One Of Speaks: Let’s Get This Party Started Right

Big Al took time to wind down the driver’s side window of his Range Rover. Shame he was in the passenger seat but still, an ACLF scribe managed to jot down his words. We then gave it to a trained chimp which had a better command of the English language and here it is.

London, February 2012

Underfoot there’s a brown, crackly layer of snow that hasn’t thawed in days. An icy wind screams through the exposed corridors of tower blocks, down once leafy suburban streets and through exclusive gated communities. Everybody feels it, keeps their head down and grits their teeth on their way to work, past blackened concrete and skeletal trees.

Welcome to the future – an etiolated population huddling inside, at home or on the job, and dreaming. In the Jet Set era we dreamed about travel, reaching places faster and with more glamour and grace than ever. 50 years later, only our ideas, effort and creativity move – we go nowhere, looking forward to the summer, when a three-second Ryanair fanfare will tell us we’re somewhere else for a few days.

On that bright note we switch to a field in the Hertfordshire countryside, where a leader – grey, angular and faintly drawn – turns his collar to the cold and ponders his next move. Things haven’t gone his way recently, but mercifully for him, little has worked out for his enemies either. A ball rolls in his direction, he flicks it up with the side of his boot, catches it and walks over to his men, assembled on the touchline and waiting for his words. Joining him is his assistant, also grey and slightly pallid, squinting at the team behind thick metal-rimmed glasses and brief clouds of water vapour.

The plan for the unlikely assault on the league, cup and Europe is about to be set in motion. If you have any doubts about his ability to rally these men then I’d like to have a go at easing them.

Wenger has always put confidence in his players. They play for his team because he’s seen something in them. Often it’s something that few others have glimpsed. Most of the time they understand this and reciprocate with effort – sometimes they don’t, and fall by the wayside, or for Nicklas Bendtner that might be the hard shoulder of a dual carriageway.

These men have a great opportunity. In the past the manager’s faith has helped propel players to the very top. Two examples, icons of the game, are at the training ground on this day, reminders in the flesh of what Wenger can do with untapped potential. Both are long past their peaks, but in lieu of speed and stamina, Pires and Henry have intelligence and awareness – characteristics that are never diminished, only developed with age and Wenger’s guidance. Knowingly, they’ll tell the Arsenal players to listen and learn.

It’s one of the reasons that we should stick with Theo Walcott, and why he should bear in mind what the club has done for him. I think it’s telling that concealed in his praise, van Persie acknowledged this week that Walcott is criticised – it’s a tacit admission his teammate has deserved it at times, and I think Walcott is aware of his shortfalls as well. I’d say that his improvement over the last couple of years has been sharp enough to indicate that he’s a mature and open-minded man – smart enough to know he’s not there yet and carry on working on his game. If it’s too late to teach him much when it comes to technique, he’ll still be able to learn how to read his teammates and opponents better.

A few of Wenger’s charges have let him down in recent years. The worst are the ones who came on as players, but somehow didn’t realise that the guiding hand for this improvement wouldn’t be at the new club they were so desperate to join. They have plenty of time to regret it now, I suppose.

Still, despite the setbacks, Wenger works the same way he always has; by trusting his players, and believing that they’ll vindicate him sooner or later. This is what we’ll always get from him, for better or worse. The same old sense of humanity and decency; treating players as people rather than commodities, and after a few years respecting their wishes, even if they conflict with his own.

From what little I can gather as a financial illiterate, there is money to spend, but it’s a finite amount. In the January transfer window it appeared there was a possible case for signing an attacker, but elsewhere most of the calls were to replace players out with injury. I doubt this is something Wenger will ever do, as we’ve seen with van Persie and Rosicky. Maybe it’s no coincidence that they’re repaying his faith right now.

The same loyalty can be seen in players plucked from different corners of Europe at young ages; Francis Coquelin stepping forward to declare that he’ll be proud to play in any position for the club; Wojciech Szczesny standing up and defending the manager after Manchester United, when the press were baying for a whiff of dissent.

So we’re left with a group of men who will fight for the manager and the red and white.

The way we see it, the enemy has had its chance. While we toiled without any wide defenders, leaking goals, losing form and confidence, they should have made their move.

And they’re going to wish they had. January should have seen us left behind, but here we are with men fit again or returning, and belief starting to course through our veins once more. All they needed was a new reason to believe in attacking football, and it arrived in the form of a stocky 18-year-old.

Young he might be, but is there a chance that Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain could fill that awkward deep-lying foward’s role in a season or two? I’m not the first to say it, but he can do everything quite well at the moment. Maybe in a couple of years he’ll be able to do everything very well. Now that’s something to dream about.

So in the words of Flavor Flav, let’s get this party started right. Arsenal is only three points off the top four, and it’s time to get down to business.

Today’s Arsenal On This Day has a cultured left foot. ’til Tomorrow.