Mark Halfpenny
During the 2012 London Olympics, 4th place was the one that nobody wanted. Fast forward 10 months however, and it is the only position occupying the minds of Arsenal’s manager and Board of Directors, because once again we’re in the merry month of May with no chance of silverware and the only thing left to play for is the Groundhog Day Trophy.
Many Gooners I speak to are sick to death of this “4th place is success” nonsense. Our on-field decline and chronic mis-management since 2006 has left us light years away from having a squad that could win the Premier or Champions League. The Club’s primary objective is Champions League qualification but participation in the tournament no longer excites most fans as it serves only to enrich Kroenke, Wenger and Gazidis.
The endless cycle of high priced stagnation has become –
• Beat enough smaller teams to scrape into 4th;
• Try to claim 4th as a great success;
• Stroll through an uninspiring Champions League group;
• Get rogered royally in the Round of 16;
• Scrape into 4th again;
• Repeat ad nauseum.
Our recent European record makes grim and repetitive reading:-
2007 – Round of 16. Limped out to PSV Eindhoven, managing only 1 goal in 180 minutes
2008 – ¼ final. Shot ourselves in both feet at Anfield, conceding 2 goals in the last 5 minutes
2009 – ½ final. Totally outclassed by Man Utd. Lost 0-1 away and 1-3 at home.
2010 – ¼ final. Outclassed by Barcelona. 6-3 on aggregate.
2011 – Round of 16. Outclassed yet again by Barcelona, becoming the only team in CL history not to have a shot on goal during a match.
2012 – Round of 16. Unable to recover from a 4-0 thumping in Milan.
2013 – Round of 16. Unable to recover from a 1-3 battering by Bayern Munich.
All in all, Arsène Wenger’s European record is poor. Even though we qualify every year, only to reach one final in 16 attempts surely cannot be judged a success. Even Bill Murray finally realised that the only way to get out of Punxsutawney was to change the way he was doing things.
But will Wenger change? Will Kroenke change? All the evidence suggests that they won’t, despite the fact that our manager never misses a chance to claim that Champions League football will attract stellar names to Arsenal. By saying that, he demonstrates that he knows we need such players to compete but - stellar names are Franck Ribery, Javi Martinez, Mario Gotze or Neven Subotic, not Gervinho, Giroud or Arteta (the Spanish Ray Wilkins).
Finishing 4th would be the worst thing that could happen because it will be accompanied by a barrage of self-congratulatory bullshit from Wenger and the Board telling us what a great achievement it was, before they put the prices up and carry on in their enormous comfort zone.
Arsenal is a huge Club and unless we invest to win the Champions League, what is the point of being in it? We should be competing for the big trophies, rather than sitting back and collecting profits. Ferguson never, ever accepted 2nd place and whenever his team fell short he did whatever was necessary to outdo any challengers. What does our manager do? Says that he will happily accept 2nd place for the next 20 years.
So despite being an ardent Gooner for well over 30 years, I won’t lose any sleep if we finish 5th. Let’s face it, we’re not going to win the Champions League as our manager won’t / can’t buy the players necessary. Even the argument that “if we fail, Spurs get the CL slot” shows just how small minded many of our supporters have become. For years we laughed at Spurs because of the way they revelled in our occasional defeats; well that’s what many Gooners are turning into and we should be much, much better than that.
Arsenal won the league unbeaten less than a decade ago, followed 2 years later by a water-tight run to the Champions League final. Wenger deserves enormous credit for that but those achievements are history. Football has changed but he hasn’t and he now presides over a Club that is scrapping for the leftovers with Spurs and Everton.
What we need is either a complete change of leadership or a total change of direction but finishing 4th will simply ensure that we remain locked into the cycle of high-priced mediocrity. If they want a couple of thousand pounds a season from each of us, that is not good enough.
