Morning.
How does Mikel Arteta prepare his team properly for the game on Saturday? Arsenal played on Wednesday evening, as did Aston Villa to be fair, and yesterday would have been a day for recovery more than any real training. Today, there’s training in the morning, and I assume some kind of team meeting about their tactical plan for Villa, then travel to Birmingham, overnight in a hotel, before playing at 12.30 lunchtime.
Far from ideal. Sometimes, in the discussion of the schedule and player welfare, you’ll hear someone say something about how it must impact the quality of the football. Wouldn’t we get a better game if the players had more time to rest and recover? It makes sense on some level, but on another I wonder if now more than ever, it’s accepted by those who run the game as almost essential.
Tiredness and fatigue can certainly lower performance levels, and also have a physical impact on players. Not necessarily in terms of injury, but mistakes tend to happen more in that context. The split second reactions required at the highest level can be dulled, more mistakes happen and often a mistake = action. A shot on goal, a poor pass that leads to a chance, a goalkeeper clanger, a late challenge that’s not nasty per se (a genuine error not a Caiecedo) that brings a red card, or you find a team that has played a lot because they have Europe to deal with struggling against a side who hasn’t played 3 games a week for the last month.
It can add chaos to the mix. And chaos is clipable. Chaos makes for great television. Chaos generates headlines and reaction and entertainment. And we know football is now the entertainment business more than anything else. Which is to say, that as much as managers complain, and players talk often about the impact of the schedule, as part of the overall package putting stress on teams in this way adds to the drama, so there’s no real motivation to do anything about it.
I don’t think it’s a deliberate strategy, it’s just a fortunate by-product of the relentlessness of the football machine these days. They can pay lip service to the idea that these players are tired or exhausted or injured, but just carry on regardless. And look, it’s not just the associations. If the clubs themselves really, really, really wanted to give players a rest, they could spend pre-season without travelling the world and arrange their fixtures at home, but there’s money to made, brands to promote and develop in ‘new’ markets and all the rest.
Pre-season tours are amazing for the fans who get a chance to see their team in flesh in a way they might never otherwise. There are benefits to those connections that go far beyond any monetary compensation for 20,000+ air-miles in 10 days, but is is ideal physical preparation for the players? Nobody can really argue it is. It’s just the way of things now. As is a lunchtime kick-off on a Saturday when you play on Wednesday night. It’s just what you have to do.
Anyway, we’ll hear from Mikel Arteta this morning who was quite pointed about the schedule both before and after Wednesday’s game, and we’ll be anxiously awaiting injury updates on Declan Rice and Cristhian Mosquera, as well as Leandro Trossard and William Saliba who we hope will be available for tomorrow.
Speaking of Saliba, he spoke to Rog from Men in Blazers this week about a range of topics, but he touched a bit on the influence of Gabriel Heinze, saying:
Gabi Heinze gives us a lot, especially for the defenders. He gives us energy because he’s always talking, always loud, even in the training. When we do simple things, he’s always loud. Even for nothing, he will be loud. He talks a lot and I think it’s good to have him close to us because he gives us a lot. And I think this guy can help us a lot.
Heinze and Arteta’s relationship goes back a long way, they were teammates at PSG in the early 2000s, so I didn’t have any concern about those two clashing. I did wonder, however, how someone whose personality was so markedly different from Carlos Cuesta, the man he replaced, might go down with the squad. Cuesta was younger, obviously, and perhaps more focused on individual improvement in his interactions with the players. Heinze is cut from a different cloth, shall we say, both in terms of experience and personality.
So far though, he looks to have been a good addition. A glowing review from Saliba, I remember hearing Arteta himself say the players ‘love’ him a few weeks ago, and while I don’t think our defensive record this season is entirely down to him by any means, if he’s having even a small impact then you’ll take it. Every marginal gain counts in a title race like this, so a sprinkling of South American defensive grit (on top of what we already have) could help make the difference.
Right, I’m gonna leave it there for now. We’ll bring you all the press conference stories on Arseblog News, and later this afternoon we’ll look ahead properly to the Aston Villa game in our preview podcast on Patreon.
Have a good Friday until then.
