Robert Exley
Rather like the Arsenal, the BBC is a once-cherished British institution that seems to have endured a torrid time of late. Despite this, it seems to have come up with a great piece of televisual genius of late which you would certainly never have seen emanate from Sky, ITV or even Channel 4, who once did try their hand at such programming but now prefer faux- reality documentaries about people who live in caravans in order to chase easy advertising revenue.
BBC 4’s ‘Why Poverty?’ series has provided great food for thought in a way that D-List celebrities munching bugs in the depth of the Australian jungle never could. It was here that I was introduced to the works of Ayn Rand – a long-dead novelist who’s not particularly well known over here but is apparently quite influential these days with the Tea-Party following in the USA, which is probably some indication of her intellectual prowess - in particular, her 1957 novel ‘Atlas Shrugged’, a metaphor for the Greek mythical titan who holds up the world on his shoulders and the catastrophe that would occur should he one day cease doing so.
The story centres on the formation of a break-away society formed in the mountains by the super-rich of America and lead by a man called John Galt as a refuge from a society whose government they believe taxes, regulates and interferes too much in their business. The refuge is named ‘Galt’s Gulch’ and is sensationally presented to us as a stark warning of what would happen if the financial elite one day went all Bob Crowe on us and withdrew their labour. ‘Atlas shrugged’, however, is a rather ridiculous notion, as it begs the question of who exactly, in a society made up entirely of the super-rich one-per-cent completely cutting themselves off from the rest of us, are the ones who would be cleaning the toilets, sweeping the streets or emptying the dustbins?
You get the impression that Galt’s Gulch would be a society of the super-rich wading in its filth within a week and that this is most probably the reason why Ayn Rand’s prophecy of doom will never materialise in reality. In the words of Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman, “there are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life - The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally-stunted, socially-crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs”.
Rather worryingly, however, the chief executive of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the US - John A. Allison - is quoted in the New York Times as stating that “I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 CEOs that ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has had a significant effect on their business decisions”. Enough of the American super-rich have also managed to club together sufficient finance to bring the story to the big screen as a trilogy, a project which they claim has been suppressed by that great bulwark of anti-capitalism – Hollywood – for over 50 years. ‘Atlas Shrugged’, therefore, can be seen as positive proof of not just how deluded and egotistical people can become once they reach the top of the tree in their chosen field, or that there will always be professional sycophants like Ayn Rand that will give legitimacy to their delusions of grandeur, but also that there will be significant numbers of people at the bottom of the chain who will literally believe the scaremongering tone of such sentiments.
In Arsenal-Land we have our very own ‘Atlas Shrugged’ tale, and the working title of this saga is clearly ‘Wenger Left’. Now, I’ve never been one from the ‘Arsène is a Fraud’ school of thinking. I’ve even admonished such articles on the Online Gooner before for perpetrating such nonsense. I’m fully aware of what attributes Wenger once brought to the table. There is no doubt, however, that a myth has grown up around Wenger and the Wenger years that seems to imply that Arsenal FC is literally ‘Arsène FC’ and that Wenger is Atlas holding up the Arsenal World, which will come crashing down should the man one day shrug his shoulders. The morning after our 4-0 capitulation in the San Siro, I was sitting in a Café in Bromley and opposite me had been a group of young blokes in their early twenties talking about the match the night before. One of the group, who probably hadn’t even started primary school when Wenger came to Arsenal in 1996, opined that Arsenal fans had a lack of gratitude towards Wenger as Arsenal had been a mid-table side when he arrived at Arsenal.
Now, I’m not usually one for butting in on the conversations of complete strangers, but, having supported Arsenal for 28 years, it took a lot of restraint not to grab the young one by the scruff of the neck and politely point out that the only two mid-table finishes during my years of supporting the club were actually counter-balanced by Cup-runs of some repute. This mythical era of mid-table mediocrity for the Arsenal that preceded Wenger’s arrival are about as accurate as Wayne Rooney’s years as a teenage heart-throb prior to his hair receding. It is understandable, however, how this young kid had come to repeat this false view of history, since much of the mainstream media in the UK has trotted this line out ad nauseam for many a year now.
At the zenith of the Wenger years, just before Patrick Vieira was about to be handed the Premiership title at Highbury in 2004, as Arsenal had become unbeaten champions, in order to convey the progress made under Wenger, Martin Tyler had stated that 16 months prior to his taking charge Arsenal had finished twenty two points beneath qualification for Europe. However, Tyler neglected to mention that, just four months prior to Wenger’s appointment, Arsenal had actually qualified for the then-reputable UEFA Cup, finishing in a reasonable fifth place in what had been a season of transition. Not to mention also that when Wenger actually took over in September 1996 Arsenal were, if I rightly recall, top of the table after a run of good results under Pat Rice’s short reign as Caretaker Manager.
The 1995/96 season can be viewed in its entirety here. New signing David Platt, then England captain and fresh from playing with and against some of the world’s best players in Serie A, clearly states on arrival that ‘I want to win honours in the English game and I don’t think there is any better place to do that than here at Highbury’. Our other major signing that summer was Dennis Bergkamp. Therefore, the ability to sign top European talent obviously pre-dated Wenger and, though they were not at any point seriously challenging for honours that season, the basket-case that Arsenal seem to have been portrayed as in the mid-1990s through sloppy folk-myth is clearly a gross exaggeration. At face value, there is also no real identifiable dearth of quality between that team in 1995/96 and the Arsenal sides for most seasons since 2005.
