Margins, Margins, Margins.

It's all in the mind

Screen shot from Arsenal.com

Margins, margins, margins. Apparently the difference between victory, defeat or a draw is all about small margins. Exactly how small are they, these damned margins? Measured in distance and it’s always a knee cap, or a toe, or an eyelash. How small can they get? If VAR were powerful enough would Martinelli be judged offside by a Planck length? (10−20 times the diameter of a proton). A distance so tiny that the edges of the line drawn to determine offside would oscillate across an oncoming Martinelli as he blurred through space and time. At that scale we are just spongy porous energy systems. Imagine the PGMOL trying to manage those levels when they can’t even measure a barn door with a banjo!

At least when measuring distances the margins are comprehensible, even if they are tiny. What about the margins in effort, or attitude, or flow? How do we deal with a few neurons firing slightly slower than they might have fired on another day, or how the oscillating phenomena of Flow works better on some days than others? Arteta has painted great big slogans all over the training ground walls, things like Everything Matters, and Set Pieces Win Games, under the assumption that slogans engender attitude and behavioural changes. 

Arsenal has finally reached the levels of social cohesion and team spirit we had during the glory days of Arsene Wenger’s Invincible team. Arteta has reduced the margins to smaller and smaller levels. But how small can they get? Can these management techniques actually extinguish margins, or eradicate luck, uncertainty and loss?

Well, we all know the answer because we all live in this, messy, crazy, universe. Of course you can’t. No one ever has and no one ever will. It’s an insane fantasy of purification and power to imagine you can eradicate noise in the system.

In fact, noise in the system is exactly what makes football and life so beautiful. It’s an ego driven fear that tries to see into the future and protect oneself from whatever might be lurking there. But the truth is there will always be noise in the system, there will always be margins that can’t be beaten, there will always be something waiting to destroy your hopes and dreams, no matter what you do.

So, having accepted there will always be noise in the system and that fine margins will always be finely tuned for and against you, what can we say about the last few games, Arsenal - Man United, and Fulham - Arsenal? 

Well, the Man United game was a pleasure for two reasons, the first was, talking of fine margins, Man United may have shown tiny shoots of improvement under Ruben Amorim, but they’re still heavily under the influence of the magic of Evil Margins. Yes, they are better organised, but they’re also pretty dysfunctional and very poor up front. I’m not sure how big the slogans would have to be painted on their training ground wall, but there’s probably not enough wall space on Earth to make a difference. They have a long haul in front of them to get any better. 

The second reason was that I watched the Man U game with my daughter in a bar. At the next table was a Man U fan losing his rag over corners. Apparently scoring from corners is not football, apparently it's cheating, apparently Arsenal fans should be ashamed at their anti-football style.

He screamed and shouted through the game, feeling hugely offended by everything, claiming Arsenal ALWAYS get the ref in their pocket, that Arsenal should learn to play football like MEN (?), and Arteta was the luckiest manager in the world, always luck, nothing more, just luck. I mentioned margins to him but (unsurprisingly) he wasn’t in a receptive frame of mind.

So, OK, this guy was half-pissed, heading towards fighting fury, and he was completely unable to deal with his feelings, which he projected toward everyone else in the bar. I get it, there's plenty of angry fans who can't deal with their emotions, but to be honest his total meltdown made our evening as we laughed and joked about him (quietly) in the background.

His real problem was that he imagined his team were better than the actually were, that they DESERVED more than they got, and he convinced himself they were being cheated. We all have that feeling from time to time. We get it as fans, whenever we believe the narrative in our heads and refuse to look at what’s actually happening on the pitch.

Then we come to the Fulham Game. And this is what got me thinking about margins, because that game could have gone either way. Arsenal were marginally the better team, but that Planck Length offside blew-up our 3 points and had forced us, once again, to repeat the immortal lines, “It’s only December, season’s aren’t decided in a December!!” Fine margins! When is the season actually decided then?

When it’s mathematically impossible to catch up, then and only then.

Back to the game. If we are playing Partey at right back and Timber at left back (both out of position) and a striker who hasn’t scored since January, then we can forget about fine margins altogether. Now we’re in fat margin territory. Fulham were well organised playing in a low block, planning to strike on the break f they got the chance. And guess what, our weak spot - the left back area, even with a brilliant player like Timber roaming about, gave them exactly that chance. Without Gabriel roaming about, a simple pass and a clever shot by Jimenez and boom, against the run of play (how I hate that expression), we were trailing.

Of course Arsenal can equalise from set-pieces (apparently Set Pieces Win Games, or at least draw them), so given the chance Saliba made up for Gabriels absence and duly scored. Another defender's header rippling the net. Fulham then set-up a low block and tried to make life difficult for Arsenal. Not quite difficult enough as Martinelli finally launches a perfect ball over the box and Saka pops in another. But then, margins, margins, margins, VAR measured the tiniest of margins and Saka’s nearly-winning goal was ruled offside. 

So how do we slide to the move to the right side of these so-called margins or can we just accept noise in the system?

Maybe the thing is not to get too carried away. Goals from open play are coming. We do score from set-pieces, but we also score during open play, let’s not throw out the baby with the bath water. Fulham had one excellent goal. Arsenal were the better team. I say let’s keep patient, Wonderlanders, there’s plenty of time left, and yes, we do need to sharpen up in attack, we do need to think about changing shape and creating more chances, but we don’t need to throw in the towel just yet!

Until next week, let’s hope the margins are with us in the Champions league, and have a wonderful winning week dear readers :)