Kevin Whitcher
16th October 2014. Arsenal chairman Sir Chips Keswick outline the club’s football strategy. “If Arsene does not have a plan we keep quiet. If Arsene has a plan we back it.”
Two and a half years on, with supporters marching to demand the manager does not hang around beyond the current season, and the prospect of a plane flying over the game at West Brom next weekend trailing a banner demanding the same, the club’s PR machine is desperately ramping things up to prepare us for the news that the club’s inability to challenge for the Premier League or take any part in the Champions League after the first knockout round is to continue for another two years under Arsene Wenger. They’ll delay the timing of the announcement until either Arsenal have won the FA Cup or, failing that, after the season ticket renewal deadline has passed and Arsene is sunning himself on a yacht in the Med.
Arsene at the same AGM in which Sir Chips gave details of how things work: “We have already lost some ground against the top teams but we think we can come back. I am here to tell you that I believe we can do well and that I’m willing to fight harder than ever to come out of this season, and hopefully face you next season, being right.” He’s enjoyed the talents of Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez in tandem for almost three seasons, and an ample transfer warchest that has either laid idle (2015) or been invested poorly (2016).
So it’s time to announce, through one of the club’s media mouthpieces, Jeremy Wilson, that hey everybody – Chelsea, Manchester City and Bayern Munich have a team of guys running the football side of the club. They have realised that, you know what, it’s a job that one man can’t do. And you know that one fellow we have doing that at Arsenal? Guess what – he runs the first team as well. Yeah, that’s right, he does everything. That’s why he tells us he works so hard for the club, from morning until bedtime.
Imagine a taxi driver taking the same approach to work Arsene Wenger does at Arsenal. Working every hour God sends and trying to do the job of half a dozen people. You’d see accidents akin to the car crash performances Wenger’s team manage to produce on a regular basis when the going gets tough. This is the 21st century. The situation has been allowed to develop for ten years since David Dein was booted off the board because Arsene doesn’t trust anybody else to take decisions. So instead of employing someone like Nicky Hammond to replace Dein, Arsene gets a figure already working for the club (Dick Law) who won’t challenge him and does not even have the authority to conclude transfer negotiations without first checking in with the dithering Arsene, who will argue the toss over a million here and there, something he never did when Dein was handling negotiations.
Hence, we end up with a football strategy in which, rather than pay the asking price for Xabi Alonso in the summer of 2008, after a season in which:
* The team’s inexperience was exposed
* The experience available – Gilberto Silva – not used
* And the latter was moved on rather than re-introduced into the first team
the manager was too tight with the purse strings to pay the going rate for a midfielder who would go on to play for Real Madrid and Bayern Munich for a further nine seasons and win major trophies for both clubs and at international level with Spain.
However, Arsene preferred to favour the first team opportunites of Alex Song and Denilson instead of meeting Liverpool’s asking price. The self-indulgence of developing potential can be afforded at clubs whose priorities are not winning trophies, and at times, it is obvious that the style of play is more important than the result to the aesthetic Wenger.
Finally, the peasants are revolting, and the board realize that they have to actually get off their arses for the first time since 2007 and actually take control of the situation, if only to placate the supporters once they announce the manager is here for two more seasons. Already, they are briefing the media that Alexis Sanchez is a rotten apple that the club can do without thank you, now that the Chilean has made it clear he has different footballing ambitions from the manager, and putting out the idea that Arsene Wenger can reinvent his team and become a hero to the Arsenal supporters again in the remaining two and a half months of the season. Really?
They have also tried to quell the protests with a statement politely asking unhappy supporters to pipe down as there is some awareness of the growing discontent at the prospect of another two years of failure, but the chairman’s statement did little to prevent a further protest before the Lincoln game with larger numbers than at the midweek march before the match against Bayern Munich.
Now we have a statement that, ten years after David Dein’s departure, the board have admitted they got it wrong by handing the club’s entire football operation over to one man. Maybe, if they’d realized that in 2007, and the club had then signed the players it actually needed to compete, a Premier League title or two would have been secured, and active participation at the business end of the Champions League would have been a regular occurrence. Right now, it all feels a bit too little, too late. And if Arsene Wenger takes any part in the selection of the people coming in to oversee the football strategy of the club going forward, it will also be rather pointless.
Let us hope that the appointment of a director of football figure is just the start of changing the way the club operate, and that other new faces arrive this summer, not least a new man to concentrate on running the first team, one who is accountable, rather than autocratic. Who knows, if the club were to announce a credible modern day winner like Allegri has agreed to take over in the summer, Arsenal’s currently wantaway star names might just sign up for more.
