I think the moral of the story from Arsenal’s perspective is that good attacking play relies on teamwork and quick communication/knowledge of your teammates just as much as defensive play - and you can’t just throw a bunch of talented players together and expect them to come up with some wonderfully incisive moves purely by virtue of them all looking good as individuals. Granted, I doubt this is news to anyone within Arsenal or seriously involved with football, but I actually find it mildly annoying that some of Arsenal’s fans even expected a better result given the extent to which they took the piss with that line-up.
Shit like one-twos, through balls, overlaps and balls inside the full-back all rely on what looks like telepathic communication but in reality, is pretty much totally contingent on teammates knowing one another and having played together a fair bit.
I think the sports media ham it up a bit by romanticising the best creative players as improvising more-or-less every bit of skill that they do but when asked, even Ronaldinho used to say that there was nothing that he, Messi or Eto’o used to do on the pitch for Barcelona that they hadn’t practiced successfully a thousand times in training.
