Neil A. Fry, Arsenal Audit
1. INTRODUCTION, LEGACY AND DISSENT
Introduction
Before Arsenal returned to trophy winning ways with the FA Cup Final victory over Hull City in 2014, Arsenal Audit had conducted a series of reviews of the management and director leadership of Arsenal Football Club. As previously, this review will examine a particular period, the 2015 - 2016 season, and consider the general progress of the Club.
The question-based format is different to previous audits. In the weeks leading up to the end of last season Arsène Wenger offered his thoughts on the season through a series of press conferences and interviews. Arsenal Audit has sampled these in order to structure a coherent question set around them. One such interview was published on Wednesday 27 April 2016 in the Evening Standard. The interview followed a draw at Sunderland which rendered Arsenal mathematically incapable of winning the Premier League and left a two- horse race between 5,000 - 1 at the start of the season Leicester City and local rivals Tottenham Hotspur. In that interview, and others, Monsieur Wenger offered a number of insights into why Arsenal fell short of the success he and the Club had hoped for.
It was a season that great rivals Manchester United would certainly preferred to have had, now facing long Thursday night Europa League treks having missed out on qualifying for the UEFA Champions League. Manchester City had a Carling Cup win on penalties to compensate for fourth place and the disruptive ignominy of having to qualify for the Champions League. Liverpool, having had Jurgen Klopp replace Brendan Rodgers, had only a subsequent Europa League cup final defeat to show for eighth place. Previous Champions Chelsea finished tenth and didn’t even make the Europa League.
At a subsequent Arsenal supporters Q&A event on 3 June, Chief Executive Ivan Gazidis explained that Monsieur Wenger had the Board’s full support. They “look at the club and we still think we are making progress ... We do see on field progress, we do see progress in the squad, we see progress in all of those other areas that I was talking about [training, medical, recruitment, opposition analysis, data analytics]. With Arsène, I see progress and change and challenge and development.”
Nevertheless, Monsieur Wenger and the Board found themselves on the receiving end of increasing supporter dissent. The 27 April interview also preceded the final live televised home match against Norwich City and the much publicised ‘Time for Change’ protest by some supporters. Whilst the protest did not directly call for the departure of the manager, but was aimed at the Club generally, support for the protest seemed considerably less than the support for the manager and the outbreak of a loud chant of “there’s only one Arsène Wenger” was noticeably louder than the scheduled 12th minute boos which marked 12 tears without winning the Premier League title.
Tomorrow, Arsenal Audit will look at the 2015 - 2016 Premier League campaign; the next day the Cup campaigns, and having reviewed the season we then look at the part played in proceedings by Monsieur Wenger’s ‘British core’. Then over the next three days it will examine a question begged by Monsieur Wenger himself – bemoaning the season’s trauma injuries, he wondered what else he could have done? This looks at leadership and character; then tactical approaches, those injuries, and Arsenal’s operational team; and finally recruitment. A summing up and concluding questions finish proceedings. For now, we will turn to Monsieur Wenger’s great legacy and consider the dissent that dogged the season.
Legacy and dissent
You are Arsenal’s most successful manager Arsène. Three League title wins, including two Doubles, a record number of FA Cup wins as a manager, and you have qualified for European competition for twenty seasons in a row.
Your crowning glory Arsène will surely always be 'The Invincibles'?
Your introduction of changes in the training and diet of players in the late 1990s are credited for helping to revolutionise English football. You've maintained a club now globally renowned for playing attractive attacking football whilst overseeing the move from Highbury to The Emirates stadium. And, with the burden of the build over, you have seen Arsenal recently progress from fourth to third and win the FA Cup in successive seasons, and now finish second. Yet, the season has been dogged by seemingly escalating protests – culminating in the 'Time for Change' protests during the home match against Norwich.
What did you make of the protests?
The day before the protests you also said that when Arsenal built the new stadium, the banks demanded that you signed for five years because they wanted the technical consistency to guarantee that you had a chance to pay them back and you turned down the chance to manage a number of other clubs. You stayed “under very difficult circumstances” and said for your critics to reproach you for not having won the League during that period “is a bit overboard".
Yet Arsenal fans pay the highest prices in world club football, were you and the Club as transparent about the negative playing impact of debt repayment and high supporter pricing as you could have been?
There were still chances to win the Premier League though Arsène. In the 2007 - 08 season you were five points clear with twelve games left, but finished third. In 2009 - 10 you were top with seven games remaining but finished third. And in 2010 - 11 you were one point behind Manchester United with eleven games left but finished fourth and lost the Carling Cup Final to the soon to be relegated Birmingham City.
Were the reasons for those failures financial?
Last season, after the great excitement of the last gasp home win against then title rivals Leicester Arsenal managed just one win in eight matches and were out of the title race, out of the FA Cup and out of the Champions League.
An all too familiar pattern Arsène?
Leicester City had a core starting XI that cost less than your signings of young prospects Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Calum Chambers and an entire squad that cost less than your two star players, Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.
