Between The Sticks - Absurdity and Uncertainty? Bring it on!
The subtle secrets of the game
This week I’m contemplating the eccentric and maverick mentality of the goalkeeper. And I’m drawing my own lines through the conversation about Arsenal improving between the sticks.
I’ll also have a new’s flash for you, dear reader later in the week, so keep your eyes open for an AW Extra. In the meantime enjoy this week’s offering :)
Goalkeepers are a special breed. A bit off kilter, a little out of focus. The kind of personalities that veer away from the mainstream. They’re the all-alone-kid standing between the sticks year after year in the rain. When their team is winning they’re watching the game from afar. When their team is losing they’re in the thick of it and (often) getting the blame. Goalies are the people that live with the twistiest of fates: Most of their saves will soon be forgotten moments whilst their misses can be remembered forever.
Not all goalies choose the role, some are just temporarily placed in goal as a kid, and they remain there, as if forgotten, for the rest of their footballing life. But whatever the path taken to becoming a goalie, it’s essentially a philosophical position. Everything about the role lends itself to contemplation and otherness. Goalies are an essential team member but forever subject to a different set of constraints than everybody else. They’re participating in the game but they’re also observing from a literal and a metaphorical distance (a strange amalgam of player and fan?).
Algerian philosopher and novelist Albert Camus was a goalie. He claimed that living is essentially absurd. We have a never-ending desire for order, meaning and happiness in a universe that never actually grants order, meaning and happiness. So we’re always searching for that which we can never find. Absurd? Sure is. If football had been invented 2500 years ago I’d put money on the Buddha choosing to be a goalkeeper. Although all that “letting go” probably wouldn’t have helped!
Danish physicist Neils Bohr was a Goalie. A brilliant thinker who proposed the Copenhagen Principle in quantum physics: a particle does not exist in one state or another, but in all of its possible states at the same time, until the moment it’s observed. Sometimes known as the Uncertainty Principle, it essentially describes a universe where everything is in a state of full potentiality until the moment of observation when things manifest into “reality”. Isn’t it just like a goalkeeper’s outsider mentality to muster up these maverick and radical theories where anything and everything can happen as they stand between the sticks and observe all that uncertainty.
Considering that absurdity and uncertainty are the ruling principles of a goalie’s life, it’s ironic that most of the current discussion around Arsenal’s goalkeepers fixates on fairness, inclusiveness and an excess of ruthlessness. In a goalkeepers world there is no fairness. These are the kids that grew up playing a position that’s basically “damned if you do and damned if you don’t”. Goalies hankering after fairness isn’t a million miles from searching for something unobtainable. Absurd? Sure is. And thinking in terms of inclusiveness about a position that’s populated by scapegoated outsiders subject to a set of different constraints than the rest of the team is a bit of a peculiar way to couch the conversation to say the least.
And as for ruthlessness? The goalkeeper position has arguably changed more than any other in the last 20 years. Today keepers are expected to be excellent ball players who aren’t really invited to play ball. The game has sped up immensely and football’s are now designed to move through the air like a drunken peregrine falcon in a tornado. Goalies need the incongruous characteristics of having speed, agility and flexibility whilst being built like an extra-tall long-reaching rhinoceros. And after all these changes it’s still their fault when things go wrong. They train and train and train to become number one in a profession mostly populated with second keepers; there’s a hell of a lot of bridesmaids and not many brides. Ruthlessness? That’s a goalies bread and butter.
So why is the conversation about Ramsdale losing the number one spot to Raya being couched in soft factor terms like feelings and loyalty when goalies emerge from such hard world realities? There’s a lot of talk of Arteta risking uncertainty by destabilising the relationship between his goalkeepers, and his disloyalty to Ramsdale. And there’s a lot of talk about Arteta’s mentioning he’d like to one day change goalies midway through a game. Yeah. There’s basically a lot of talk. There always is.
