Not even master Wenger can halt United

Ian Chadband13 April 2012

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger tried his best to adopt a brave face, but it was difficult to remember that face ever being lined with such resignation.

It was a picture which might have conjured up similar images of utter helplessness throughout the rest of the domestic game because when Arsenal get dismissed like a bunch of Sunday League lads nursing a hangover, what hope is there for the rest of Manchester United's hapless pursuers?

They have not always been successful, of course, but no other English club in recent years has stood up to the inexorable United tide of triumph with quite the same gusto as Arsenal. Under Wenger, they have always been the one side which have consistently never looked as they've harboured an inferiority complex on their blood-and-thunder visits to Old Trafford. Until now, that is.

First, they were taken apart so clinically the heart and stomach for the fight had already been removed by half-time. Then, all that remained was a great, flat void as, after the interval, we watched Arsenal hopelessly trying to play catch-up with the uncatchable amid the unbearably smug refrain from 67,000 of "One-five to the Arsenal!".

In fact, the occasion, like a dazzling firework display which gets washed out before everybody's got their money's worth, might have stood as a symbol for the entire season.

Is United's monopoly bad for English football, Wenger was asked. He replied: "Not bad for English football, but bad for the league in terms of excitement.

"We're not into March yet and already it's all over."

To many, it is unarguable. United's mastery can be exhilarating, but it's also making for tedium. Last season they won by 18 points - what odds it ends up being over 20 this season?

Credit where it is due, though. United's long-standing excellence at both domestic and European level is a feat all the more laudable, as Sir Alex Ferguson noted in an interview yesterday, because only Bayern Munich and Real Madrid among the current continental elite can claim similar top-level consistency. Thank heavens, then, for West Ham.

In sport, you have to applaud brilliance. The sight of David Beckham skipping past Silvinho and then directing an inch-perfect pass some 40 yards so it dips just over a defender's head and on to the chest of Dwight Yorke, who controls it, holds off a challenge and finishes exquisitely . . . well, that was as good as it gets. Not to mention Roy Keane once again being as good as the Premiership's got.

Just as nobody ever thought seeing Don Bradman scoring another inevitable hundred was boring, the full-house at Old Trafford yesterday would pack out the place to watch this lot steamroller a pub team. Or a youth team, as Wenger gloomily observed about some of Arsenal's defending yesterday.

Yet, naturally the rest of the game yearns for a genuine challenge. But from where?

A Leeds team which, though maturing nicely, have shown no evidence of transmitting European miracles onto the domestic scene? The resurgent, but still maddeningly erratic Liverpool? Chelsea, post-Claudio Ranieri, perhaps?

No, still you have to think of Arsenal - but, on this evidence, even with a quite beautifully worked goal from Thierry Henry illustrating their own quality, the chasm is only growing wider.

What is to become of the bedrock, the Arsenal back four, in the post-Adams era?

Without him, Martin Keown and Lee Dixon yesterday, never did it look more like ancient history.

There was no obvious leadership, but an obvious communication breakdown between a central defensive pairing of a Frenchman, Gilles Grimandi and a Latvian, Igors Stepanovs, who floundered so abjectly that even young Ashley Cole's precocious confidence seemed dented by their malaise.

Wenger now has a huge task to regroup with huge Champions' League and FA Cup fixtures looming, because when you're weary, this was the sort of experience designed to prematurely derail a season's ambition.

"It's too easy to slaughter the team after a loss like this," he said, and he won't. If anyone can lift a scarred bunch, Wenger can.

For the moment, he could only opine: "I feel sorry for the players - they are good players."

Yet they are good players who this season, particularly away from Highbury, have not proved they have the same week in, week out desire, the same insatiable appetite for success which guarantees the title will reside at Old Trafford for the seventh time in nine seasons.

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