what to make of arsenal?

(it should be noted that this was written, just not published, before today's games)

so it seems that the home dressing room at the emirates was a bit of a mess on wednesday night.

clichy was in tears, gallas, silvestre and adebayor were all criticised by the manager and generally the picture painted is one of chaos.

much was made of arsenal's collapse - their supposed lack of maturity & experience, their inability to kill off the game - but i genuinely think that most people overstate this somewhat. firstly, the team is experienced. it might not be old, but a great deal of the players in the side have considerable experience in domestic, european and international football. ignoring the fact he may be the best pure central midfielder in the world at the age of 21, fabregas has made over 200 appearances for the club and has 36 caps for his country (plus one European Championship winner's medal). even gael clichy, who i would rate alongside patrice evra as the best left-back in the premier league despite his mistake on wednesday, has made nearly 150 senior appearances for arsenal and is now a member of the full france squad at the age of 22. in fact, of arsenal's starting xi on wednesday, only denilson had less than 100 senior appearances at the time of kick off; according to wikipedia, spurs had two - gareth bale and benoit assou-ekotto.

furthermore, the avalanche of criticism that has befallen arsenal since their ignominious collapse fails to recognise the sheer chance of spurs' comeback - if that game was replayed 100 times, on how many occasions do spurs come back from a frankly deserved two-goal deficit in the last 5 minutes? 3? no more than 5 i would say. fact is, at 80 minutes, arsenal were comfortable and the eventual result was utter freakishness.

however, this is not to say that arsenal's flawless performance was undone by random chance. rather substantial flaws were on display throughout the encounter, flaws that continue to suggest wenger has erred in his recruitment policy. whilst i may be the only person on the planet who doesn't think manuel almunia is especially poor, wenger could definitely do with a new goalie. that lukas fabianski is still hanging around is probably a good sign that wenger rates him - young players not making the grade are generally shipped out pretty quickly - but then again this may be his last year to make an impression before getting shipped out. but the problem that needs to be wenger's highest priority is his centre-back pairing.

specifically, the problem here is necessarily the personnel but the mixture of players that the back four contains. william gallas may be everyone's new favourite scapegoat - and his lack of leadership is far from ideal - but remains a really good centre back, with a rare mixture of pace and anticipation. certainly, wednesday was a great example of this, as the frenchman kept roman pavlyuchenko ridiculously quiet, pre-empting his movement and chasing down the occasional ball into the channels with ease. however, to be most effective, gallas needs to be paired with someone who can make up for his lack of aerial dominance; it is surely no coincidence that he experienced his best run of form in the premier league playing alongside john terry. mickael silvestre isn't john terry, that's for sure - in fact, his skillset mirrors gallas rather than compliments it (although silvstre has him beaten on the "flakiness and mistakes" scale by quite some distance). as such, the two are never going to be a particularly good pairing. what arsenal need is a skrtel or vidic, someone who will do that dirty work, bullying attackers and winning those aerial battles.

of course, the problems don't stop there. as i have been saying since my verbose, tedious premiership preview thing, arsenal need a proper defensive midfielder in their team, and nothing has happened to change that; looking back at the spurs game, it probably is no coincidence to see all four spurs goals come from the same route, with shots coming in from the edge of the penalty area, exactly where you would expect to have that anchorman breaking the play up. admittedly, for the jenas goal clichy's mistake probably would have rendered any defensive midfielder irrelevant and modric's shot that essentially set-up the lennon equaliser was contested, but it still must be a worrying pattern. alex song was inserted into the role against west ham and occasionally looked ponderous in possession, particularly in the first half, but that was indicative of a wider malaise that seemed to also envelop cesc fabregas as arsenal struggled to get into gear. probably the most worrying aspect was that even with song in the line-up west ham still looked dangerous on the counter, but that may have simply been a consequence of arsenal having almost too much possession, their midfielders and full-backs being sucked up the pitch only to then be worryingly out of position when west ham tried to play quick direct passes up to bellamy. still, the cameroonian is worth persevering with, not simply because his performances in the african cup of nations demonstrated him to be a young man of enormous potential, but also since arsenal don't really have any alternatives and probably won't until at least the end of the season, unless wenger recruits from outside the pool of champions league sides.

the worst thing for arsenal fans is that this could have so easily been averted - if wenger hadn't been so stubborn and spent the money available to him, he could have been looking at a title-winning side. instead, he's looking squarely at 4th place and the possible departure of cesc fabregas next summer.