Gunners beware November fifth

Champions' League: Wenger's positive words rebound on him but prolific Arsenal will not be profligate for long

By around the hour at Highbury last Saturday, let alone Dortmund on Wednesday, you could see even the most avowed disciples of His Most Revered Arsène Wenger beginning to ask the hitherto unthinkable question: had they all been dupes in a massive confidence trick? Was this a false prophet?

Faith can be a shallow and transitory phenomenon. Particularly so when expectations have been raised to extraordinary heights, and five weeks ago there appeared no end to this Highbury high.

Those of us fortunate enough to be present at Elland Road on that one particularly auspicious occasion witnessed Arsenal scythe through a decent Leeds with an audacity that bordered on sheer rudeness to their hosts. They were responsible for bringing the game, diminished in some quarters of the Premiership, into repute with such exhilarating one-touch play that it took the breath away.

Even on occasions when Arsenal had performed below their optimum level, such as against West Ham at Upton Park, Thierry Henry or Sylvain Wiltord would discover something special in their repertoire to claim a point, or three. And, everyone chuckled knowingly, just you wait until Freddie Ljungberg and Robert Pires return.

Then they breeze into the doldrums, with no evidence on Wednesday that the wind is about to start ripping into those voluminous sails once more, despite their qualification for the second group stage by dint of Auxerre's defeat at PSV Eindhoven. Yet, what is so perverse about the current sequence of Arsenal defeats is that there are few glaringly obvious deficiencies for Wenger to work on and Ljungberg probably had it about right when he declared: "It's important that we don't think too much about what we are doing wrong."

Henry and Wiltord have gone from prolific to profligate and appear somewhat jaded at times, it is true. Until Henry's sweetly struck free-kick against Dortmund he had not scored for five games. Wiltord has not netted for nine matches. Yet, what team would not name them as first-choice selections in their starting line-up? Certainly not Manchester United, who without Ruud van Nistelrooy look impotent in front of goal. Thank goodness for Paul Scholes, Sir Alex Ferguson must smutter to himself in front of the shaving mirror each morning.

But back to Arsenal, and specifically to their midfield; is there a manager in the land, in Europe even, who would not rejoice at the prospect of selecting Patrick Vieira, Gilberto Silva, Pires and Ljungberg? And yet why has their passing deteriorated to the degree that it has?

To an extent, some astute managers are countering Arsenal by withdrawing their rearguard and midfield and covering en masse to frustrate them. Vieira and Henry have complained of fatigue, and, cynical though we have become about such complaints, who is to say that it is not a factor. For all the eulogising about teams of yesteryear, even those participating in Europe did not perform with the regularity that the Champions' League now demands; nor with the energy required today. One could question, though, Wenger's wisdom in deploying two players from the start, Ljungberg and Pires, who have both just returned from long-term injuries.

As for the defence, the current centre-back partnership of Sol Campbell and Cygan may have been forged only recently, yet Arsenal are not exactly offering scoring opportunities to their opponents by the skip-load. Overall, this is scarcely a "let's get back to the drawing board" job, more a question of maintaining morale and restoring confidence by breaking the sequence.

From what we can observe from the outside, Wenger has retained harmony during this difficult period. That is one of his strengths. Denounce him, and we all do, for bouts of myopia over his players' indiscipline, but it is difficult to recall when he last castigated his team directly, or even by implication.

Arguably, his positive attitude is directed too far the other way. Though the Arsenal manager was doing nothing more than stating the obvious when he agreed that his team could progress through the season undefeated, it may, in hindsight, have worked psychologically against his players' interests. It will have applied enormous pressure and given an even greater impetus to other teams.

Fulham, at Loftus Road today, may provide Arsenal with the opportunity they require to restate their domestic ambitions. The west London club may have overcome Dinamo Zagreb with ease in the Uefa Cup on Thursday, but defensively they were woeful at Southampton last Sunday.

It is about time we saw the authentic Gunners once more. In a week of yet more unlikely Champions' League results, not least Ferguson's fledglings being eclipsed 3-0 by Maccabi Haifa, we were advised by Rio Ferdinand: "That was not the real Manchester United." And presumably that was not the real Madrid who lost at home to Roma after the previous week only managing a draw against the Belgium club Genk at the Bernabeu?

Thus the all-singing, all-dancing, greatest act in European football have yet to confirm their appearance in the second stage alongside the excellent Valencia, conquerors once again of Liverpool and a team who may produce compensation for the club's defeats in the 2000 and 2001 finals.

Both Arsenal and Real Madrid, you sense, may ultimately benefit from their present predicaments. Both may have suffered from a little too much flattery back in the summer. It was Wenger who retorted masterfully to Ferguson's jibe that United had played the best football last season with the response, "Everyone thinks he has the prettiest wife at home".

Now perhaps the Frenchman may reflect on the fact that the prettiest girls don't always win the prizes.