Shakespearean Subplots And A Team Mentality
Will Ben White's statue need a McGinn statue beside it?
According to the after-match analysis there are Shakespearean narratives and sub-plots already brewing at Arsenal. Two games into the season and disgruntled players are vying for each others positions. A blank faced Trossard is sending messages to El Jefe via the reliable No-Smile Celebration method. Martinelli had better start making better on-field decisions or the Belgium Prince will be gunning for him.
Yep, the summer break had no impact on the Content Machine, it’s in full flight, churning out new micro-intrigues with every kick of the ball. In fact Ben White, Arsenal’s provocateur extraordinaire, presented a miniature revenge thriller on a plate with his half-vengeful, half-righteous settling of McGinn’s karma account. Ben White’s statue (when they eventually erect one) might need a grovelling McGinn statue forever positioned beside it, with a ball leathering towards the diminutive Villian.
The Brooding Basque Managers had their own revenge sub-plot magicked up as well. This might be only the second game of the season, but had Arsenal lost, the Zombie Narrative of a belittled Arteta desperately losing not only the game but the transfer window too, would have hit the headlines harder than a Ben White revenge zinger. Had Arsenal lost, well, the season would have been over.
There’s something about we humans that requires a narrative to be conjured out of nothing. We need to make sense of the world through story. We need a narrative arc and where there is none, we create one. Stories are a organising activity that impose meaningful order onto our experiences. They are essential to the human condition. And one of the most beautiful aspects of football is its capacity to constantly generate narrative for we story-addicted apes.
Even the obvious and poorly thought through narratives pouring out of football media studios are part of this wonderful tapestry of stories generated by football.
Ok, some are third-rate, like the Trossard/Martinelli sub-plot. Yes, football players all want to play as often as they can, but professionals also understand tactical necessity and long seasons. Besides there’s too much camaraderie in Arsenal’s dressing room for bad blood to spread. You can just hear the clanking as this narrative is being thought up.
The Ben White revenge plot, on the other hand, is almost visceral. That one needed no thinking. White’s booted ball hit McGinn at exactly the moment a demand for “justice” was being felt deep in the synapses of every Arsenal fan in the Emirates. McGinn was playing to the crowd, trying to wake them into greater support. White was blind to everything except his team mate.
There is a unity in Arsenal, brought about by Arteta, that transcends petty rivalries or ego. There is a team spirit, a team cohesion. We saw this in Ben White’s reaction to Saliba being hassled. And we saw it in the way the team played. Of course there were individual moments of beauty. Players like Ødegaard epitomise both the team spirit and individual flair. But there is a positional discipline, a relational understanding and a pure joy at playing with each other, supporting each other and winning together that is obvious in this Arsenal team.
Arsenal has languished for nigh on 2 decades as a team that was less than its parts. We had unbelievably brilliant flair players but we lacked the cohesion required to turn flair players into a team greater than the sum of its parts. Now we’ve got unbelievably brilliant flair players who transcend individual flair and create a team greater than the sum of its parts.
Of course there’s going to be challenges. Something is up with Martinelli. He needs to shift his head a little. His upwards trajectory was ridiculous. He had the capacity to meet any challenge and keep rising. But right now he’s flattened out for a time. That’s ok, he’s young and he needs to grow into himself. It’ll happen. And when it does, the team will be better. Arteta knows this and is managing positions with both the immediate game and the long term in mind.
As for Trossard, last season I wrote that “Trossard has intelligence and calmness wrapped around more positional flexibility than the Karma Sutra. His fluidity of movement draws in the opposition whilst his in-game intelligence and perpetual scanning frees up team-mates to spin new patterns on the move. When opposition teams study Arsenal’s tactics and flows of game-state management, intelligent players like Trossard can act both without thought (see Arsenal And The Flow) and by intelligently divining what’s happening in real time in order to counter the counter”.
We saw exactly this when Trossard roamed inward toward spaces he’d seen from the bench, intelligently divining where to create the most impact he scored with his first touch, changing the dynamic of the game and reenergising his team mates. Last season we were a chaotic whirling wind of plastic unpredictability. This year we are far more controlling. Things have changed. Last season we’d have turned up the unpredictability dial and tried harder. We learn during the actual game and alter our game plan according to the opponent ad what they are doing. It’s a spectacular thing to watch.
Oh, and one more thing about Zombie Narratives. Goalies aren’t just random passers-by who save shots on the way to work. They are an integral part of the team with skill sets that the whole team understands. When Raya saved Ollie Watkins header it’s not a sign of disaster or weakness or a failing defence. It’s a sign of a highly tuned and drilled professional doing his job.
It’s funny how we add spice to the narratives we create as humans. So often we add moral or philosophical conundrums where none should be. We do it in our political worlds, where an injection of moral and ethical thinking is highly needed, and we do it in our football worlds, where almost no extra spice is required. Personally I find the Content Machine disappointing. If anyone needs to raise their game it’s the studio pundits, not the payers.
So, let’s roll on to next Saturday where, as fate would have it, we’re playing Trossard’s old team Brighton, which means he’ll surely get a starting place in the first 11 and the studios will go crazy. Hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s AW. Have a wonderful week and may all your stories be true, or at least excellent stories.