There was, however, a managerial vacuum. Whenever Bruce Rioch speaks throughout the video, it’s difficult to take him seriously as a managerial figure, so one only wonders what seasoned old pros like Tony Adams, Ian Wright and Lee Dixon must have made of him at the time, especially as Rioch’s only other experiences in the top flight at Middlesbrough and Millwall had ended in relegation. This is where Wenger filled the gap; as with his previous experience with old pros such as Hoddle, Klinsmann and Scifo at Monaco, he was able to deal effectively with the old guard, who in turn socialised the up-and-coming young signings he unearthed in the following years such as Vieira, Ljungberg and Henry in the Arsenal way.
There’s no doubt that Arsenal gave Wenger the platform to implement his ideas - very innovative and, for a long time, very successful they were too. However, having only won one French League and one French Cup during his time with Monaco, as well as plying his trade in the footballing backwater of the Japanese League in 1996, there is no doubt which one of the two of us was doing the footballing equivalent of, in the words of the Human League, working as a waitress in a cocktail bar back in 1996. Many do compare Arsenal’s sticking with Wenger to what Forest did with Clough until 1993, but you can’t compare the two – Forest were stuck in Division Two and going nowhere in 1975, where Clough had won the title with provincial minnows Derby just three years earlier. It’s quite natural that many would have seen Clough as bigger than Forest. Our board, on the other hand, have no excuses whatsoever in treating Wenger as bigger than Arsenal, regardless of what the Invincibles achieved.
Even taking his managerial achievements into account, it’s still astonishing to think of how Wenger has been allowed to develop such a superman-complex by the Arsenal board, even to the extent where he was allowed to interview Ivan Gazidis for the position of his own boss. The only explanation is probably that with the board being so predominantly Old Etonian and Wenger being the scholarly type, they accord him more kudos as he is not your usual, average proletarian footballer-type. However, Wenger’s Economics degree doesn’t necessarily make him the Iron Chancellor any more than my own Law degree makes me the Lord Chancellor.
Returning back to the Tea Party theme again, it’s interesting how they and others on the right wing of the political spectrum seem to cloak their ideas in buzzwords such as ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, as if to make their contentious viewpoint unchallengeable to right-thinking individuals. Similarly, the doctrine of ‘Wengerism’ likes to trot out such incontestable slogans such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘fiscal prudence’. Wenger may well be known in the Football word for his aversion to risk in the transfer market, but in overpaying unproven talent he has saddled the club with liabilities such as Nicklas Bendtner and Denilson who are earning so much under their existing contracts that no-one is willing to match their wages to take them off Arsenal’s hands. This goes some way to explaining how Arsenal’s wage bill exceeds Tottenham’s by £40 million per annum, despite there only being a one point difference between us and them last season in the Premiership table.
Recent results also raise questions over whether money alone is the issue. I may be alone in thinking that the squad itself doesn’t look too bad on the face of it – it certainly isn’t the tenth-best/worst squad in the premiership. The back-five has been much maligned and yet at least four-fifths of it I wouldn’t necessarily sell or replace. The main problem is that, regardless of the personnel, once the side actually gets onto the pitch it turns into an incoherent mess that seems to be unable to communicate with each other. Wenger also seems to have dogmatically adhered to a 4-5-1 formation for too many years now, even though it’s highly questionable whether this is getting the best out of the players that we’ve got. There are certain players who you wonder why he is playing them in the fashion that he does. There is no point in selling your microwave oven because it doesn’t make a very good portable television, and only an extremely deluded individual who’s lost the plot would even try to use it for that purpose in the first place. Not utilising what assets we actually have at present clearly makes the issues of boardroom struggles and access to funds irrelevant.
It’s true that much of the reporting surrounding Steve Bould in recent weeks, like most other rumours that emanate from the Football world, need to be taken with a pinch of salt. However, unlike an Ayn Rand novel, these stories seem to be very believable. We did at one point this season have the best defence in the Premiership; the fact that it has gone to pot gives credibility to the stories of a rift between Wenger and Bould on how the side should operate. Part of good management is knowing when to delegate. Wenger’s superman-complex quite clearly seems to be getting in the way of this very important trait. Unlike Pat Rice, Bouldy has his whole coaching career ahead of him and clearly doesn’t want his reputation to be tainted by being associated with possibly the worst-performing Arsenal side for nearly two decades.
If there is any truth in the rumour that Bould ranted at the players after the Swansea match, it may well be the equivalent of kicking the dog in order to avoid an argument with your boss. There is no point in taking your frustrations out on others because an argument with the main man might well cost you your job. You can blame the players, you can blame the board, you can blame the oligarchs at other clubs for throwing money around like there’s no tomorrow, but ultimately the reason why, after 15 games, Arsenal are sitting as lowly as tenth place lies with only one man. The buck stops with Wenger.
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