There’s some muttering out there that this was a mistake, that they needed a hard defensive midfielder or an Easter Island centerback, that all this does is create a selection headache and prove that Wenger doesn’t know how to spend money. Before I take the opposite view and tell you why I haven’t been this excited about a transfer since I don’t remember when, let me state for the record that I’m an Arshavin skeptic from way back. Just so this doesn’t look like some kind of player-advocacy case.
The problem with the Arshavin critique is that it assumes that self-correction is the highest purpose of the transfer window. If your team is scoring goals but also conceding them, you buy a defender. If the seesaw is tilted forward, you buy the right to lean back. And because the normative chorus in sports is always focused on the most successful moment of the recent past—the moment when a team was least susceptible to criticism—the self-correction everyone wants is usually the one that brings, say, 2003 back to life, with some purple smoke and a golden bottle. In 2003, Arsenal had Patrick Vieira, while today, they have William Gallas in his Poor-Tom’s-a-cold stage. So their tax-return proper January move would be to bring in some stone sequel of their ex-captain who could give them that “combative presence in midfield” that they currently delicately lack.
Fine. But as true as all this is, it strikes me as not just shortsighted, but rising to the level of the civilized clerk in the Western movie after his spectacles are slapped away by one of the outlaw’s goons. That’s especially—maybe uniquely—the case with this move. With possibly one or two exceptions (Messi, maybe, but the club he’s playing for is already at least as Arsenal as Arsenal, if that makes sense) Andrei Arshavin is the most Arsenal player on earth. I mean that as a matter of style (those twisty-lethal, quietly thundering runs), of mentality (“I think I will think about attacking,” he said, almost too perfectly, when Arsenal TV asked where Wenger intended to play him), of cognate words (Arsène, Arshavin, Arsenal; it’s getting a little carnivalesque), of biography (intimations of magic, a total lack of certainty). In every way, including cost, this is an Arsenal transfer blown up out of all normal proportions, and it has a crazy tension that an Arshavin move to Milan or Real Madrid wouldn’t have. This isn’t a correction from Arsène Wenger. It’s an act of escalation.
And that’s what I love about it, and why I’m desperate for it to work, even though I don’t really expect it to. Arsenal have stood for something over the last ten years in a way that no other club, certainly no other English club, can claim. Now, about to be done in by what everyone else thinks is an excess of the virtues that have taken them this far, they’re stepping on the gas. They’re saying, in effect, that they’re not about to go falling over the cliff because they’re driving in the wrong direction. They’re about to go falling over the cliff because they aren’t driving fast enough.
This is what I don’t understand about all the talk about selection headaches and whether they’ll line up Arshavin behind the midfield to help shore up the back four. To me, that’s missing the whole point of the transfer. Why bother to buy him at all if he’s not supposed to be transfiguring? If they wanted Lasanna Diarra, why would they have sold him in the first place? This line is being taken by a lot of journalists I like, but when I see Gabriele Marcotti writing this:
OK, so Andrey Arshavin is finally an Arsenal player. Great. We all saw what he could do at Euro 2008. If Arsene Wenger was ready to splash the cash to this degree, it shows he obviously believes in him. But what’s going to be fascinating is where he puts him in this Arsenal side. No matter where he puts him, somebody’s going to lose out. Somebody out of Robin Van Persie, Emanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri, Cesc Fabregas and Theo Walcott (when the latter two are fit again) is going to lose out. How Wenger handles that will provide an education in football management.
I want to ask whether everyone else saw the same Euro 2008 I saw. Because the Arshavin that pulsar-bombed Sweden and Holland in that tournament wasn’t a player you’d worry about fitting in around Samir Nasri’s playing time. Everyone on Marcotti’s list is obviously good, stylish, effective (partially, in the case of Theo Walcott) and suited to Arsenal—maybe more, in every category, than Arshavin will turn out to be. But if you’re spending sixteen million pounds on Arshavin, you’re not doing it to get a slightly out-of-place holding midfielder who can co-exist with Theo Walcott, you’re doing it in the hope and belief that those hints he gave in Euro 2008 are about to be fulfilled, that he’s going to remake your team as a more intense, faster, flashier, crueler, more angular version of what it already is. If this transfer works, Arshavin isn’t going to be a useful player on a list of useful players. He’s going to be the stake that gave a wayward team an identity. He’s going to be a wonderment.
