Start of new season already a write-off?

Following last season’s disastrous start to the campaign which left the Gunners playing catch-up for the entire season many would have rightly assumed Arsene Wenger would place great emphasis on the club’s pre-season preparations this year. In the early stages of the close season, all seemed to be going to plan, with the very early (by Arsenal standards!) signings of Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud, however since then several questions have been raised as to whether the Gunners will be raring to go by 18^th August when they host Sunderland in the first game of the season.    

Throughout his time at the club, Wenger has always favoured a quiet training camp in Austria to get his squad ready for the new campaign. However last season the Frenchman finally caved in to commercial demands and reluctantly agreed to a money-spinning tour of the Far East. At first it was widely reported that the manager had only agreed to such a move as there was neither a World Cup nor a European Championship taking place that year. However the tour was so commercially successful that the club once again sanctioned another trip to the Far East this year, despite the European Championships taking place in June. As a result, Wenger has had to leave behind both his new signings (following their participation at Euro 2102) as well as first team players such as Laurent Koscielny and Per Mertesacker, although Theo Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain, who were both in England’s Euro 2012 squad, did make the trip to the Far East.

While the absence of first team regulars such as Koscielny is not so alarming, as they will surely be able to fit straight back into the squad once the players return to London Colney, (although Steve Bould would have preferred a full pre-season to work with all the defenders at the club) the fact that Podolski and Giroud are yet to play a game with their new team mates does seem strange.
 Surely the whole point of completing these transfers so early was to provide both with ample time to acclimatise to their new surroundings and assimilate themselves into the team, so that come the start of the new season they would already have built up a degree of understanding between themselves and their new colleagues. Yet with only one more pre-season game lined up between now and the start of the season (following the cancellation of the game against Nigeria), it appears that neither Podolski nor Giroud will in fact be in a position to start the new campaign, with Wenger indicating that he will have to introduce them to the rigours of the Premier League gradually. In all likelihood Niklas Bendtner, Park Chu Young and Robin Van Persie will no longer be at the club (or not in a position to play anyway) and so Arsenal will begin the campaign with one recognised striker available in their ranks: Marouane Chamakh. If that doesn’t fill you with sheer dismay nothing will.

At the other end of the field, Wenger has also had to accept that his side have looked especially weak in the defence, which is particularly worrying (even though Wenger has not been able to field his first choice defence so far) considering that Arsenal have mainly played against local opposition on this tour, all of whom have caused the Gunners problems. However, although this is an area which clearly needed addressing following last campaign's concession of some 49 goals, it is not even the most distressing element of Arsenal’s pre-season tour. According to reports, the training facilities and pitches in the Far East have left much to be desired and the players have not yet reached the right fitness levels, with many reports focusing on the recent 2-0 friendly defeat against Man City, where the Gunners’ fitness levels clearly lagged behind those of their opponents. There were also reports that Wenger himself indicated that with only one more pre-season friendly left, his players would not be fully prepared for the start of the league season!

Consequently there does not seem to be much to look forward too with the very first game against Sunderland fast approaching. Jack Wilshere will not be making his long awaited return from injury until October at the earliest, while in a repeat of the events which greatly marred the previous summer, uncertainty regarding the future of the club’s captain hangs over the Emirates Stadium once again. It is extraordinary that those who hold the destiny of Arsenal Football Club in their hands have not heeded the lessons from last season and allowed the club to be so ludicrously unprepared for the new campaign.