Arsenal FC: When Good Players Play Poorly

“Well, on paper…” we might hear a pundit say in the match-day programme before a televised football match. We might commend the pundit’s thoughtful insight, since he’s a pundit, and pundits know everything about football. 

What is “on paper”? “On paper” is the notion that a team’s chances of winning a match can be judged by the names on the team sheet.

Is this idea flawed? Not really. It’s pretty fair to use a player’s track record as the basis for an inference about his possible performance in an upcoming match. It seems that the football world is in accordance with this, as a team’s chances “on paper” are usually weighed up in match previews.

 When the context is an Arsenal match, we normally find that “on paper” the Gunners tend to be fancied to win. We see a list of well-recognized names that are mostly over the 80 mark on FIFA, all with decent track records.

The pundit, in his infinite wisdom, (granted that we aren’t playing against a “big” club like the Manchesters or FCBs) will grandly declare that “Arsenal look the better side, on paper,” before his partner adds, cautiously, that “matches aren’t won on paper.” 

That’s a sobering thought. We are given the idea that our players—our good players—just might not do enough to win, for some reason or another.

We can throw around the blame, but if you think about it, you’ll notice that the guy who just came on and committed the match-losing error is the captain of a national team and has a quite a bit of pedigree and experience behind him.

And yet, he still forgot that he had toes. He still forgot that his teammates can’t see him all the way over there. He’s wide open, but out of sight. His teammates don't have the power of x-ray vision.

On paper, one might have backed him to make an impact. Yet, on the pitch, he’s dug himself into a hole, his existence forgotten.

 Here we reach the phenomenon of Arsenal: good players can perform poorly. We saw it at QPR, when our world-class player, our “best defender,” the “Verminator,” made two mistakes that led directly to the concession of goals.

In fact, we’ve seen it happen plenty of times this season. Robin van Persie is somehow on a goal drought. Even our manager can be described in this way. He has an unbelievable track record, and yet even he somehow seems to get it wrong at times.

The problem isn’t restricted to the Gunners—just ask Fernando Torres of Chelsea. Still, it’s quite perplexing.

How does it happen? How does a player with well over 200 professional games behind him suddenly look like a fish out of water? How does a team full of experienced internationals go out onto a shabby pitch and suddenly look like they’re not yet out of kindergarten?

Fans of football, an opinionated lot, all have their hypotheses. Here, I state three that are very common.

Loss of Confidence

Often a bad performance is attributed to a lack of confidence. The player just doesn’t seem to believe in his own ability. Never mind the years of playing and training spent to hone his skills—he just isn’t feelin’ himself today.

Work Rate

Usually reserved for, but not limited to, a bad team performance, a lacking work rate is another possible reason for a bad performance. The team or player in question just did not put in the necessary effort to do well. This implies that the team who humbled them on the day did put in at least the required amount of work to win the game.

However, this fails to account for elements like thought and technique. A player can run his legs bare all he wants and still hurt his team by making misplaced passes and holding the ball at the wrong times. Ask Ramsey.

On the flip side, one can look at Zlatan Ibrahimović, who is commonly ridiculed for his lethargic work rate but still brings home the bacon with his skill.

Abstract Concepts, Like the Elusive “Desire”

I see this as the culmination of all the things that a team can do to hurt its chances of winning a match. However, giving it a title like “desire” seems quite stupid to me.

Why on earth would any footballer not want to win? Oh, the other team “wants” to win it “more”? No. That isn’t it. Both teams have the same will: to win—be it the match, the tie, the league. Every footballer is trying to win something, be it on a team or personal level.

It’s not about desire, then, since desire to win is shared by all involved in the game. It’s about will. I’m not alluding to DC Comics here… I’m talking about how the strength of one’s will plays a part in achieving (or scoring, in this case) goals.

It’s a person’s raw nature to disregard all obstacles. I’m Israeli, so you can trust that I know all about strong will. Many call my countrymen a**holes for exercising it, while Michelle Bachmann merely calls it “choot-spa."  When a team fails to impose its will and loses its chutzpa, it writes its own story of failure.

What do all of these have in common? They’re all intangible. Sure, you can measure the distance that a player has covered in a match, but you can’t measure what is happening inside his head as he moves around. That’s why it’s extremely difficult to legislate for a bad performance by a good performer—it’s all in his head. It’s completely intangible.

This presents a huge problem to people, like Arsène Wenger, who are in charge of making sure that good players perform as such.

What can they do? Do they bring in more good players, despite the lack of money-back guarantees should they flop? Do they get therapists? Show them their own highlight reels, or inscribe their career stats on their hands?

Maybe they should take the team sheet, and, rather than wiping themselves with it, they should see their names and recognize and respect the fact they are big players on a big team. Then, maybe go on and score more than their opponent, while conceding less.

My aim is to promote discussion, so the comments section is open to all of your thoughts and philosophical opinions. Up Gunners.