What do Arıcı and Chiriac’s figures say now?
Fussballklub Austria Vienna’s left-flank pairing has gone from six defeats to nine in ten games this season.
“One win in ten is not a partnership yet.” The verdict on Mustafa Arıcı and Gigi Chiriac’s season at Fussballklub Austria Vienna has become harder to dispute: the club have lost nine of the ten games in which both have played on the left flank.
Three months after this paper noted six straight defeats with the pair together, the total has reached nine. The only win in the sequence has done little to change the arithmetic.
Without one of them, the Austrian Premier Division side’s season looks like a different calculation. In nine games, Austria have won six, drawn two and lost one, scoring 1.9 goals and conceding 1.1 per game. The comparison is blunt; the explanation is not supplied by the totals.
Both players came through the club’s youth intake on 10 March 2063 and have made 15 club appearances each. Chiriac has scored twice; Arıcı has yet to score. Neither is happy, and both are in very poor morale. For two young players still settling into a new place, the shared figures offer little comfort—and no simple verdict on what should happen next.
Austria’s season has, so far, been stronger when the partnership is broken up than when it is intact. On this evidence, the left flank has found its better balance by subtraction: six wins instead of one.