Somak Goswami
It was supposed to be a new season, what with rumours of this being Wenger's swansong, where he would try to do something about his legacy, but December 2016 already feels like December 2015...or 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011. You get the picture. Out of a cup? Check (League Cup). Staring up at the leaders of the EPL from a significant distance? Check. Drawn against a team widely believed to be almost certain to dump Arsenal out of the last 16 in the CL? Check. (Of course, Wenger, in a massive justification of his £8M-plus-bonus salary, managed actually to finish top of the group for a change, thanks to PSG screwing things up.) Wenger moaning about referees and fixture lists in December when he knew about the fixtures in July? Check. Sigh.
So what went wrong? Exactly the same things that have been wrong in the last eight years and that everyone and his uncle minus AKBs have known - this team falls apart the moment it finds itself in a position where the others are chasing them down. The players must accept a lot of the blame, but the majority of it lies with the manager. It is Wenger, and Wenger alone, that has made some pretty ordinary players massive millionaires without expecting anything in return, much like his own self.
If Walcott fluffed that chance at Citeh, who has allowed him literally to thieve a living at Arsenal for ten years? It’s a shocking indictment of Wenger's inability to own up to mistakes, and correct them by offloading underperforming players, that Walcott is now owed a testimonial. If this was just a stray mistake or even a limited number of mistakes, one could have lived with it. However, Wenger is a repeat offender at this sort of nonsense. We won't go over the long list of names in the failed Project Youth, for everyone knows them well, but he learns nothing from it and goes right ahead and signs more average players on big salaries, whilst retaining average players like Ramsey and offering them contract renewals. That Diaby could take so many millions out of the club and even get a contract renewal should alone have been grounds for sacking the manager for accountability. But no. At Arsenal, Wenger was allowed to go ahead and sign Diaby Mark II (Sanogo) on indecent wages, rescuing him from a life of delivering letters and parcels. When was the last time Sanago got a run-out in an Arsenal jersey?
Having learned nothing from signing has-been Silvestre, he goes right ahead and signs a has-been in Cech. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the likes of Cheatski and ManYoo will never let us sign players that could be a threat to them - Arsenal is the only "top" club directly selling its best players to rivals. Since the club has refuted Wenger's contention of paucity of funds after the stadium move, I am now convinced of my long-held suspicions - funds were always there for Wenger but he chose to waste it on utter trash like Denilson and Bendtner.
Wenger's megalomania has nearly destroyed the club's foundations and has ushered in a decade of mediocrity dressed up as achievement worth the most expensive tickets in the world, while he and his team have made money hand over fist with zero accountability. Others, notably Bould and Rice, in the Wenger culture, have feathered their own nest while disregarding the interests of the club. It’s not wrong to earn money, but to see heroes like Rice and Bould accepting being reduced to putting out the cones tarnishes their images in the eyes of fans; at least the ones that know the history of these two.
Would Bould, in his playing days, have stood for his defence allowing the opposition left-back to cross to the opposition right-back who ends up scoring, as happened against Everton? I guarantee a few players would have been walking with a busted eardrum. This is another problem – yes-men are the backbone of Wenger’s audacious last decade and this is crucial to his escaping any and all accountability. After all, where Wenger interviews the incoming CEO it can't be expected that Wenger will be held to any form of accountability.
The buck has never stopped with Wenger and it never will. It will always be someone else's fault - namely, the referee, fourth official, mysteriously-brutal fixture lists that affect only Wenger, opposition (if and when they dare to put up a fight to Lord Wenger's team), earth, moon, sun, rain, thunder and everything else in between. But never Wenger. Same as how other clubs are perfectly capable of doing transfer business when the window is officially shut (in June, for example) but Wenger has to wait till August 1st and more often till August 31st. Not that any of this should be unknown to any sane Arsenal fan. Of whom, unfortunately, fewer and fewer are seen at the Emirates, which in itself is another massive problem helping Wenger trouser a massive salary while escaping hard questions. The ones who come are probably what the ManYoo fans used to be called - the prawn sandwich variety. They come to eat, drink, take selfies and do everything else besides watch the game. The only time they get riled up is when anyone questions their Lord and God. Then it descends into violence. Which suits Arsenal and Wenger just fine - keep overpaying for the tickets, support the manager while he wins nothing of note, and don't ask any questions. I suppose so long as these are a majority of the fans attending games, nothing will change because fan unrest will never build up (even if the Stalinist club were to allow any form of disagreement in public).
Arsenal fans have been conditioned to accept, and overpay, for an inferior product and on this I must doff my hat to Wenger – he can easily conquer Goebbels and Kim Jung (creative liberty of throwing together two separate eras) put together where propaganda is concerned. Wenger’s the smoothest-talking con-artist that the world of football has perhaps ever seen or will see, and the best propagandists from around the world should sit at his feet and take lessons from him.
Of course, a spineless and clueless media has helped him along by asking no questions, and he ensures that it’s always this way by banning those media people who do ask questions (Jacqui Oatley). It’s a vicious circle, I suppose. Only true fan unrest can break this circle, but, for the above-mentioned reasons, this will never happen. Meanwhile…we can live in hope that Kevin Whitcher’s prediction of this being the last season is accurate…and then we see Myles Palmer’s prediction of 2019. Confusion all around...well, I suppose I haven’t spent 30 years in football so what do I know?
