Arsenal Should Not Look To Samir Nasri (Or Anybody Else) To Succeed Where Cesc Fàbregas Has Failed

By Richard Farley - Soccer Editor

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Mar 14, 2011 - As Arsenal trip through a disillusioning March, the search for explanations has focused on a number of intubated dead horses, the most clichéd of which is team leadership. Yet for all the places where on-field leadership is evoked to explain some unknown (that probably does not exit), Arsenal may legitimately a hero. Arsène Wenger's inability to get strong performances versus Birmingham City, Barcelona and Manchester United gives us reason to question his leadership, while the commitment of captain Cesc Fàbregas is readily (if unfairly) questioned amidst his assumed return to Catalonia. With no Patrick Vieira in the team, Gooners are left to embrace defeat after defeat with forlorn looks toward life after Cesc, hoping his successor can be more Tony Adams than William Gallas.

Those dreams have coalesced on Samir Nasri, those hopes the product of the attacker's stellar fall, a span in which the attacker's form vaulted him into the Best in the Game discussion. Even as though debate has dissipated since the calendar turned, Nasri remains amongst many's Player of the Year candidates. But as we consider the other players who comprise the league's elite, we see being one of the best is not sufficient to be considered a leader of men. After all, though they are both amongst the league's best, there is a demonstrable difference between John Terry and Didier Drogba, and with Nasri slapped with a UEFA misconduct charge days before we let his frustrations draw him into a confrontation with Paul Scholes, the 23-year-old may have more than a history at Marseille that parallels Drogba.

But we can't be too hasty in painting Samir. From a spectator's distance it's difficult to speak to temperament in a fair way, though if speculation were shunned and we focused on Nasri's role in the last two week's travails, our protagonist's audition as Cesc's replacement provides little relief for Gooner melancholy. In the League Cup final, Wenger declined to employ Nasri in the Fàbregas role despite the captain's absence. With Fàbregas back in the team at the Nou Camp, Nasri (like his teammates) failed to acquit himself well, Arsenal failing to put a shot on Victor Valdes. On Saturday against Manchester United, Nasri played closer to (but not exactly in) Cesc's role, though he did little to prevent his team's 2-0 loss to a patchwork United side. If Nasri is intended to lead the post-Fàbregas Gunners, his trial runs have failed to convince.

Before We Believe Any of that Matters

This begs the question of whether leadership matters. For lack of contradicting evidence, I ascribe to the notion that leadership only matters to those who elect to need it, an inefficient choice. It's better for an team - be it in soccer, sport, or life - to enable individual components to succeed without emotional guidance. That's not to say other unquantifiables - teamwork and cohesion - have real and demonstrable benefits (how did he know he would be there?). Leadership, however, serves as causation at the point our imaginations fail.

All of which may explain why Arsenal may need a leader. Perhaps it's the legacy of Adams and Vieira that has them buying into a leadership-dependent model. Regardless, it seems as if they're foolishly doing so. As we see their Fàbregas-less performances against Brum and United exhibit a lack of drive - a complete ambivalence toward the occasions - you hearken back to last season's display at Brittania, when Cesc led the team beyond the emotion of seeing Aaron Ramsey's leg break, leading the Gunners to a 3-1, comeback victory over Stoke City. Arsenal would go seven unbeaten after their 3-1 win over Stoke, but consider Fàbregas's performance last week at the Nou Camp, in the context of a winter that's failed to rival last's, Gooners can be forgiven for overlooking their current captain in search of a new hero.

Not the Wrong Idea, Just the Wrong Implementation

Fàbregas's failings, if you buy into leadership, may be a problem with positioning as much as ability. This may be grasping at straws, but a lot of the leadership philosophy is trying to find correlations where little causation exists. So let's just play along. In this case, the correlation may be Arsenal being the rare team to give the armband to an attacking player.

