and the touchline, because Henry is out there and his reading of the game is presumably telling him that the ball must either go to Thierry, or be crossed in speculatively for Wiltord to try and get on to. Having seen that the latter isn't going to work, as soon as the ball is at Henry's feet, Pires suddenly bursts forward and positions himself for a short pass, and Cole's continuation well ahead of the ball has taken Laville out of play. As Pires finally gets the ball, Campo charges out just too late to intercept, and the Frenchman now has enough time to take one touch, look up and in a single movement curl his shot away with minimum backlift. This was a Bergkamp goal, made possible in equal parts by luck, and in equal part by a natural awareness when to drift inside and cut away from the 'overlap, pass, cross' theory. You see this again in the Cup Final – the two 'wingers' are hanging around the six yard box, and the confusion Bergkamp's reverse pass has created means there is no defensive choice but to run to the ball. If you can sneak in on the blind side and into space, even into Lineker territory at times, your team has an abstract attacking option which will work as long as there is that idea of coverage out on the wing. No less than three different players operating in that area, two with blistering pace and quite often playing off the man who has the vision to see the possibilities ahead of him is as a nonuniform an idea as the Premiership has to offer, given the restricted area of the playing field within which this functions. Of course, the specialist nature of the personnel needed makes this so, but within Wenger's 4-4-2 it's pretty radical.
Of course, Pires is not the player he was in the second Wenger double season. He's more selfish, is more inclined to go it alone as opposed to being the main provider. In that respect, Henry has inherited what Pires was originally supposed to be about. Going back to that Arsène quote – he's our Zidane. A creative hub for our movement, and when he was lacking on confidence (See his miss in Moscow – urgh), we as a whole seem to be lacking in confidence. If Wenger wants to take us back to how we were in 01/02, I'm assuming that means Parlour will keep on the right wing. Or at least, I hope so. Does this constitute Pires and Ljungberg fighting it out on the left? If so, may the best man win. A power poacher operating out of midfield, who can be mostly AWOL during games, reliant on pinpoint service through the middle? Or Bobby, who has all the attributes listed above. Just look at the relative impact when Pires came on against Newcastle. Freddie is not the player he was. Neither is Bobby, but that's not the point. Both have class. Pires' is a totally different league to Ljungberg's, in my worthless opinion. To use the hopelessly whorey old mantra - “Form is temporary. Class is permanent.”
Dodgy showings this season finally resulted in Arsène doing something rather rare around Highbury – dropping a nigh-on-permanent fixture in the Arsenal team on the basis of sustained sub-par form. And keeping him dropped for more than a couple of games. And, if nothing else, it showed us that you truly don't know what you've got til it's gone.
I had intended to keep this short, due to complaints that the last thing I scrawled out was just too, too tacky with regard it's length. But I love Pires as an Arsenal player, and can't resist an opportunity to shower him with the kind of exuberent praise that he hasn't had for a while. You'll note I haven't mentioned the goal at Anfield, because his performance wasn't really very good, and the glorious strike acted as a set of blinkers to what he was doing wrong. But on the limited evidence so far, it's given him confidence. Which is all he needed. Again, and I have to repeat it, variation is not exactly my forte. And now I'm going to go and download the original version of Expresso Love. The Alchemy version is better. But you don't want to forget how everything came about. How it 'evolved' (Dear God, not that again!). Do you?
Ally Winford
Pires' signing was low-key. It was known he had been a Wenger target for a timespan of years rather than a short-termist eye-catching, spur-of-the-moment flutter – a move to sign Pires at the twilight of his Metz career had failed to work out and he had moved to Marseille. In Myles Palmer's Wenger biography, a quote from Arsène pretty much sums up his intent.
“I wanted him when he moved from Metz to Marseille and I made a bid. I couldn't get him at that time. He has a good mixture between individual and team play, and he could play central as well” [This was of course, pre the van Bronckhorst experiment] “He's the closest I know to being a successor to Zidane. Unfortunately, he's too close age-wise to Zidane so that will not leave him much time. But I think as well they can play together. That's why I want him to play on the flank. Because he has shown one-on-one he can pass anyone. He's very quick. He doesn't look it.”
In the event, the deal was timed to perfection – a few days later, he landed a bouncing cross straight onto Trezeguet's instep and France won Euro 2000 on the Golden Goal. The other score, of course, was Sylvain Wiltord's hair-raising equaliser with virtually the last kick of the ball, slashed under Toldo from a speculative angle. This was, more or less, the same sort of position that Pires had crossed from, and was a fair indication of the differing personalities of the two forwards that Wenger brought in. One just wanted to have a shot (And in the circumstances, Wiltord's strike was sensational), and the other clearly was happy to look up and measure his delivery. This was definitely not selflessness; it was intelligence as opposed to instinct.