As I said, I’m not brightly disposed enough to expect this to work out. I’ve made the “his stats weren’t that good in a substantively worse league” argument myself on multiple occasions. But I would love it, love it with Kevin Keegan urgency, if I were wrong, and the visionary move turned out to be the tactically right one. Maybe I’m overstating all this, and I should actually be using a middle rhetoric and not setting expectations too high. But Arsenal are supposed to be the club that believes in beautiful possibilities. And more than any other player I can think of, and regardless of how much they were tarnished by the endless, tedious transfer negotiations, Arshavin has beautiful possibilities surrounding him like a constellation.
Read More: Andrei Arshavin, Arsenal
by Brian Phillips · February 4, 2009
[contact-form 5 'Email form']
I was ready to shrug my shoulders and mutter “Whatever” at the end of this predictably tedious transfer process, but seeing the photos of him in an Arsenal shirt has got me giddier about football than I’ve been since the Euros. Though I share your doubts about the move, I’m too wrapped up in partisan optimism to care right now. Who said the January transfer window was a load of hyped-up nonsense, anyhow?
And how come “Andrei” has become “Andrey”? Did the transliteration guidelines change on February 1st or did someone make an error on the contract or what?
That’s got me stumped, too. Maybe we should just go the full Maude and start calling him “Andrew.”
I vote for “Onndrűű”, with a Spinal Tap umlaut on the first N.
Best defensee is a good offense. Maybe they need defensive help, but if the ball is constantly in the *other* team’s third, then the need for defense is not so great …
And the point I failed to make in the piece is that the idea that they’re an explosive attacking team that’s only in need of defensive help is actually not that persuasive. They’ve given away more goals than anyone in the top 5 (25), but they’ve also scored the fewest (38, tied with Aston Villa).
Part of the reason why I thought this Euro in the summer was so good was this kid. Happy to see him in the EPL.
Arshavin as a holding midfielder? They must be having a laugh.
I agree that Wenger is doubling down by signing Arshavin. My question isn’t “Where will he play?” either. It’s “Will he show up?”. In some Zenit CL matches I’ve seen, he couldn’t be bothered to lift a foot. In others he ran box-to-box for sixty or seventy minutes. And when you think about Russia vs. Holland last summer, you also have to remember Arshavin in Russia vs. Spain. If his intermittent lack of elan is a result of friction with the club, then maybe a change will do him good. But I’m doubtful. Something’s strange about him wanting to leave Russia so badly; like he thinks a move–any move–will fix everything. It’s not like Zenit haven’t had room to improve domestically. If Arshavin had grit to go with his genius, he should be able to shoulder the load and help his team win the domestic league every now and then–like Diego and Napoli on a less celestial level. Arshavin is a talented artist who thinks he deserves a bigger audience–which he does–but that’s what most artists think. If Arsenal miss the CL next year, will he bite down and play a season of brilliant football to help them regain it? Or will he sulk and look for another transfer? I’m guessing the latter.
Elan is a good word for what Arsenal are doing. Forward always forward.
I get the feeling they are headed into the Ardennes.
I think the “where will they play him” question is a valid one were everyone on Arsenal to be healthy. However the fact of the matter is that right now (after Saturday’s games) Arsenal are six points out of 4th place, which means they are six points out of about 40 million quid worth of Champions League money. With the season moving on quickly and the team playing in a very mediocre fashion (cf. the nil-nil draw to West Ham) and a whole army of creative talent side-lined by injury (Fabregas, Walcott, Rosicky, Eduardo) Wenger needed to do something and to do it fast.
Yes, this means that in two, three months time there will be a bit of a selection dilemma. However, that dilemma will be nothing more than an academic discussion if Arsenal are nowhere near fourth spot in the EPL. In short, even if Arshavin departs again next year or his signing creates a selection headache for Wenger, bringing him on board is a calculated gamble which may be just what Arsenal need to stay in the top four.
in answer to the where will he play him, I’m really hoping for something next year along the lines of:
Almunia
Sagna…____(1)…Djourou…Clichy
Arshavin…Cesc…_____(2)…Nasri
Walcott…van Persie
with (1) and (2) being filled with the profits of Adebayor, Gallas, Diaby, And Eboue sales, with the neo-Vieira (or hell, happily and probably even better for this side, neo-Flamini) and Easter Island central defender you reference.
I too fear it won’t work, but applaud the elan. I think (even though Wenger would never admit it) that this purchase was a bit of a write-off of this season.
If he were committed to tightening up and finishing 4th he would have made the more pragmatic purchase. But Arshavin is for next year, and this makes me happy because it suggests that perhaps Wenger is finally starting to admit just a bit that the plan has some flaws and needs tweaking.
ALL RUSSIAN PEOPLE WISH ARSHAVIN LUCK IN ARSENAL! WE WISH HIM A LOT OF GOALS!WE WANT HIM TO BE THE BEST PLAYER IN THIS SEASON IN ARSENAL!