Mesut Özil has Emirates purring and gives rise to thoughts that Arsenal are on to something good after the fallow years
Happy anniversary, then, Arsène. Seventeen years on from Wenger's first day at work his latest Arsenal team of homegrowns, old familiars and high grade fresh blood produced a performance of great energy and incision in the opening 20 minutes against a disappointing Napoli team, killing off the match in controlled and even – whisper it – magisterial style.
Top of the Premier League and now top of Champions League Group F: as a snapshot of late-stage Wengerism it is hard to think of a more bullish anatomy of good health.
Optimism about Arsenal's current trajectory rests on taking a year zero approach to the post-austerity era. From a certain angle this is in effect the dawning of Wenger's troisième âge at Arsenal. The fiscal burden has shifted. Mesut Özil, who was elegantly decisive here, has arrived like a slightly giddy flare launched from the battlements. Wenger has shown for the last eight years that he can be a brilliant chancellor of the exchequer. Late Wenger, almost two decades in the making, will be the moment to show he can still cut it as a leader in the good times.
Here Arsenal began brilliantly. With Olivier Giroud playing in front of a fluid five-man midfield, they were simply too slick for Napoli. Aaron Ramsey continued what appears to be an uninterrupted midfield gallop and Özil was expertly clinical in his first home Champions League fixture for Arsenal, scarcely seeming to exert himself while effectively deciding the match in and looking unapologetically a cut above every other attacking player on the pitch.
Not that this should come as any real surprise. Behind the distractions of the Wenger-related narrative Arsenal have been the form team in England over the last six months, winning 17, losing one and drawing three of their past 21 matches. However it has often been hard to gauge Arsenal's true level in recent years. A great deal has been written about Wenger's anniversary, much of it a little too closely caught up in the dissatisfactions of the fallow years. Wenger's trophy-less period coincides not just with Arsenal's own period of stadium-driven austerity but with the rise of irresistible forces elsewhere. The figures are stark: Arsenal are almost £20m in the black on transfer spending since moving to the Emirates. Over the same period Manchester City have spent £640m net, and Chelsea £880m. Figures like this are easily dismissed but they are still remarkable. If Napoli carried to London a sense of elite-level cult appeal then Wenger is, from one angle, an unrelentingly hipsterish figure in his own right, perhaps even the ultimate purist: utterly uncompromising in his methods and continuing within hair-shirt financial limits to fashion beautiful teams from base clay.
In many ways these Champions League nights at the Emirates are the definitive Wenger-ball experience, the stadium full under its brilliant steel canopy and the latest crop of soft-shoed cosmopolitans given licence to zip the ball around under those brilliant white lights, an epitome of frictionless modern European football.
Arsenal even kicked off with a seductively Wenger-ish opening goal. Aaron Ramsey's run outside Giroud invited the Frenchman to play him in behind Camilo Zúñiga. From his cross Özil finished well and then led his team-mates in running to congratulate Ramsey. It was in its construction a fitting commemoration, a goal that might have been designed to come leaping up out of a giant Wenger cake wheeled in front of the home dugout.
The second moments later was equally slick, Miguel Britos's poor clearance punished mercilessly as Özil skipped to the goalline and played in Giroud for a stylishly-enacted tap-in.
Some Arsenal fans may have felt a little uneasy about the signing of Özil, which in a certain light might look like the football equivalent of a lottery winner rushing out and buying a helicopter. Yes, Arsène.
Another slinky attacking midfielder. But where, exactly, are we going to park him? And yet Özil is perhaps the ultimate Wenger poster boy, not just an indication of renewed financial strength, but a sign that Wenger will not be compromising any time soon, that he will simply keep hammering away at his strengths rather than clouding with pragmatism the style in which he wants his team to play.
Here Özil played mainly on the left, from where he was a controlled decisive influence in those opening minutes. In the middle Mathieu Flamini continued to provide not so much muscle as a barking sense of order, an understated influence in Arsenal's bright start. They need him too. A degree of slackness remains behind the fluid forward movement and Napoli threatened occasionally as Arsenal drifted a little.
Not that they were ever in any danger here. Özil continued to move with wonderful agility and speed, seeming at times to take three perfect little steps where his opponent takes one. The introduction of Jack Wilshere, playing high up the pitch on the left, added a little gloss to a routine last half hour as the crowd stirred itself now and then to sing that there is only one Arsène Wenger. This, at least, is unarguably the case.
via Football news, match reports and fixtures | theguardian.com http://feeds.theguardian.com/c/34708/f/663845/s/31f0c6a1/sc/13/l/0L0Stheguardian0N0Cfootball0Cblog0C20A130Coct0C0A10Carsene0Ewenger0Earsenal0Emesut0Eozil/story01.htm
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