CanadaGooner
I have waited a fair while to see if I could understand some of the arguments being repeatedly tabled by those who still support Wenger’s position as Arsenal manager and those who oppose it. After we got dumped out of our last trophy opportunity (the unlikely Champions League), and reading Wenger’s post-match comments and ensuing discussions on onlinegooner, I find myself still confused as to the arguments advanced by those who continue to support keeping Wenger on.. Here are some of the key talking points to date:
(1) Some say football isn’t all about winning trophies. True – otherwise clubs like Spurs would have ceased to exist many years ago. However, I’m sure everyone would agree there always has to be a purpose. The problem is that as a club we’re now at ‘cross-purposes’. Our fans state that the purpose of the club is to win trophies and be competitive in all competitions we play in; our owner and management (including the manager) continue to tell us that the purpose of the club is to live within its means and that we shouldn’t believe the hype. My only question is - what was Wenger told when he took the job? I’m sure he was hired to deliver on the pitch and win trophies, wasn’t he? So, has he been successful to that end in the last eight years? (It’s a rhetorical question, friends.)
(2) Some say Wenger’s record needs to be reviewed over his tenure at Arsenal and not just the past eight seasons: again, I don’t disagree with that, but what sort of average are we looking for here? Do we have to wait till his trophy per season average goes down to a negligible figure? How many years without a trophy can the club sustain before we become an irrelevant (‘also-ran’) team? The pundits on Sky Sports would say we’re already there and Arsenal have already become irrelevant. It would be very difficult to disagree with them on that point, given that we currently sit 24 points behind the Premiership lead. That equates to eight matches! So, right now, Man Utd could begin their premiership campaign in mid-September (skipping their first eight matches drinking cocoa in Hawaii on vacation) and they’d still be level on points with Arsenal. You call that competing?!
(3) Some say we won’t find a better replacement, so why not stick with what we currently have. Those are obviously people who haven’t heard of the ‘law of diminishing returns’, a law with which Wenger of all people should be very familiar, seeing he’s got a degree in economics. Arsenal face diminishing returns in all aspects; since winning our last Premier league title we’ve gone down to only winning an FA Cup, and then almost winning a few Carling Cups, to winning nothing for several years but finishing in the top four for a CL spot, and now we’re down to a right struggle to maintain that fourth spot.
It will not take a magician to tell you that the next step in our chapter is that we will then fail to qualify for the CL (whether it’s this season or the next remains to be seen, but it’s imminent) and we’ll be told the Europa is actually almost as nice and that we will make some money (and could win it), we’ll qualify for Europa for a few seasons (won’t win it) and then most likely we’ll move on to not qualifying for Europa and Gazidis will tell us it’s a rubbish competition anyway….. on and on, and on. Is that what we want for Arsenal? Well, as many have said for months now, Wenger was an unknown quantity when we hired him. We have a choice now to take a similar risk or try a fairly known manager e.g. Laudrup and some of the other lesser-known managers fans have been naming; or we could go out there and entice some of the Premier League calibre managers who already know what it takes to manage at this level (even Benitez may not be a terribly bad idea, seeing whoever takes over can’t do any worse than not winning a trophy). Keeping a manager just because a club is too scared to see what else is out there is a very cowardly approach.
(4) Some say Wenger can still turn things around. Ok, that’s a good one. Now, let’s look at the reasons Wenger and others at the club have tabled so far for our failure to win trophies, and we can see if there is light at the end of the tunnel somewhere (even if it’s an unusually long tunnel). We were winning trophies when Wenger first arrived and he told us that in order to become a great club we must make more money and build a stadium that’s on a par with other great clubs. We all agreed; who doesn’t want a dazzling stadium? I recall Wenger even threatened to walk away from Arsenal a few times until the board agreed with his demands for a new stadium and the building began in earnest. The tradeoff was that the club will have to manage its debts and build the stadium by sacrificing huge spending on new players and keep the wage-bill down.
The answer to that was in Wenger’s back-pocket and it was known as: project youth! We will allow Wenger to use his magical touch that had already supposedly worked in turning the likes of Thierry Henry into a goal-scoring machine from his days as a winger, to groom several other young players and keep Arsenal competitive till the impact of building the stadium has gone and we can go back to normal. However, in comes oil money; that phenomenon that the short-sighted folks like Wenger never accounted for, and with it came something else - the need to adapt to modern-day football, which doesn’t really support the grooming of young players, because, as Clichy and several others have shown us, modern-day players do not owe their allegiances to any club and they will move as often as they wish to any club who either offers them more money or gives them a better chance to win trophies (oh! Looks like even the players realize it’s all about winning trophies….). I have a question for you all - how is Wenger supposed to turn things around? How exactly is he going to do it?
(5) Some say Wenger still has the tactics right. That is almost as laughable as it sounds. Without getting pedantic or silly about this, Man Utd clung on to some of their senior players for years (and some are still there right now - Giggs, Scholes); why did they do that? Because there is something called pedigree and a winning mentality that can only be shared through experience and not just taught on the training ground. After the Invincibles season, Wenger thought he had indeed become invincible, and he cleared out the majority of the experienced players we had at the time and filled those key positions with a bunch of kids. These kids soon got demotivated and that was that. No senior shoulders to lean on and no experience to count on. Our tactics against Bolton and other physical sides in the league was to have a right moan after each defeat or dropped point, and we did nothing about adopting a different tactic when playing those teams. Long ball after long ball got goals for Kevin Davies against Arsenal, and that era was quickly followed by long throw-ins from Rory Delap as we dropped point after point against Stoke and Wenger continued to moan. To date, not a lot has changed; we have remained a spineless side that drops points at will (and not just to decent teams, but to any team with the desire to win; Bradford, Blackburn……). Wenger has refused to move with the times, so, we will continue to struggle in key games.
(6) Some say a new manager won’t fare any better because of Gazidis and the board. There’s some truth to this, but we can’t do much worse than finishing empty-handed for yet another season, can we? Yes, the club’s current owner has turned the club into a business and we’re no longer a football club per se. But imminently, when the club’s value dips appreciably, because we’re no longer seen as a serious football club and supporters refuse to buy merchandise and begin avoiding matches, the board and owner will either sell to a more motivated (football-minded) owner who will most likely get rid of Wenger; or Wenger will at that time come out and blame the current board for the club’s demise and he’ll get back to focusing on football and we’ll be back competing and eventually start winning again. But what are the chances this owner and board will depart anytime soon? I say we have a better chance of trying a new manager and showing the board they can make even more money if we go back to winning trophies (more fans, more merchandise sales etc.). Again, it’s a tricky argument, as the current owner/board are raking it in now anyway (and so is Wenger).
Anyway, I’ll leave you all with the above thoughts and questions. Perhaps some of our fellow fans who still want Wenger in place can share other logical ideas that will convince us all that eight years without a trophy isn’t so bad and Wenger should remain at the helm for many more years
