Football: Gunners' armoury short on supplies

IF THE visiting supporters at Wembley on Wednesday had been from Scandinavia, with their impeccable command of British football anthems, they would doubtless have taunted the home side with a rendition of "Are you Arsenal in disguise?" Towards the end of the evening, even the home following must have been tempted, for the team in unfamiliar navy-blue shirts looked nothing like the one that ended a triumphant season last May by completing the League and Cup double on that same pitch.

Goodness knows what sort of a side will turn out for the final group match away to Panathinaikos on Wednesday week when, as a result of this 1-0 defeat by Lens, the Gunners will be playing only to avoid the ignominy of finishing bottom of the table. Emmanuel Petit and Patrick Vieira, badly missed in two of the three home matches, are unlikely to be ready to return to a midfield area that will also be deprived of Ray Parlour, who was sent off in stoppage time as the English champions lost all sense of Le Fair Play. Dennis Bergkamp - also missing against Lens - need no longer worry about trains and boats, let alone planes, to Athens, and may not be fit either. Ditto Tony Adams, taken off at half-time because of recurring back trouble.

Wenger has always insisted that the table he cares about most is the one currently headed by Aston Villa. Whether or not Arsenal's senior players share his opinion after winning three League titles but never reaching a European Cup quarter-final, the defender Martin Keown was toeing the party line yesterday when he said: "It's over now. It was nice while it lasted, but we have to dust ourselves down and get on with it. We've got another big game against Middlesbrough on Sunday and we've got to be ready and right for it."

Keown will be, but the continuing unavailability of influential team- mates raises again the question of whether Wenger has a strong enough squad.

Comparisons with Manchester United are inevitable and inevitably unfavourable. Since last season Alex Ferguson has shelled out pounds 27m on strengthening each area of the team. Wenger has lost Ian Wright, spent pounds 2m on David Grondin and Nelson Vivas, then, after the Champions' League deadline, bought Fredrik Ljungberg.

The manager says the transfer market has "gone crazy", much as people did when Arsenal paid pounds 14,000 for Bryn Jones 60 years ago, and much as George Graham did when he was prevented by the Highbury board from taking part in it. The result is that, after some commendable success in securing players like Petit, Vieira and Nicolas Anelka at duty-free rates, Arsenal are buying the foreign equivalents of Chris Kiwomya and Jimmy Carter.

While statistics can occasionally lie, they do not, on this occasion, contradict the evidence of the season as a whole. Arsenal have scored 19 goals in as many games and none in the past four matches. Only once has a player scored twice in the same game, and the last six have brought only one victory.

In Europe, lacking the quality to cover for injuries and largely self- inflicted suspensions (Vieira was booked in every Champions' League match he played), they have been exposed twice by Kiev, run close by Panathinaikos and beaten at home by a Lens side only 10th in the French league.

"We had enough out there to have beaten that team," Keown said. "We should have won at a gallop." The official match statistics gave Lens exactly 50 per cent of possession and twice as many shots on goal, even after a first 15 minutes spent under the cosh.

Keown believes it is time for the real Arsenal to stand up. The trouble at present is that half of them can't even walk.