Arsenal Vs Wolves: The crisis of inconsistency

Thierry Henry slammed Arsenal for their inconsistencies last season. Now under new management, the same problems persist. It is a pandemic that must be cured.

As a teenager, I used to play football with a friend who should have been better than he was. Extremely quick, very athletic, good technique when striking the ball. One minute, he would beat two players and smash the ball into the bottom corner; the next, he would let the ball roll under his foot as he looked to control it. It was infuriating.

Catch the latest episode of the Pain in the Arsenal podcast right here

When playing sport, it is not failure itself that is frustrating. If I try to make a shot in tennis, for instance, that I know I have the ability to only make one or two times out of ten, if I don’t make it, then I am not angry with myself. Failure isn’t necessarily frustrating. What is frustrating, though, is failure when you know you are capable. In a word, it is inconsistency.

More from Pain in the Arsenal

• 3 standout players from 1-0 victory over Everton
• 3 positives & negatives from Goodison Park victory
• Arsenal vs PSV preview: Prediction, team news & lineups
• 3 talking points from Arsenal’s victory at Goodison Park
• Mikel Arteta provides Gabriel Martinelli injury update after Everton win

Arsenal, sadly, seem to be the kings of inconsistency. ‘On their day, they can beat anyone.’ The very fact that this phrase ever pertained to the Gunners is proof of their irregularities. Thierry Henry, when working as a pundit for Sky Sports in February 2018, slammed his former club’s inability to be consistent:

"“The problem that they have, not only Arsene, not only the players, but as a team, is consistency. We go back to the same thing: you need to be consistent <…> You want to be excited sometimes after they are playing well against a good team but you tend to calm yourself down because you don’t know what is going to happen next <…> That is the story for everybody involved with Arsenal, especially the fans. You cannot brag about the win because you think ‘mmm, hang on a minute, maybe next week we might be in trouble.”"

In all honesty, that could have been said in any month of the past decade, such is the consistency and persistence of Arsenal’s inconsistency. And this season, that infuriating trait has once more been on display.

Unai Emery and his players welcomed Wolves to the Emirates on Sunday afternoon after their best performance of the year, a 1-1 draw with Liverpool in which they controlled the match for extended periods. They had not lost in 15 matches and were looking to keep pace at the sharp end of the Premier League. And then they put in perhaps their worst performance of the season, luckily snatching a draw in the final minutes — if you want an illustration of their ineptitude, all you need to do is consider that Bernd Leno was the consensus Man of the Match. That tells you everything you need to know.

The frustration of this performance is that we all know that Arsenal are capable of so much more. They proved precisely that just a week prior. And then they proceed to lay an egg like this. That is where the infuriation lies, and it is where this crisis of inconsistency stems. If it persists, the top four will be a monumental task indeed.

Arsenal, like my friend, need to learn to just control the ball, not find the top corner one second and the corner flag the next.