Kevin Whitcher
If you like your Football Bets, there are four bookies offering odds on Arsenal’s next manager, with either Eddie Howe or Massimiliano Allegri as the current favourite. How long punters would have to wait to collect on any successful bet placed is another debate, but there are a growing number of Arsenal fans who are hoping it will not be too long before successful punters can collect their winnings.
Assessing the situation at the club, there are three possible versions of who will decide whether Arsene Wenger remains at Arsenal as manager beyond this summer.
1. Arsene will decide himself.
2. Stan Kroenke will decide.
3. The Arsenal board will decide.
The first option is only relevant if a contract is indeed on offer, but let’s take a flight of fancy here and just imagine that either Kroenke or the board will actually decide not to offer Arsene a new deal, rather than Arsene deciding to inform the board they have to offer him one, or he will… walk out? Yes, if you think about it, the only way Arsene decides his own future is if Kroenke or the board do actually want him to remain.
There is an understandable perception amongst supporters that the directors unanimously back the manager and wish him to continue. My own view is that Kroenke’s knowledge of the game is so minimal that he does actually listen to his fellow directors, and in the past, for example, has been persuaded not to raise the price of ordinary tickets by his fellow board members. So it is not necessarily a complete autocracy in the Highbury House boardroom. Hell, actually winning the title could mean that Kroenke could hike ticket prices with less protest, and the Premier League TV deal means that the club is on a very sound footing and could actually afford to try something different without suffering greatly financially. So the idea that the club cannot possibly prosper once Arsene departs might not be one that is held by the directors.
Of course publicly, the message to the wider world is always going to be that the board back the current manager 100%. Every boardroom puts this message out until they decide they could do better with somebody else. So let’s imagine for a moment that the directors had decided that it might be time for the club to try something different after continued failings to deliver either of the major trophies that Arsene prioritises every season. How would they go about the tricky issue of his departure?
Well, Wenger is feted all over the new stadium. There is no way he could leave with anything but his dignity totally intact without things looking very odd in terms of his presentation as a God-like figure in the fixtures and fittings all around the stadium and especially on club level. So how would the directors choose to relay the story of the end of his tenure as Arsenal manager? What is the best possible narrative that they could present if they had decided it was time for change?
I would suggest that it would be to say that they wanted him to continue, but that he decided he wanted a change himself, to let another coach have a go. So, they would put the word out that there is a new contract waiting for him to sign, even though in reality there isn’t. And of course, mindful of his own legacy, Arsene would comply with the narrative, hence his statement that he will make a decision on his own future in April. Certainly, if there was no new deal in reality, and the story is that he will decide when to depart rather than any notion that the board don’t want him to continue, then the only real choice he has to make is at what point he reveals that he has decided not to stay on. Critically, the board would leak information that there is a new deal waiting to be signed to cement the narrative. And people would believe it when trusted sources who have been told this leak it to the media, who would print it in good faith.
So, how fanciful is this idea that the board might be looking elsewhere for a manager to lead the team next season? They say there is no smoke without fire, and speculation about Allegri may or may not be true, but the quotes from Leipzig Red Bulls manager Ralph Hasenhuttl suggest that the board are at least exploring possibilities, even if Hasenhuttl’s indiscretion may prove fatal to his own chances of a highly paid number at the Emirates.
So in conclusion, all I am suggesting is that if the board had decided to move on after 20 years plus of Arsene, the story we would be hearing is exactly the one that is out there at the moment. There is a new deal on the table just waiting to be signed. And of course, that might also be the truth. Only a handful of individuals really know. Whether you want the manager to stay on or not, let us hope that if this really is the end, then he goes out in a blaze of glory by winning something at the end of the season, so that we can bid him farewell with less acrimony than exists right now.
