Early Doors - Your morning briefing blog

Fabregas cannot save Arsenal

Tue Nov 25 08:54AM

In the current spirit of alarmism, Early Doors would like to state in big, bold writing that ARSENAL DO NOT NEED A NEW CAPTAIN, THEY NEED A NEW SQUAD.

Cesc Fabregas leads the side for the first time tonight after William Gallas's sacking at the weekend, but ED boldly predicts it won't make a blind bit of difference to the club's predicament.

Gallas received universal condemnation for airing his dirty laundry in public on Friday, as though his ill-judged quotes were more of a problem than the fact that Arsenal's dressing room is in a state of civil war.

It is more than a PR conundrum. If you have dirty laundry, it really doesn't matter where you air it. The point is - somebody has taken a dump on your freshly-ironed linen.

Robin van Persie did not learn in the papers that Gallas has issues with him - there is a chance he already knew about it.

Some experts trotted out the stock line: "This kind of thing happens at every club." No, it doesn't. Clearly not every player is best mates with every other, and tempers flare from time to time.

But that is a long way from the festering feuds and cliques that have led Arsenal to remove all sharp objects from the dressing room lest Gallas gets all Joey Barton on a cheeky upstart.

If Gallas tells the world he is fed up of taking the blame for his good-for-nothing colleagues that is just a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.

Wenger's side used to be famed for its unity - in fact he used his team's togetherness to bait Fergie.

Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires and a pre-sulk Thierry Henry spent so much time lunching together in Hampstead brasseries that locals just assumed they were posh nannies.

If you have a solid core, the occasional 'difficult character' like Jens Lehmann or Van Persie cannot cause too much trouble.

But Arsenal have lost the experience and expertise of Vieira, Sol Campbell, Dennis Bergkamp and Gilberto, and replaced it with... well, nothing.

Gallas's unorthodox captaincy was not the problem. The fact that there were no better candidates in Wenger's squad was.

Manchester United pass the captain's armband around like a Frisbee. Gary Neville takes it on the rare occasions when he puts down his beard-trimmer and gets a run-out.

Otherwise Ryan Giggs takes over, with Rio Ferdinand stepping in when both elder statesmen are missing, which is often.

Does Ferdinand play any differently depending on whether he is captain or not? Of course he doesn't. He shouts, snarls and just occasionally organises the defence regardless of any adornment to his upper arm.

Whisper it, but United are proof that captaincy in football is not very important.

On one occasion last season Park Ji-Sung came off the bench to replace Giggs, who handed him the armband.

Ferdinand and Neville were off the pitch and the Korean looked around, desperately trying to remember who was next in the pecking order. Eventually, he shrugged and put the armband on himself, to cheers from the Old Trafford crowd. Nobody minded.

The point is, influential players are influential whether they are the captain or not. And Arsenal don't have any.

Fabregas is the best choice to take over from Gallas, as his playing skill demands respect. But it does not solve the underlying problem - namely, Arsenal have too many loose cannons and not enough leaders.

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Having last week exploded the myth that healthy eating helps you win football matches, Early Doors pays tribute to Newcastle's Charles N'Zogbia who, The Sun claims, refused to join his team-mates on a pre-match walk on Saturday because he couldn't be bothered to get out of bed.

N'Zogbia reportedly said he was too tired to go for a stroll around South-West London at 11am, although he later claimed he had a leg strain which miraculously subsided to the point where he was able to come off the bench for 14 minutes against Chelsea.

"Charles is a strange one. No-one could believe it when he said he was too tired," said a club insider.

Early Doors asks what is stranger - wanting a few minutes' extra shut-eye, or thinking that couple of laps around Richmond Deer Park will have any bearing on your team's performance?

Even after Saturday's goalless draw at Stamford Bridge, Joe Kinnear's men have picked up just one point out of 10 in the capital this season.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: Fergie has had few run-ins with chairmen of the board, but Frank Sinatra narrowly avoided a blast of the hairdryer treatment nearly 20 yeards ago: "You can't beat Sinatra. I was actually supposed to have dinner with him one night, but we lost to Charlton so I cancelled it and went home!" Early Doors wants to know: what was Frank Sinatra doing arranging to have dinner with Alex Ferguson in 1989?

QUOTE OF THE DAY 2: Blackburn's Martin Olsson reveals his calm and considered reaction to getting sent off against Tottenham: "I destroyed most things in the  changing room. I was kicking everything I could lay my eyes on - doors, bins, cardboard boxes. I don't know what was broken and what wasn't. My team-mates supported me. They said: 'You are only 20, take it easy, we have had experiences like that.' Paul Ince said it was better that I showed my feelings rather than not doing anything at all."

FOREIGN VIEW: More Rene Higuita, who is making a comeback for Colombian provincial side Pereira aged 42. The eccentric keeper's new side lost 3-0 at America thanks in part to a superb blunder.   In the last minute, Higuita rushed out of his penalty area towards the halfway line, tried to head the ball away, missed and allowed Paulo Cesar Arango to score into an empty net.

COMING UP: Full coverage of all tonight's Champions League action, including Arsenal v Dynamo Kiev and Villarreal v Man United. The whole farrago gets under way at 17:30 UK time with Zenit St Petersburg v Juventus.

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