How well do you know the men’s team? Imagine Mikel Arteta having to face six to eight months without Saliba, Gabriel, White, Saka, Ødergaard, Martinelli, Kiwior, and Rice. That’s the kind of issue Jonas Eidevall faced when ACLs and other absences for a variety of reasons robbed him of his best players. I offer you Mead, Williamson, Pelkova, Wienroither, Miedema, Ilestedt, Beattie, Lacasse, Rafaelle Souza….. Do you spend a fortune trying to replace them with new ones, knowing their role might be unnecessary when the missing players return? Or do you make do with what you can afford and adapt the way of playing with who’s available until the stars return?
But what then? When the players come back, after so long out, how long will it take them to reach peak – and will that be the same peak as before or will they not be able to reach the same level of performance as before? Anyone watching the returning ACL players would be hard-pressed to say, while they are still superb professionals, they are anything like as dominant as they were.
Meanwhile, what of the stand-ins? Yes, the hymn sheet says everyone plays a part and is ready to step in as and when and where needed. But it must be hard to be playing regularly and well to see a ‘star’ player jump ahead of you, or you be moved to a different position you’re less comfortable with, even when she’s not performing as she once did.
I would question whether any manager has struggled with absentees as Jonas did. Where he seemed to lose his fanbase was in what appeared to be muddled thinking. Switching four or more players for one game, then changing it for the next, then back again, looked like there was no plan, rhyme or reason to his selections. Was he struggling to choose between those who had kept the team running if not purring, and those world-class players who were available to come back? And what was his thinking about his two prime strikers who never seemed to hit it off, singly or together? In a way, that’s what a new coach can bring – a new sense of perspective, based on current form, not past performance. They won’t have Viv Miedema though, whatver happens, another giant sore that never healed..
There’s little time, of course. Arteta started from a low base and was given a long period to grow his players and his squad, and was helped by an early cup success, largely courtesy of a player he quickly dispensed with. Others, he persevered with, even when the fanbase was turning against them (Kai Havertz, anyone?) In the Women’s game, there’s no time at all to allow players to rediscover themselves, to try new tactics. Everything must work first time. Lose a game and the odds are the season is over. Which, for Arsenal, would be a disaster. Dare the coach stick with a group of players not performing in the hope that they’d find their form. Jonas actually won two trophies, but these are largely seen as mere trinkets. This season he has lost to Chelsea (it’s happened a lot in the recent past, and there’s still the game at Stamford Bridge to come), drawn with City and had the annual off-day with Everton. The season is still young. Could he have turned it around?. Was the negativity towards him truly justified?
Anyway, he’s resigned and we’ll never know what he thought, what went on behind the scenes, and if his team tinkering was being brave or showed he didn’t quite know how to address the issues. The problem becomes someone else’s!
It now needs the supporters to get behind the players on the pitch, help build their confidence, give them strength and belief to fight for the club, for the season.
Whether that can happen in a sparsely filled Emirates remains to be seen.