Enjoy it while it lasts
The managerial madness and a reminder for Arsenal fans
A short one from me today, on the managerial madness just reminding me to have fun with this Arsenal team. Something on the title race run-in later this week.
“What can I say? I think the elephant in the room is why am I still sitting here,” Jürgen Klopp said on Monday when asked about the sackings of Graham Potter and Brendan Rodgers.
“I am aware of the fact I am sitting here because of the past, not because of what we did this season.”
It felt like a timely reminder, amid all the stress of the title race, to enjoy things as long as they last. Injuries (and suspensions) can strike, players can decline, a bad month can easily become a bad season. This time a year ago, Liverpool were chasing a quadruple. They were a couple of bounces away from pulling it off.
Now look at them, limping to defeat at Manchester City before ending the weekend eighth in the Premier League with 11 to play. There is no way this season will see them win any of the four trophies they were going for 12 months ago.
A recent episode of The Athletic’s Tactics Podcast saw Michael Cox point out that life never really ends well for a manager at a club. Managers are invariably sacked because things have gone badly. I think there’s another thing, where managers leave for something they think is bigger — Graham Potter has done both this season — but the point, in combination with Liverpool’s form, has had me thinking about just how much we should enjoy this season and where Arsenal are in the table.
It can all slip away so quickly and, as unlikely as it seems right now, we might be 12 months away from a conversation about Mikel Arteta’s future. We could also be 12 months away from other clubs trying to tempt him away from us.
All we can ever hope is that those responsible at the club are making the right choices for us to succeed long-term, that they are brave enough to make sales at the right times (imagine Liverpool had moved on from their attack, or their midfield, quicker and brought £100m to refresh the side like when they sold Phillipe Coutinho) but they clung on to midfielders, they barely got anything for Sadio Mané, and they spent a fortune to give Mohamed Salah a questionable new contract as he entered his thirties.
At some point, Arsenal will have to sell players we like to refresh the team. At some points injuries will strike. At some point, we will wonder if the players are good enough or if Arteta can fix it all.
For now, in the period of boom before the inevitable bust (whether that is 12 months or 12 years away), Klopp and Liverpool are a friendly reminder to just enjoy it as much as we can while we can because it has been, can be, and one day once again will be so much worse.