Mark Quillfeldt
The first point I should like to make is that this is not a character assassination. It is not an attack on Arsène Wenger the person, who, I am sure, is a perfectly decent, upstanding gentleman. It is, however, an attack on Arsène Wenger the manager, and will hopefully serve as a comprehensive rebuttal to those who claim that he should remain in the job for the foreseeable future. For those who agree that he should go, there is the question of the board’s role in all of this, and it is my firm belief that its members are as much to blame as the manager for this great big mess we are in. However, that is a matter for another article. For now, I am putting forward four reasons why Wenger needs to go. There is no arbitrary reason why the number is four. It just so happens that these are the four things that have sprung to my mind whenever I have thought about the situation. So, in no particular order, here they are:
1: The 8-2 disgrace at Old Trafford.
Arsenal is a massive football club with a history of success. It is, in fact, the third most successful club in the history of English football. A team of that stature should not be conceding eight goals to anyone. Ever. Most, if not all teams will go to Old Trafford this season and not concede eight goals, and only one of those teams, Liverpool, has a more impressive history than Arsenal. Make no mistake: by allowing this to happen, by sending his team out without any noticeable tactics aside from ‘play your football and the opportunities will come’, without the new signings which should have been brought in before the start of the season, Arsène Wenger has brought shame on the club which will probably never be lived down. Even if we do become a successful club again one day, unless we somehow manage to put eight past United, their fans will forever be reminding us of what happened that day. Some, including Wenger, have said we were unlucky with injuries, and, as a result, had to play with a number of inexperienced players. To those people, I say: Robin van Persie: Dutch international; Theo Walcott: England international; Johann Djourou: Swiss international; Aaron Ramsey: Welsh international captain; Andrei Arshavin: Russian international captain; Tomas Rosicky: Czech international captain. Lack of experience was not a huge factor. It was the lack of a clear strategy to win the game or, at least, to come away with a draw, that was to blame for this result. Another manager might have had one.
2: Refusal to spend money.
Okay, Arsenal are not in the same position financially as Chelsea, City or United, and if there is one thing we have learnt from the Torres transfer, it’s that spending an obscene amount of money on one player is not always sensible. But we are not poor, and there have been various comments over the years from Peter Hill-Wood, to that effect - comments like ‘we have got more money than we have had for a long, long time, and we would like to spend it.’(Mail Online, April 16th, 2010); ‘we have plenty of money and enough to spend.’ (Goal.com, August 31st, 2008); ‘it is our policy that we give the manager a transfer budget, which includes the ability to use all the money from player sales.’ (The Guardian, May 27th, 2010). I will not go into detail about how much Wenger could have spent on new players following the sales of Fabregas and Nasri; you can do the maths for yourselves. I will make the point, however, that when Wenger did decide to splash out this summer, it was to the tune of £12 million on a teenager from League Two in the mould of most of the attacking midfielders we already have, when what we have desperately needed for the last season and a bit is another central defender, several of whom are available at around that price, with Premier League experience. He was also willing to let Samir Nasri run his contract down, which effectively would have meant us paying £23 million for him for one season. So the problem is not just that Wenger won’t spend the kind of money that needs to be spent and is available, but that when he does spend, it is on players we don’t actually need. Another manager might be slightly more astute in the transfer market.
3: Refusal to change the training methods.
Admittedly, I don’t have access to Arsenal’s training sessions, so I don’t know exactly what is going on behind those enormous castle walls, and it is entirely possible that Wenger is going to great lengths to drill the defence and get them playing as a unit. If this is the case though, there is not much evidence on the pitch that this is what is happening. Even if it is, whatever he is doing with them is clearly not working, and has not been working since the Carling Cup final defeat last season, so something needs to change. For most of last season, we were able to keep the opposition away from our penalty area with possession football, which was great, and for most of the season we had a better defensive record than United. But since that monumental collapse against Birmingham, possession football doesn’t work for us anymore. Wenger, however, seems to be too stubborn to admit it, and as a result, we have made a catastrophic start to the season and there is no indication that things will improve any time soon. Another manager might actually go back to basics and start working on the defence, instead of letting them make the same old mistakes over and over again.
4: There are several decent managers available now to replace Wenger.
An argument I hear a lot when I suggest that it might be time for Wenger to go is, ‘who will replace him?’ Well, how about Martin O’Neill? What about Carlo Ancelotti? What about Guus Hiddink? What about an as-yet, relatively unknown young, but talented manager, which is exactly what Arsène Wenger was when he first joined the club? There is a real danger that if we wait another few years, we might not be able to attract a top-quality manager on the grounds that we will no longer be a Champions League side. Surely it makes more sense to replace Wenger now, while we are still in the competition? If we wait any longer, when he does eventually go, the best managers might not be available to us.
So there are my four reasons why Wenger should be replaced. I am not saying that he is not the greatest manager this club has ever had. He gave us the best football and some of the best players the world has ever seen, and for that we, as Arsenal and as football fans, should be eternally grateful. He introduced new training methods, new fitness regimes and new diets to help players perform better, and that has benefited everyone in the Premier League. But since then, other clubs have caught up, thrown money into the mix, and surpassed Arsenal. The longer Wenger hangs around, the more danger there is that people will push his successes to the back of their minds and remember him simply as a manager who refused to acknowledge that the football world around him was changing. If he goes now, voluntarily, he can do so with a shred of his dignity still intact. If he waits until the end of the season, it may well be too late.
