The Midfield Chieftains

I understand geometry plays an important role in Arsene Wenger's scheme of things. The one touch passing game is built on parallel runs, patterns of equilateral triangles in offence and tangential runs by the full-backs. A new equation seems to have emerged: the size of the preferred midfield set-up is inversely proportional to the size of the home pitch.

The Invincible season at Highbury in 2003-04 saw a midfield primarily of 6 + feet individuals - Robert Pires, Patrick Viera & Gilberto Silva, Edu and ofcourse, Freddie Ljunberg who brought down the average. However, with Van Persie & Bergkamp often playing behind Henry, it helped in maintaining the mean at 6'+. Much as the small pitch at Highbury had to do with the fast-paced counter attacks that was synonymous with the Invincibles, I believe long legs also had a crucial role to play.

But in the interspersing 3 years, as everyone knows, many things have changed; crucially being the exit of Viera and thereon the exodus of the core Invincibles group. Which (along with the shift to The Emirates pitch), from empirical evidence leads one to believe that the strategy changed.

The point is: the bright first months of this season has undoubtedly been driven by the new-midfield quartet in Cesc Fabregas, Mathew Flamini, Alexander Hleb and Tomas Rocisky. Generating a good mix of offensive and containing midfield play. And this has become more apparent with their absence in the last few games of this season leading in 2 defeats and 1 draw, when at least couple of wins should have been the case.

The average height of the 4 would be around 5' 6.5" - very different in structure from the Invincibles midfield. Whilst it could be just coincidence, am sure hours of rat analysis would have helped the think tank to arrive at the conclusion that shorter centre of gravity leads to more pace over a longer pitch and 90 minutes. Also enabling them get around proponents of direct football. And this would also explain the energy of the team resulting in over 60-70% of goals coming in the final quarter.

Leading in from last season, the big surprise that many had to contend with was the fact the Flamini was the preferred number in the holding position - naturally most took it as a unreasonable considering the experience & proven capability that Gilberto brought along. The question is raised no more as Fabregas' goal scoring this season can be definitely attributed to the effectiveness of Flamini in his role.

Whilst its indulging in a bit of wishful thinking to think that this team could go on to win the League this year - however, a lot would be determined as to the availability of 4 for the rest of the season.

I refer to the 4 as chieftains - for some reason chieftains to me are people of small stature.

Over the last couple of seasons, with the team being largely comprised of youngsters with lack of experience & maturity, I always felt the need for an enforcer. On the pitch as well off it. Someone to believe in the youngsters and bullying them into playing to win matches. It was important in dealing with the pressures of a long season.

Thats where I think the scoop of the Arsenal season rests - making Gallas the captain. Which had most of us think if some screws had fallen in the manager's room. The truth was that Gallas is a whinging fuck, which wasnt a great thing for a team of neophytes. Am sure it was a big call for the manager to make - but seems to have made it with his head. Another day, another frenchman I thought - but this one prefers winning rather than mentally compiling the number of clean sheets. And again on hindsight, it appears to be the right decision for the club. His presence is as important as the midfield quartet's till the end of the season.

Despite the recent hiccups, I believe we are on our way this season - i.e. there wont be a repeat of last season where all hopes of silverware disappear over the course of 3 games in March. The manager has been making more of an effort to set expectations more realistic - which will help a squad with such little experience of dealing with a long season & expanding fans' expectations. The squad has amply shown in the last season as well the current one that they most certainly can deal with the pressure of a game. But a season is a lot different and takes much more from the squad.

As most have been predicting: todays game will not decide the season, but will certainly indicate whether Arsenal has it in them to surprise everyone.