The heady days of the inexorable climb to the summit of English football, starting with the signing of Patrick Vieira and culminating with The Invincibles and the unfortunate Champions League Final of 2006 seem so very far away now. The wonderful talent that played for the club; Bergkamp, Henry, Pires, Vieira and Fabregas to name just a few. I remember sitting in my seat at Highbury, giggling as I watched the team run rings around the opposition week after week after week. All now no more than a distant memory.
And the thing that is so hard to take is that I love Arsene Wenger. I love how he transformed Arsenal Football Club. I've loved the hours and hours and hours of pleasure (and bragging rights) that he helped give me and my family. I've loved his whole-hearted commitment to Arsenal Football Club, and to football. And whilst he needs to shoulder his share of the blame for the current malaise, I don't feel that it's right to place the blame for the mess that the club is getting itself into entirely on him. He has become the lightning rod for all the bad news/publicity, because he is the Manager. But the malaise goes considerably deeper than that.
Behind the Manager are the owner and the Board of Directors. To my mind (and I believe many others) Kroenke and his son (mainly), and Gazidis are hiding behind Wenger - and it does appear that he is allowing them to do so. Their Fall Guy. What I can't understand is how he can condone the apparent lack of thirst for genuine success from Kroenke (although £8m a year might have something to do with it). And all he is doing is tarnishing his legacy with every season that passes.
Now I am aware that Arsenal fans are suffering from the football equivalent of a First World Problem. There are probably only around a dozen clubs in Europe who would swap places with Arsenal. But it really does depend on one's expectations, and those of Arsenal fans are understandably high. Despite the climate of European club football having irrevocably changed with the arrival of the oligarchs and the sheikhs, what every Arsenal fan has stored away in his head are these (post oligarch and sheikh) quotes from Ivan Gazidis:
November 2012 - "As we look to the next two, three years we will have an outstanding platform on which to compete with any club in the world".
And June 2013 - "We're very confident with the new deals we've got coming through... That's showing really positive progression. We should be able to compete at a level like a club such as Bayern Munich.
"I'm not saying we're there by any means; we have a way to go before we can put ourselves on that level. But this whole journey over the past ten years really has been with that goal in mind, which is why I say that this is an extraordinarily ambitious club.
"We get beaten up along the way, but I think we are an extraordinarily ambitious club. This has been about putting us up with the best in the world and now the question is turning that platform now into on-field success".
All of which sounds very hopeful. But then we got this from the owner, a year ago:
"If you want to win championships you would never get involved..."
Do we want or need to hear that? How soul-destroying is that sort of remark? My response is: "If you have that attitude, sell up and clear off!"
This is an owner of numerous US sporting 'franchises', who don't spend - or even attempt to spend - as much as their opposition do. He takes his share of the sponsorship and TV money, and just bounces along in mid-table mediocrity; getting richer and richer with every year that passes and tearing the ambition and optimism from the hearts of the fans. What have the LA Rams, Denver Nuggets. or Colorado Avalanche won recently? Nothing, you won't be surprised to hear (Avalanche actually won the Stanley Cup the year after he took over (2001), but it's been downhill ever since results-wise). And he's doing the same to Arsenal.
And against this background; the above quotes, the unwillingness to compete fully at (or even near) the top of the transfer market, the growing fan unrest; and finally even results are starting to unravel. The inability/unwillingness to compete at the very top has been difficult enough to take for a number of years now (and that's even accepting the relative poverty of the early years at The Emirates), but this season the cracks are really starting to show.
I did liken it elsewhere to a slow motion car crash, but I think a better metaphor is a tumble down a very long flight of stairs, crashing into the walls and getting more and more badly injured on the way down. And I don't think we can see where the bottom is yet!
Lose to Everton (from a goal up) - stumble/crash/ouch! Lose to Manchester City in an almost identical fashion - a painful tumble down to the next landing. Go down limply at home to Watford - hit a particularly nasty bit of sticking-out bannister on the next section. Get thumped by Chelsea - a long and painful tumble down the next flight. Bayern Munich - equally as painful; limbs getting broken and confidence in ever regaining one's feet receding. And then getting turned over by a Liverpool side who had been badly out of sorts - that's another long flight of stairs and another massive set of bruises. If the team isn't careful, it's heading for a metaphorical broken neck.
Add to that the issue of the team's two best players being soon out of contract and not tied down to new deals... If you were Alexis Sanchez, would you want to stay? And Ozil's form and confidence have completely deserted him. Apart from those two, the squad is full of very good players but where some teams are better than the sum of their parts, the opposite seems to be true of Arsenal.
And here's where the cracks are starting to show in Arsene Wenger, and the reason why he simply has to fall on his sword at the end of the season. Tactically, where more and more people have been saying that he is being left behind as each year passes, the past few weeks have been something of an unmitigated disaster. Let's examine a few recent inexplicable snippets:
- the general and continued failure of the team to start matches quickly. This points to the Manager being no longer able to motivate them. If he mentions Mental Strength one more time (perhaps after Arsenal beat Bayern 3-0 this evening?)...
- the decision to play dyed-in-the-wool centre half Gabriel at right back in the absence of the injured Bellerin, when Mustafi has played at right back for World Cup winners Germany? I'm sorry; inexcusable
- the opportunity to prepare for Chelsea with the game against Watford, who play an identical formation to Chelsea but with considerably inferior players; yet he set the team up in the same way as usual
- Chopping and changing Oxlade-Chamberlain. Expediency meant he has been played in central midfield, and he has actually been the team's most effective central midfielder over the past month. Yet he's the first one pushed out wide, or down to the bench; even for Coquelin?
- The inability to solve the problem of the lack of a sliding defence. How many recent goals have been conceded by defenders getting sucked in/across and the last man, arriving wide, late and unmarked, doing the damage? This is down to poor coaching, and poor discipline instilled in both the wide players and specifically the defensive midfielders. I'm pretty sure that it's not Rocket Science!
- Over-protection of Welbeck. Get the guy in the side!!!
- And here's the last straw; the tactics vs Liverpool. Here's a side that struggle when teams sit deep and suck them in, then hit them hard on the break with pace. So he selects Giroud, and a high line. And guess what happened?
In summary, it's a perfect storm. The club needs a new and ambitious owner, or a Manager who is going to force the owner to loosen the purse strings. As for Arsene, he looks a broken man - broken by what's going on above and around him and no longer able to cope with the pressure. Yes, there has been a historical concern about dropping out of the Top 4 should we change Managers (like what happened to Manchester United), but Top 4 is looking less and less likely with each passing week, so that excuse is redundant.
I'm long past "Be careful what you wish for". I'll take my chances now. There's a further contract offer on the table, but if he takes that offer up, the only things that are going to change are the loss of Champions League football - and of our best players - and the club will be set back a good 5 years. We've fallen behind Chelsea and Manchester City. United, Tottenham and even Liverpool are about to overtake us. Do we really want to be fighting for 6th and 7th place with Everton and Southampton, but with £200m+ of earmarked transfer funds in the Bank? In a half-empty stadium? Because that's the way things are heading. And whilst his ownership dictates that he can do what he likes, I reckon that Mr Kroenke will find that the fans will vote with their feet, and make things very unpleasant for him. This isn't the United States, Stanley.
We can address who's next some other time. But if there's no succession planning going on right now then that's downright negligent.
There's a massive groundswell of discontent with Arsenal Football Club at the moment. I believe that as far as the Manager is concerned it's mixed with sympathy and a deal of sadness. But with the owner there's merely anger. Deal with it, Mr Kroenke. Man up. Step out of the shadows. And take your hands out of your pockets!
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