Peter Le Beau
How we laughed in a disinterested sort of way when Millwall fans flew that plane over the ground where West Ham were being relegated on the last day of the season, referring to the great work by “Agent Grant”. It’s quite an insult to a manager to suggest he is doing so bad a job that he has been sent in by the enemy to deliberately sabotage a club!
As the game wound its way to what was, for most Arsenal fans, an inevitable conclusion at White Hart Lane last week, I half expected the final insult to be a plane going over that dismal vista with a “Congratulations Agent Wenger!” sign.
In truth, if it had, it would have been vaguely preposterous, given that Wenger had overseen fifteen successive campaigns in which Arsenal had finished above Spurs, but there was an inescapable feeling that things would never be the same again - and that the unfolding truth at Arsenal was that here was a club being so very badly run it was almost deliberate.
I was at Fulham last season, and saw Wenger trudge off looking very downbeat as Arsenal fans berated him with that now well-known ditty about spending some….. money. I had a very flat feeling, not buoyed by any optimism at all that he would take any notice. One thing fifteen years have told us is that, if you want Wenger to do something, don’t be seen to be putting pressure on him. He is as obstinate as a mule.
My premonitions at Craven Cottage were right. I knew we were in for a hell of a close season, but, even at my most pessimistic, never did I envisage that, on top of the mismanagement, we would lose two of our four best remaining players for over three months and that one of the others would scarcely play before mid-October.
We are trying very hard in the Gooner to present a balanced view of the club and not to keep knocking what is going on, but we also need to be honest. It will help no-one to spout AKB nonsense when the club is crumbling. This club was mismanaged to an utterly alarming degree in the close season. On almost every front, chaotically wrong decisions were taken.
One thing experience has taught is not to take too much notice of what Arsène tells us as soon as the season is over. This year, we learnt that he had realised we couldn’t defend set pieces and that we needed more experience throughout the team. Later, he said we needed to keep all the players we had----how many left this summer? After that, he gave that ridiculous press conference in the Far East where he claimed that neither Fabregas or Nasri would leave. All of it completely fallacious. And we have still failed to get any semblance of organisation in a defence that visibly quakes when facing set-piece deliveries. What did you do in the summer, Arsène?
I think he spent it brushing up on his poker. While his former nemesis at Old Trafford was identifying the players he needed and signing them before Wimbledon was over, Wenger suggested the real business would be done just as the transfer window slammed shut - a game of financial chicken for sides desperately seeking to correct the bad starts they had made, and what a bad start we made! For several weeks, Wenger knew we had to play Newcastle, Liverpool and United with two legs of a vital Champions League qualifier sandwiched in between - and he signed Carl Jenkinson from Division One and an 18-year-old prodigy who had to make his debut in a game where his side lost 8-2.
We were totally unprepared for the start of the season - the team was not settled, players were not signed because we didn’t know when Fabregas and Nasri were going, and so the club slid into chaos with the fans watching dispiritedly.
The Mata saga ended ridiculously as we let his transfer clause expire, and then - after an appalling start, culminating in a humiliation at Old Trafford that none of us will ever forget -we belatedly sparked into life at the poker table trying to snap up last-minute bargains... or, in fact, anyone we could.
We sold late for amounts we could have got much earlier if we had negotiated single-mindedly and with any firmness. We bought too late and, as we keep hearing now, failed (as we were bound to) with lots of desperate last-minute attempts to do deals.
All the time we’ve wondered what the CEO, the Board and the majority shareholder (whoops, I nearly called him the owner) really feel about how the club is being run. Then, that interview in the Telegraph with Silent Stan. I dearly wish he’d remained silent, because he confirmed all the fears we had that our man at the top was happy to settle for third, fourth or even worse if it secured him a comfortable profit, and that he considered Wenger one of the great managers in world football. If this interview had been given between 1998 and 2006, he might well have been correct, but now, after the summer that we’ve just had, following on the gradual decline since 2004?? Nobody in his right mind could ever think Wenger is still a great manager after overseeing the farce that was the close-season of 2011.
Kroenke’s piece was Peter Hill-Wood at his unreconstructed best and the combination of Hill-Wood, Kroenke and the increasingly unimpressive Gazidis makes me want to weep almost as much as when I see Jenkinson and Arshavin run on to the pitch.
I was a devoted AKB for many years – look at back issues of the Gooner to check, if you don’t believe me. One of his great skills was picking just the right moment to offload players who were past their sell-by date. It is a supreme irony that he seems so incapable of transferring this skill into analysis of his current side or his own performance. Unfortunately, as a result, we have inevitably got a lot more suffering to endure before Kroenke realises that this Arsenal regime has hit the buffers. In the kingdom of the inert, inertia reigns!!!
