nerves
Well, the North London Derby will be kicking off in a few minutes, and my nerves are tingling. I won’t be watching the match — I’m gonna practice meditation or something. But I have some thoughts.
I don’t expect Arsenal to win — Spurs are playing at home and they need the points more than Arsenal do — but that doesn’t mean anything because I never expect Arsenal to win. My son asks me before every Arsenal match how I think it’ll go, and I always explain, patiently and rationally, why they can’t possibly take all three points.
It may therefore come as no surprise that I would’ve been absolutely shocked at the beginning of the season — and even more after the first three matches of the season — to learn that the Gunners would be in the top four in May. But then everyone else would’ve been shocked also.
So, whatever happens from here on out, the lads have been great, and they deserve plaudits.
You might therefore expect that I am fully supportive of the decision to extend Arteta’s contract. In fact I am not —I am seriously doubtful about the decision. The achievements of this year are mainly due to the excellent construction of the squad, which has enabled a degree of success even in the face of many injuries. And that’s down to the front office. They’re the ones who deserve the same applause we give the players. (That said, with European football coming next season, they need to do some major reinforcement work in the offseason.)
Arteta, I think, has been the weak link. The problem is that he’s very poor at one aspect of the manager’s job: making in-game adjustments. He’s good at general strategy — though there he has a lot of help from the front office — and good at setting up his tactics for any given match. But when things go wrong (and in soccer you must expect that things will regularly go wrong) he seems befuddled. Several of Arsenal’s losses could have become wins if Arteta had acted more swiftly, decisively, and intelligently to make changes, whether in formation or personnel or both. But making the necessary adjustments just doesn’t seem to be in his skill set.
But I’m only doubtful that his contract should have been extended, not certain that it shouldn’t have. He may get better; and there aren’t many clearly superior candidates out there. (Though that Emery guy at Villarreal — he’s impressive! I wonder if he could be talked into moving to London….) And in any case the deal is done. But while I always worry about Arsenal, a good deal of that worry centers on whether Arteta will be able to handle the demands of a tough match. Arteta is my second-biggest concern; the first, as always, is whether Xhaka will decide that he needs to get himself sent off.
UPDATE: For “Xhaka” read “Holding.” Arteta’s complete inability to teach his players on-pitch discipline — very few of their many red cards in recent years have been undeserved — is another mark against him.
mapping the books
I love this idea from my buddy Austin Kleon: not listing but rather mapping the books you’ve recently read. I have never thought of this but am convinced that I need to try.
bloggy
A friend of mine wrote the other day to commend some of my recent posts for being “bloggy.” There can be no higher praise. I love blogging bloggily, but it’s not easy to do.
I’ve spent decades practicing the craft of writing for book publishers and periodicals, and that craft requires me to seek clarity, coherence, and completeness. But those aren’t the virtues of blog writing: the Blog Imperatives are exploration, experimentation, and iteration. You’ve got to be willing to try out ideas that you’re not wholly comfortable with, ideas you don’t yet have a firm grasp on; and then you need to circle back later to revisit and reconsider.
In fact, one of my writerly tasks in the coming weeks is to read through old posts here and see if I can find some dots to connect; if I do, I will connect them through linkage and tagging. Keep an eye peeled for these Posts of Revisitation.
If you think my bloggy work here is valuable, you may support it through my Buy Me a Coffee page — see the link at the top of this page. I wrote an update for my supporters today: you may read it here.
Just posted an update to my Buy Me a Coffee page.
ascending
In many of my courses I ask my students to explicate certain key passages from the texts we read — to dig in to the details, to see how the passages do their work. Here’s a selection from Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago — the chapter called “The Ascent” — that some of my students are writing about:
You are ascending….
Formerly you never forgave anyone. You judged people without mercy. And you praised people with equal lack of moderation. And now an understanding mildness has become the basis of your uncategorical judgments. You have come to realize your own weakness — and you can therefore understand the weakness of others. And be astonished at another's strength. And wish to possess it yourself.
The stones rustle beneath our feet. We are ascending….
With the years, armor-plated restraint covers your heart and all your skin. You do not hasten to question and you do not hasten to answer. Your tongue has lost its flexible capacity for easy oscillation. Your eyes do not flash with gladness over good tidings nor do they darken with grief.
For you still have to verify whether that's how it is going to be. And you also have to work out — what is gladness and what is grief.
And now the rule of your life is this: Do not rejoice when you have found, do not weep when you have lost.
Your soul, which formerly was dry, now ripens from suffering. And even if you haven't come to love your neighbors in the Christian sense, you are at least learning to love those close to you.
Those close to you in spirit who surround you in slavery. And how many of us come to realize: It is particularly in slavery that for the first time we have learned to recognize genuine friendship!
And also those close to you in blood, who surrounded you in your former life, who loved you — while you played the tyrant over them….
Here is a rewarding and inexhaustible direction for your thoughts: Reconsider all your previous life. Remember everything you did that was bad and shameful and take thought — can't you possibly correct it now?
Yes, you have been imprisoned for nothing. You have nothing to repent of before the state and its laws.
But … before your own conscience? But … in relation to other individuals?