Consider the match at the Nou Camp, where Arsenal played conservatively at the onset, entering the second leg with a 2-1 lead. The tactics minimized Fabregas's (and Nasri's, more so) influence in a way a defender could never be overlooked. Even a position-hogging side like Barcelona will always depend on their defenders to display a competency and confidence (even if rarely employed) that coincides with our conceptions of leadership. That may partially explain Carles Puyol wearing the armband ahead of the more influential Xavi Hernández, and it may also explain why, amongst the 18 clubs that qualified for Champions League from UEFA's big five leagues, only two attacking players wear the armband: Fàbregas and Roma's Francesco Totti.

Is there some kind of cosmic quality to defensive players that make them better captains? Under Wenger, the best times have been under Adams and Vieira, enough information to identify coincidence but nothing more. But if Arsenal does buy into a leadership culture and wants to emulate that of other successful clubs, giving Thomas Vermaelen or Bacary Sagna the armband could be step forward. The Cesc era hasn't worked (and he's leaving), Nasri does not look like a more attack-minded Vieira, and hoping that a defending captain can fill the Gunners' void seems no less blindly hopeful than belief captains matter. Both ideas may be valid. Both ideas may be inconsequential folklore.

How To Move Forward

If Arsenal doesn't buy into the need to give the armband to one of the foundations of their formation, there are other candidates farther up the pitch. Where Adams' captaincy started when he was 21, Jack Wilshire will be four months short of his 20th birthday when the 2011-12 season starts. There may be no better way to give a the team a new direction than to begin what could be a long Wilshire Era. In a similar vein, Aaron Ramsey has already been hailed by Ryan Giggs as a future captain of Wales. He will be three months short of 21 when next season kicks off.

The best idea, however, might be to kill the idea that this kind of leadership needs to matter. Having a strong leadership culture can work, as we've seen with Chelsea, but it's not the only way to construct a squad. Leadership at Internazionale, Barcelona, and Manchester United have been defined by a relative, innocuous steadiness. In other words, being a figurehead and not screwing things up. All of Inter, Barça, and United have a culture of enabling professionalism in their individuals, a practice that implores Wesley Sneijder, Andres Iniesta, and Wayne Rooney (to name three) to take responsibility for their own performances. When their teams fail to meet expectations in big matches, they don't look at Javier Zanetti, Puyol and Nemanja Vidic to guide them. And when Manchester United is smoked at Anfield, Barcelona can't beat eliminate a 10-man Inter at the Nou Camp, or the Nerazzurri give up a late goal to Bayern in a Champions League leg, nobody points to a lack of leadership.

As much as Tony Adams and Patrick Vieira's leadership can be lauded for Arsenal's past successes, they were never isolated leaders. Arsenal would have never succeeded if they were, yet post-hoc rationalizations of those teams places an undue significance on their contributions. Vieira has failed to serve as a leader (or meaningful contributor) since leaving Arsenal, giving us a better perspective on his contributions relative to those of Lehmann, Touré, Henry, Pires, Campbell, Cole, Gilberto, Ljungberg and Bergkamp. Adams' last title winning team had many of the same contributors, along with the likes of Seaman, Keown, Dixon, van Bronckhorst, Wiltord, Parlour and Kanu - arrays of talent that make you wonder if even handing a Mario Balotelli-type the armband could have derailed those squads.

Nasri is probably not the next Cesc. He's not the next Vieira or Adams, and Wilshire or Ramsey are as likely to solve the perceived problem as they are to play into the psychosis. Give the armband to a defender, like everybody else does - fine. But a better idea may be to get the team away from looking for a hero. All that's done is given the players an excuse they may be employing.

Cesc wasn't the answer, and in hindsight, it doesn't seem Vieira or Adams were the answers, either. More likely, the answer is going to be Arsène Wenger getting his immensely talented team playing like they should. There won't be anything mystical about it.

Read More: Samir Nasri (MIDFIELDER - Manchester City), Arsenal

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