Former Arsenal stars Charles Nicholas and Paul Merson have offered varied views on the club’s struggle this season.
Nicholas opined that the 22-unbeaten run Arsenal registered earlier in the season made people believe that the team had changed for the better but to him, nothing much changed from what the team looked like under Arsene Wenger. Arsenal were eliminated by arch-rivals Manchester United in the FA Cup race with a 1-3 loss.
“The only thing that changed was the period of 20 unbeaten and that gave some people hope that there was a big swing coming. I still think they’re good going forward – but they always were under Arsene Wenger. But I go back to what I said a couple of weeks ago. It’s been brewing there for four or five seasons. Even when Arsene spent a lot of money on defenders, it was the wrong defenders. Now the crowd know it and there’s nothing the owners can do, they’re not prepared to do anything to help this manager.” Nicholas argued on the Soccer Sunday.
“If you don’t help the manager strengthen where you’re weak, what do you expect to change? I’ve given up on Arsenal this season because even though they can beat Spurs and Chelsea, they are a mess at the back.” the former Scottish footballer added.
On his part, Merson has a problem with Unai Emery’s tendency of sidelining Mesut Ozil. The German has been an unused sub in the two previous games Arsenal played and Emery’s argument has been the German is not always tracking back something that Merson greatly questions. Merson reckons that Emery will get away for the time being with the isolation of the German star but at the end of the day, he will have questions to answer.
“When (Mesut) Ozil comes on, I sit there and think ‘how’s he not playing?’ I know people say, ‘he doesn’t run around, he doesn’t track back’, but none of them track back. The two holding midfield players were nowhere to be seen in the first half for the goal when (Romelu) Lukaku broke away the two holding players were nowhere to be seen. The young right-back didn’t bother to track back for (Jesse) Lingard’s goal.
“I think the manager is getting away with it at the moment. I like the manager but it’s like, ‘you know what, everybody knows we’re bad at the back, so we’ll just play this way. It doesn’t matter, it ain’t me. These aren’t my defenders. We were a mess before’. Set up a certain way,” Merson offered
