Sarf Lunden
‘All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’ may be a widely misquoted saying. But in a much, much. much smaller way we've seen this at Arsenal. A widely respected manager has been allowed to indulge his own personal fantasy about winning the Premier League with a group of unproven, underachieving, injury prone, players who earn vast amounts of money for repeatedly failing to deliver. For six years. His fantasy fails time after time. But, according to the manager it's the fault of the officials, of clubs who spend too much money, of everyone but himself.
You can't really blame the players. They have been brought by the manager (with the exception of Wilshere), trained by the manager and their tactics decided by the manager. So, lets face a few facts. The manager has failed. He's run out of ideas. His tactics don't work. The players don't respond to his management.
The same manager has been indulged by a board whose aim has been determined to pass the club onto a safe pair of hands. For £11,750 per share. Judas only got 30 pieces of silver. To enable the vast profit the board has made they have given the manager total power in the club. We were given a new training ground, then a new stadium and a team that went from going 49 games unbeaten to a team that currently is 14th in the Premier league form table.
Compared to every club below 3rd and, probably, soon every club below 4th our problems are laughably small. But we've seen how other clubs have fallen apart under foreign owners and failed managers. I really, really don't want to see Arsenal follow them.