As a replacement for Overmars, Pires was a weird choice. His arrival was presumably an intentional shift away from a winger who wanted to get the ball to feet, get his head down and run at the full back, to someone with more patience and who could hold up the ball and provide cover to the man behind him. There were other options on the left, but they were not bona fide wingers – experimenting with Silvinho in midfield didn't really work, and he basically looked like what he was (A flair defender being played out of position), and Ljungberg was and is an attacking midfielder who avoids the corner flag as if Gary Neville had recently been in that general vicinity. The point of Henry was never that he operate on the touchline, but was given a roaming role without instruction across the forward line. The bias to the left in the current Arsenal lineup, depending on the opposition, can either be unstoppable or supremely unproductive. Ljungberg's presence when Pires was briefly dropped only resulted in absolutely nothing being produced, and Ashley Cole being given one of the most torrid examinations his career will ever contain against Ronaldo. That he came out so well was everything to do with the maturity of the young man, and essentially nothing to do with the player who should have been aware of the danger in behind him, but due to the nature of his attacking tendency did little to help.
Pires and Cole are as close to the 'Dream Ticket' combination as Wenger has anywhere in his team. A foot in both camps approach, but with both working towards the same aim. Without wanting to encourage unsavoury comparisons, back in '97 when the Blairites aimed to win over marginal Middle England zones to take the Tories out where they had been complacent for about a decade, they had the help of Prescott to maintain links with Old Labour while major internal reform was going on, thereby creating a rather artificial impression that socialist principles would be genuinely acknowledged. The traditional camp fell for it hook and line. If you can lure people into thinking you're something that you're not, without actually lying to them, you can go places. The two we have on our left [Arf, geddit? Arf, nudge, nudge] are a multiform pairing, who also look like they have no ability to engage in anything different than exchanging pretty passes on the touchline. This shifty disguise works against the best of them – witness the methodical switch of play from right to left against Chelski on Saturday, Cole taking the ball down with a flicked toe ender, and stroking a pass to Pires who advanced slowly on the rather good Glenn Johnson before taking him completely out of contention by a caress of his right foot straight to the by-line – the cross ended up with Gilberto taking a rather barbaric swing straight at Cudicini. Such inventiveness from a player with, relative to the opponent designated to shut him down, little pace brought back shades of 01/02.
As far as that 'Dream Ticket' assertion I just made, which is probably highly debatable, I'd say that Vieira and Gilberto still don't have the same interchangeable diversity as PV4 and Manu did. The Henry-Bergkamp institution looks at this moment as if it has slowed down, and will probably be stopped before much longer in favour of some new blood. Oh, it's not stale, because I'll bet it could still work if Bergkamp was playing every week. It's just too reliant on the same old technique, and can be seen to easily enough if a manager has done his homework. All three in last seasons Champions League evidentally had. Bergkamp has forgotten more about unlocking a defence than most equivalent players will ever know, but Henry is so enigmatic, so randomly explosive that Bergkamp is on a brief which involves picking out perhaps two or three moments per game when Titi gets the angle and timing of his run through the middle right. That TH14 appears to be a thirty-goals-a-season striker who is, perversely, far more content with laying on goals these days doesn't help, and this is obviously more geared to working with someone who can position themselves properly around the penalty area, and is not Sylvain Wiltord when he has other things on his mind.
Pires and Cole down the left are, to be honest, a joy to watch. The space they create, how the overlapping player can draw off at least one defender, possibly opening up options inside, (or if that defender stays put, working with what is often a huge amount of room in a square that extends along the edge of the penalty area all the way down to the touchline) and holding the ball up until the cavalry arrives in the middle. The diversity (that word again..) is breathtaking – take two examples of how Bobby can involve himself.
Example 1 – Assist v Middlesbrough - 24th August 2003. Cole, to Pires – Shimmy, pinpoint cross for Gilberto to run in underneath of. Counter attacking football, straight down the wing, partial cut-in, no nonsense, BANG. Just a direct approach of how to score a thumping goal with a left winger well aware of the conventions of his position, and who is not afraid to use them. It's all about options. Pires will chose the best one. If Henry hadn't been smothered by defenders who were unaware of about three different Arsenal players about to advance into clear scoring positions, Pires probably would have used a simpler cut back rather than a floated chip. He has no set ideas of what he intends to do. If he doesn't find anyone readily available, he just holds onto the ball, glued to his feet with exemplary control, and then picks the easy, simple option.
“Song about growing up, song about being in a band, song about being in love, song about all kinds of things...”
