Kevin Whitcher
It was a moment in history. Akin to Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement, or Bob Marley bringing the leaders of the warring political factions in Jamaica together on stage to shake hands. When Arsenal’s manager made his first substitution in the fixture against Manchester United on Sunday 22nd January 2012, every man, dog and club captain, every AKB and AMG/WLP in the stadium came together as one in united belief. Arsene Wenger is out of his tree.
The boy known as the Ox was demonstrating exactly why the manager felt justified in spending £12 million last summer on a teenager when Project Youth had yet to be given the hiding of its life at Old Trafford. Arsenal had conspired to claw their way back into a game that should have been dead and buried by the interval. Finally converting a chance to score, momentum was on their side. In no small measure due to the performance of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, it appeared United were under the cosh. This game could actually be won. Time to freshen things up. Arshavin prepares to enter, and one assumes the ineffectual Walcott will make way.
But wait. There it is, writ large in the neon of the fourth official’s board. Number 15 your time is up. Interviewed subsequently, the player gave no indication of there being any physical reason he needed to leave a game he was having a serious impact upon. Now the manager is no great tactician, no Mourinho when it comes to making game changing replacements. He has said in the past he makes subs for physical reasons as a rule, hence their general predictability. But to actually handicap his own team’s chances by removing the game’s most potent attacker for no discernable reason takes the biscuit. Does he want to get the sack? Does he want to jeopardise the club’s chances of making the top four?
The crowd let him know what they felt. Chants of ‘You don’t know what you’re doing’ rang out. Robin van Persie seemed of the same mind. And he has even worked half a day in football too. One pundit on the radio suggested it might be a defining moment in Wenger’s tenure at Arsenal. It certainly sets a precedent if the fans are booing the manager during a match. We’ve heard it before at the conclusion of games, but not during them as far as I can recall. It is an untenable situation. One suspects he lost many of the players some time ago. They are close to him and can probably detect the onset of senility, but will obviously not break ranks. Others can. One former Arsenal player, who on occasion benefits from his links with the club, actually told a Gooner seller that the club “will do nothing until they change the manager”. To preserve his relationship with Arsenal I won’t divulge his name, but all I can say is that he is far from alone in his view, and many fans that had faith in Arsene Wenger in spite of last season have now joined those of us who have believed it’s time to move him on for a while now.
It’s sad to witness his decline. And it’s awkward. The man is deified all over the stadium, not least in the giant chain mail hang facing that of Herbert Chapman in club level. The celebration of his work is justified, but it makes telling him he’s not wanted anymore just a bit awkward. The person who will call time on this descent into farce will only make that decision if he sees profits take a dive. This should happen when the club level and hospitality box renewals go out in the spring. The take up will be lower than last season, when it was down on the season before. So there is a trend which cannot be denied – at least internally – even if the club are invariably bullish. They claimed that the ordinary season ticket renewals were healthy for this season, although privately, they were in fact surprised by the numbers that chose to forego the guarantee of a seat at every home game. Obviously the likely failure to qualify for the Champions League will also register, although the financial hit of that will be compensated for by the £50 million plus sitting in the bank in the player trading account, which covers transfers and player wages. £35 million of that will plug the gap that missing out on UEFA’s golden egg next season will mean. Really, it’s just a matter of at what point Stan Kroenke decides he has witnessed enough decline. With every passing month, the manager’s pay-off gets cheaper. At the end of this season, it will be down to £14 million. My feeling about Kroenke is that he will give Wenger another year, just to save £7 million from the bill of sacking him.
It’s not a situation that is about to get any better any time soon. Things desperately need freshening up at Arsenal. They will lose one of their best players this summer, that’s one fairly certain conclusion from yesterday afternoon. About the only thing that I think could persuade Robin van Persie to remain is to bring in a new manager in the next few days – and probably a Dutch one. On a general level, the team needs both organizing and motivating. Skill and technique in possession is getting some results, but not enough for it to compete realistically for honours.
Wenger’s obsession is the Champions League. He has never won it and considers it a huge omission from his managerial CV. The reality that he may well not get a chance at cracking it again next season is having an obvious effect on his demeanour. Someone should have the balls to put him out of his misery, as on £7 million a year, he sure isn’t going to do the honourable thing and call time on his tenure at Arsenal. And of course, in his own mind, he probably believes that with a bit of luck, he might actually manage to win it this season. And that’s delusional behavior if ever I saw it.
I was reminded by Gooner publisher Mike Francis (the man behind The Gooner twitter feed – you think I have time for that!) that Ivan Gazidis said last May that Wenger’s future would be decided by the fans. But words are easy. Let’s hope that he at least has the gumption to tell Mr Kroenke that the natives are getting restless.
I’ll finish with the text messages I received that tell the story of the afternoon, including some from those who would have described themselves as AKBs not so very long ago…
16.58 (half time) – A different kind of humiliation – Ian Tanner
17.35 – Clueless takes off best player – Pete Mountford
17.35 – He’s lost it. Amazing – Ian Tanner
17.54 – Watch the replay of the Ox sub. RVP looks at the bench and mouths ‘f*** you’ towards Wenger. Wenger totally f***ed this because of his love for that little Russian ****. Absolutely diabolical substitution – Telboy
18.03 – Clueless manager. Shapeless team. 0 points out of 9. We are becoming a farce more suited to the West End – Ian Henry
18.25 – That will go down as one of the worst substitutions of all time (and you don’t need telling which of the three I mean) – Ian Tanner
19.06 – The substitution was the final straw for me – Howard Lamb
23.43 – MOTD2 – he couldn’t even explain the substitution! - Howard Lamb
On a lighter note, we promised you the result of the
competition to win an ebook of Arsenal’s Best XI. The correct answer to the question How many league titles did the club win while Herbert Chapman was their manager? was two, and the winning entrants were as follows…
Nick Comber
Mark Wetherall
Simon Rahamim
Séan Donnellan
Paul Murphy
We’ll forward the winners’ email addresses to the ebook publishers today and they will be in touch to arrange er… delivery, however that works with these things.
The new issue of the Gooner went on sale yesterday and can also be bought outside the stadium at the games v Villa and Blackburn. It is available to buy online here. You can also get an e-version of the issue to read on your ipad/tablet/iphone/android. The app is free and you can download the first few pages of each issue to decide whether or not to purchase the whole thing
