THE BEST WAY TO DEVELOP A WINNING MENTALITY

Ten years ago the premiership was a very different place, but in some ways, it was exactly the same.  Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger were managers of two of the top clubs in england, Liverpool were in the process of trying to rebuild a winning team and ..well that's about it really.  Everything else is different.

Well, there is one more noticeable difference . . . Arsenal were winning stuff. In the five years previous to 2001 they'd been runners-up five times but had been winners on four occasions. They had a taste for it and even though two of those bits of silverware were community shields it didn't matter, they were happy to win it.

Arsene was a well respected manager and his opponents held him in high regard. Over the next five years however wenger would exceed his previous achievements with ease.  While his team were still runners-up a further four times they also won SEVEN more pieces of silverware.  They were invincible in the league in 03/04 and were amazing to watch, BUT THEN, the worst thing that could've happened to Arsene Wenger happened, and it wasn't that Thierry Henry left.  No.  It was that they were losing finalists in the champions league.  

It wasn't just the fact that they lost that seemed to hurt Wenger, it was the manner of the loss. The match was killed off by the referee in the first few minutes and lead to arguably one of the worst champions league finals ever.  Wenger seemed to become a man possessed, they would win that trophy . . . At ANY cost, and boy has it cost, because since then a strange pattern has emerged, a pattern that arsenal fans are all too familiar with and it's a pattern that one could argue has cost them some of their best players over the last twelve months.  

The pattern starts with arsenal on dazzling form, charging up the league table, their best players all working in sync and even the subs all understanding and playing their part.  Then, along comes something decidedly unimportant ...like a Carling or FA cup match (????) and so he fields his younger team to give them experience (Experience?  Of what? Losing?) and they do wind up losing, sometimes badly, sometimes it's closer, but still they lose, and after this their entire season collapses.  

It is a pattern that has repeated itself so many times that Arsenal fans must dread when certain games loom into view. Even this year after their worst start in decades they still managed to go on a twelve match unbeaten run only to have a young team be beaten by city in the quarter final of the Carling cup.  Now to me, watching this is baffling, especially with footballers being such a traditionally superstitious bunch. When you're on a winning streak to purposely upset that with a loss seems counter-productive at best and career suicide at worst.

The one thing that wenger seems to have forgotten is that the best way for a big team like arsenal (and in spite of their identity problems they are still a big team) to develop a winning mentality is by actually winning stuff. His consistant bad attitude to the carling and FA cups in order to chase the big prizes has left them trophyless as their winning streaks are continually stopped by their own manager. When united went trophy-less for one season (04-05) and it seemed like Fergie had lost his way, he purposely went all out to win the Carling cup and after that went on to win a further FOUR league titles, THREE carling cups FOUR community shields, the european cup and the FIFA world club cup.  

Fergie knows the value of winning when you're struggling to win. A trophy with little value is still more valuable than no trophy at all.

Arsenal are only ever going to escape the shadow of their own need for beautiful football when they become ugly enough to win again.


Thanks for reading, reading my blog, yeah, hope you liked and read some of the earlier posts, and please remember my first book FREE AT LAST: A NOVEL is still available on Amazon Kindle at £2.29 for UK customers and $2.99 for US customers.  Thanks everyone.  YEAH!

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