And then, you need that something which is different. To deviate slightly from the track of all this nonsense, I'd like to state (/Confess?) that my favourite record of all time is the Alchemy version of Tunnel of Love by Dire Straits. Fourteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds of elegant, sweeping, at one point totally orgasmic noise. It's not really fashionable, it's not really a generally acceptable source for a 'favourite record' accolade. But then this was before Brothers in Arms ushered in the CD generation, and Tunnel of Love, as Sultans of Swing from Alchemy is as well, is just a reworking of an old classic. Don't forget the non-corporate origins, the influences (JJ Cale et al) the raw and sweat-drenched initial sound when they were Live at the BBC. Dire Straits were better live – a more upbeat tempo. A more solid, enforced and defined sound (ToL was originally recorded sans rhythm guitar). The simply astonishing guitar solos - Sultans played as if Knopfler has a gun against his head with grave warnings to play like he never has before; ToL is, to take the previous comparison probably a stage too far, the musical equivalent of jacking off. Twelve minutes and fourty-eight seconds into the song – the most uplifting moment of any record, ever. And they can have a record like that in their repertoire alongside the moody, fundamental Six Blade Knife and two records well in contention for some award for poignancy bordering on categorisation as a depressant – Brothers in Arms and Private Investigations. That's the mark of a great band – if they can successfully record records so different from each other, but with equal adroitness. Needless to say, modern day examples are rather rare. Manics, yes (The Everlasting to You Stole the Sun), the Stripes, yes (Cold Cold Night to Black Math), but the list is small. Variation. Dissimilarity. It's rare. It nicely parallels football teams and individual players, I reckon. And seeing as I have referenced Dire Straits a number of times before, that's why I'll never be a journo. Same old. No creativity, me. Anyway, back to more 'interesting' business...
Example 2 – Goal v Bolton, 26th April 2003. No overlap here. Not even any support down the left. Cole is scrapping for the ball with Per Frandsen, and Frandsen's misjudgment allows Cole a break and some time to work with – again he gets lucky with a deflection as he tries to take on Mendy. Pires is still calmly standing about in a completely harmless area of the pitch, well away from both the penalty area and the touchline, because Henry is out there and his reading of the game is presumably telling him that the ball must either go to Thierry, or be crossed in speculatively for Wiltord to try and get on to. Having seen that the latter isn't going to work, as soon as the ball is at Henry's feet, Pires suddenly bursts forward and positions himself for a short pass, and Cole's continuation well ahead of the ball has taken Laville out of play. As Pires finally gets the ball, Campo charges out just too late to intercept, and the Frenchman now has enough time to take one touch, look up and in a single movement curl his shot away with minimum backlift. This was a Bergkamp goal, made possible in equal parts by luck, and in equal part by a natural awareness when to drift inside and cut away from the 'overlap, pass, cross' theory. You see this again in the Cup Final – the two 'wingers' are hanging around the six yard box, and the confusion Bergkamp's reverse pass has created means there is no defensive choice but to run to the ball. If you can sneak in on the blind side and into space, even into Lineker territory at times, your team has an abstract attacking option which will work as long as there is that idea of coverage out on the wing. No less than three different players operating in that area, two with blistering pace and quite often playing off the man who has the vision to see the possibilities ahead of him is as a nonuniform an idea as the Premiership has to offer, given the restricted area of the playing field within which this functions. Of course, the specialist nature of the personnel needed makes this so, but within Wenger's 4-4-2 it's pretty radical.
Of course, Pires is not the player he was in the second Wenger double season. He's more selfish, is more inclined to go it alone as opposed to being the main provider. In that respect, Henry has inherited what Pires was originally supposed to be about. Going back to that Arsène quote – he's our Zidane. A creative hub for our movement, and when he was lacking on confidence (See his miss in Moscow – urgh), we as a whole seem to be lacking in confidence. If Wenger wants to take us back to how we were in 01/02, I'm assuming that means Parlour will keep on the right wing. Or at least, I hope so. Does this constitute Pires and Ljungberg fighting it out on the left? If so, may the best man win. A power poacher operating out of midfield, who can be mostly AWOL during games, reliant on pinpoint service through the middle? Or Bobby, who has all the attributes listed above. Just look at the relative impact when Pires came on against Newcastle. Freddie is not the player he was. Neither is Bobby, but that's not the point. Both have class. Pires' is a totally different league to Ljungberg's, in my worthless opinion. To use the hopelessly whorey old mantra - “Form is temporary. Class is permanent.”
Dodgy showings this season finally resulted in Arsène doing something rather rare around Highbury – dropping a nigh-on-permanent fixture in the Arsenal team on the basis of sustained sub-par form. And keeping him dropped for more than a couple of games. And, if nothing else, it showed us that you truly don't know what you've got til it's gone.
I had intended to keep this short, due to complaints that the last thing I scrawled out was just too, too tacky with regard it's length. But I love Pires as an Arsenal player, and can't resist an opportunity to shower him with the kind of exuberent praise that he hasn't had for a while. You'll note I haven't mentioned the goal at Anfield, because his performance wasn't really very good, and the glorious strike acted as a set of blinkers to what he was doing wrong. But on the limited evidence so far, it's given him confidence. Which is all he needed. Again, and I have to repeat it, variation is not exactly my forte. And now I'm going to go and download the original version of Expresso Love. The Alchemy version is better. But you don't want to forget how everything came about. How it 'evolved' (Dear God, not that again!). Do you?
Ally Winford
