Do Arsenal run the risk of being under-cooked?

Arsenal in action at the Markus Liebherr Memorial Cup 2012

No Arsenal fan wants to be reminded of the beginning of last season. 4 defeats and a draw pushed the team down to 15th place, and included some humiliating defeats to Manchester United, Tottenham, Liverpool and a frankly ludicrous defeat to Blackburn. The majority of Arsenal’s problems were put down to a long running transfer saga involving Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri, which culminated in both the star players leaving and a mad scramble for players on the last day of the transfer window. Even as 5 new players were brought in during the final day of the transfer window in August, there wasn’t a significant upturn in results until the middle of October, when Arsenal played Sunderland. As Arsene Wenger put it, in the wake of the Blackburn defeat, the team still needed time to gel.

Determined to avoid the pitfalls of the last season, Arsenal did their business pretty quickly this season. While Lukas Podolski’s signing was confirmed even before the end of the last season, even more impressive was the signing of Olivier Giroud, as a replacement for Robin Van Persie. Giroud was signed immediately after the Euros, giving Arsenal fans real hope that the lessons of the previous season had been well and truly learnt. And then the RVP saga blew up. While making his position at the club untenable with a public questioning of the club’s ambition was only one part of the disaster, his refusal to go on Arsenal’s far east tour might just turn out to have the biggest impact on Arsenal’s pre-season preparations. In order to maintain the semblance of normalcy at the club, Wenger was forced to leave behind both of his new signings in addition to established first team players like Laurent Koscielny and Per Mertesacker, ostensibly for fitness reasons, since they had just returned from the Euros.

Leave aside the fact that both Theo Walcott and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain traveled despite having taken part in the Euros, the entire point of taking part in pre-season games is to build up fitness and get match sharpness for the new season. It makes little sense to leave players behind to work on their fitness. Not having Koscielny and Mertsacker on tour might not have such a big impact, as they are well acquainted with the first team. But the absence of Podolski and Giroud might cause some serious headaches during the start of the season, since they are almost guaranteed first team starters who would not have had too much time to gel with the squad. As things stand, with only 5 full matches in pre-season, this is the joint least number of games (along with the 2006-07 season) that Arsenal have played during the pre-season since 2002-03. Additionally, with no Emirates Cup this year and the tour to Nigeria being cancelled, it leaves just 1 game, against FC Cologne, to blood the new signings before the season starts. With the RVP transfer saga promising to continue well into August, the beginning of this new season is starting to have some uncomfortable echoes of the season just passed.

A quick look around at Arsenal’s Premier League rivals’ pre-season fixtures shows Manchester United and Chelsea playing 6 games each and Manchester City playing 9 games. So while Arsenal’s 5 games is definitely on the lower side, the possibility of having just 1 game in which the entire first team will be available might just result in the Arsenal squad being distinctly under-cooked for the start of the new season.