But most of this “talk” isn't because of Arteta’s statements or out of sympathy for our emotionally stunted goalie-victims of ruthless management. Most of it is merely manufactured controversy and babbling fervour that passes as 99% of coverage these days. Plus, it’s also pretty obvious that in today’s current harsh climate, much of the Ramsdale/Raya "debate" is a proxy for lots of really unpleasant tendencies in the British media.
So, let’s forget that nonsense and think about our goalie dilemma in a different way. Let’s just embrace the absurdity and uncertainty for a moment and think about what Arteta is actually trying to do. Obviously he trying to win football matches. But he isn’t some Sunday-league manager who kinda likes football. Arteta is a devoted footballing monk. He’s an obsessed, driven, possessed-by-a-demon, living, breathing, footballing monk. His obsession breeds enormous focus and concentration. Arteta is on a mission to uncover and master every last secret of the game. He’s an obsessed tactician constantly tweaking and making minuscule changes to test the boundaries of what’s possible. These minuscule changes can make huge differences. Arteta’s basically trying to accelerate football evolution with his tinkering interventions and his latest bubbling experiment is to introduce a slightly different goalkeeping style. Just a few drops of new goalkeeper style. Just to see…
Now, don’t get me wrong. I understand (and share) the genuine feelings for Ramsdale. I loved the fact that Arsenal were pilloried for spending 30 million quid on a player that’d been relegated three times, only to watch him become one of the Premier League’s most brilliant and dependable keepers. I love Ramsdale’s Jesterish interpretation of a windup merchant, stooging about with a glint in his eye as he playfully winds up entire stadiums. I love that Ramsdale was/is a massive figure in the team that brought joy back to the Emirates in last season’s Love-Fest. I get it. But Arteta is trying to win football matches like a chemist is trying create new compounds. He’s experimentally adjusting fine measures to create new composites. And you know what? That’s exactly why we’re now back where we belong.
When Arteta cancelled contracts and paid players like Aubameyang and Özil to leave he was criticised for not maximising returns on players value. When he loaned out Tierney he was accused of under-utilising a future Arsenal captain. When he stuck with Xhaka and moved him forward to the left 8 he was told he was destabilising the team with a red card-in-waiting player without the ball skills to perform. All of those decisions (and plenty more) were pilloried and yet the team always improved, the on-pitch control increased, Arsenal's ranking in the table rose and the football got better and better. When Xhaka finally left he was given a hero's exit, his redemption curve a beautiful story.
And so here we are, Arteta has begun tinkering with the goalie position in order to change the way the team controls games from the back. We beat Man City for the first time in EIGHT years with a mature and considered display. Yes, there were scary moments as Raya stubbornly stuck to the game plan. But that game plan was all test tubes and beakers and Bunsen-burners and in the end the experiment was a success.
Arteta has simply been (as if it were simple) working to change the culture of the club on and off the pitch with the single aim of winning the Premiership. Every sign indicates he's got the best chance of doing that in 2 decades. If Arteta chooses Raya to stand between the sticks in his never ending quest to tweak football evolution and create a winning monster, I’m OK with that. If our Monk from La Masia wants to have two brilliant goalkeepers instead of a major drop off between them, I'm OK with that. And if Arteta, an agent of change if ever there was one, has actually found a competitive edge over the other 19 managers in this ever shifting, fluctuating and changeable game we call football then I’m OK with that too.
Apparently in 1957 Camus said, “After many years in which the world has afforded me many experiences, what I know most surely in the long run about morality and obligations, I owe to football.” I reckon our current manager and the Algerian philosopher would have got along, they seem to have a lot in common. Obsessive thinkers willing to break down the walls of convention to push forward their own vision and make an impact on their chosen field and the complex world in which we live. Long may it continue. Here’s to the goalie (whoever it may be) and all the mavericks and outsiders and original thinkers. Where would we be without them!
So, there you go dear reader, I hope you enjoyed this weeks AW. Not long to go before the Interlul is over and we can (hopefully) continue watching a team experiencing incremental improvements on a ever-lasting quest for winning ways. Have a great week and please feel free to share, comment or just sit back and chill.