Harry Redknapp: Resting Petr Cech sent the wrong message but don’t write Arsenal off yet

Tense time: David Ospina can’t hide his anguish after his blunder handed Olympiakos a goal
(David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
Harry Redknapp1 October 2015

Arsene Wenger cannot possibly justify leaving Petr Cech out against Olympiakos. It was too big a gamble in the most important club competition in the world, especially when they didn’t even win the first game against Dinamo Zagreb.

Resting Cech sent the wrong message to the rest of the team. We have seen it time and again in the Capital One Cup where big teams are knocked out after making so many changes because the players think, ‘Oh well, it’s not that important today’.

It also leads to complacency because the attitude of the players is directly affected. They think, ‘The manager reckons we can beat this lot without our best goalkeeper so it’ll be comfortable’ and the performance level drops. It just doesn’t do any good.

Look at what happened to Manchester City at Tottenham last weekend when they left Joe Hart on the bench. Arsene didn’t exactly have to look far for an example of what could go wrong.

David Ospina made a horrendous mistake which cost them dearly. That error sent shivers through the whole team. You could see them looking around thinking ‘Oh my God’ and they never properly recovered their composure.

There was no reason to rotate a keeper — especially if Cech was fit enough to play at Leicester and fit enough to be on the bench three days later.

It only breeds the kind of inconsistency Arsenal have shown this season. When things are going their way, they are excellent. Some of the football they played at Leicester was phenomenal but so often they are vulnerable.

They have a problem with set-pieces. Look at them on Tuesday. Who did they have who can head the ball and command the box? They had two players: Laurent Koscielny and Gabriel. Who else is there?

They have tiny midfielders, small full-backs and Theo Walcott up front. When you have a keeper who also isn’t first choice, you have an immediate concern over who will deal with set-plays.

Arsenal vs Olympiakos: Champions League Player Ratings

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Watch Mesut Ozil coming out to try to get a block on the first goal. It was pathetic. The ball comes out to the edge of the box and he makes the most half-hearted effort to close it down. If someone is going to shoot from the edge of the box, you want your midfielders or defenders to throw themselves at it to do everything for the team, whether you cost £4million of £42m.

Arsene has far more experience in the Champions League than most of us but you have to adapt the way you play. I quickly learned with Tottenham in that 2010-11 season that there are some games that demand you change your style from what works in the Premier League. We were 3-0 down at Young Boys after 28 minutes because we were far too open. By the time we played AC Milan in the knockout round, we were more mature and tried to keep things tight when the situation demanded it.

Arsenal are a team with full-backs who want to bomb forward and one holding midfielder in Francis Coquelin trying to keep the balance. They are a very open looking team. And with all the attacking talent they have, Arsene would still have enough to hurt teams if he put another holding midfield player in there just to make them look a bit more solid.

It has been a disaster because they couldn’t have wished for a better draw. Dinamo hadn’t won a Champions League group stage game for 16 years and Olympiakos got travel sickness every time they came to England.

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But, as silly as it sounds, I wouldn’t rule the Gunners out of qualifying from here because you can see the other two teams beating each other and they could always nick a point off Bayern Munich which could be enough. But they need a miracle now.

Manchester United’s visit on Sunday becomes a massive game. They have got to come out and beat United otherwise it will have been a truly terrible week for Arsenal.

They couldn’t have a better game. The crowd will put the disappointment behind them and be absolutely buzzing on Sunday.

What you don’t want is a game against a team near the bottom who you are expected to beat because if it doesn’t go well, the crowd start moaning and the situation gets even worse. They will be bang up for it and I can see them bouncing back and beating United. As long as Arsene picks his best team.

Pochettino has a chance now Baldini’s gone

Tottenham bought badly under the guidance of Franco Baldini. They got excellent money for Gareth Bale and Luka Modric, spent most of it and on what?

Roberto Soldado, Federico Fazio and Vlad Chiriches were all failures. Mauricio Pochettino will be more involved with recruitment now and has the benefit of working with Paul Mitchell — effectively Baldini’s replacement — from their time together at Southampton and, hopefully, they will rely more on the manager’s judgment.

Flop: Roberto Soldado scored 16 goals in 76 Spurs appearances
Julian Finney/Getty Images

I wish I’d had that money available to me in 2012. We were two top-class players short of a team that could challenge for the Premier League in 2011-12.

I asked for a centre-forward and a centre-back. But we brought in Louis Saha and Ryan Nelsen on free transfers, both of whom were good lads but coming to the end of their careers. They have invested since then but not bought well.

It is the young players who have carried them through. Dele Alli is a great signing but it has been Ryan Mason, Nabil Bentaleb, Harry Kane, Kyle Walker and Danny Rose who have taken the team forward.

You have to be honest and say Baldini’s record wasn’t good enough but a director of football role can work. It has to nowadays because managers just haven’t got time to watch players as much as they used to. Those days are over.

Years ago, Bob Paisley or Joe Fagan or even Alex Ferguson, when he first started, all went to scout targets in England and Scotland but it is a global game now. Ninety per cent of players are coming from abroad and it’s not as easy to pop over to Sao Paulo as it is to Sheffield on a Tuesday night.

A manager might get to see them once but otherwise you have to rely on the recruitment people and DVDs produced for you.

Spurs have to get the process right now. But if they sit down with Pochettino and identify the right players, then with the young players they have got the future looks bright.

Get JT back in the side, Jose, and he’ll turn things around

Matthew Childs/Reuters

It is time for Chelsea to recall John Terry. If you look at Tuesday night, Branislav Ivanovic is a bigger problem than the centre-back positions. I thought he was the strongest right-back in the country a year ago but he had yet another horrendous night in Porto.

If you ask me to put my life on a game and I had to pick a team for England or Chelsea in a one-off match, John would captain it. There is no better English centre-half than John, even now. He has proven himself to be a winner and when things aren’t going well, you need characters to turn it around.

You know what you are going to get from people like him. They give you a consistency that teams need when performances are up and down — that’s how you improve things.

I am a big Jose Mourinho fan but he needs to get John back into his side. Leaving Terry out continues to be a strange decision.

Santi clause cost me the best present

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Santi Cazorla was very nearly a Tottenham player well before he joined Arsenal in 2012.

He was fantastic against us for Villarreal in a pre-season friendly in July 2010. I went up to Everton to watch him play again a week later and then we spoke to Villarreal.

Santi wanted to come. He was happy to join Spurs but there was a breakdown in talks over the fee.

The deal was almost done but it got lost somewhere in the negotiations between Tottenham and Villarreal. It was a transfer that could and should have been done. He ended up being another one who got away.

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