Jack Leahy –
In many, many ways, what Arsene Wenger has achieved in his 15-year tenure at the helm of Arsenal Football Club has been worthy of our admiration.
Slowly but surely, he equipped the club for the modern era, plucking talents like Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, and Cesc Fabregas out of the blue and turning them into world-beaters while defying modern trends in ensuring financial comfort.
His achievements are well noted, and no number of superlatives is too many to be thrown upon 2004’s unbeaten season with one of the finest teams the Premier League has ever seen, the vast majority of whose members were brought to the club by the meticulous Frenchman.
Teams consistently at the business end of the league table will always divide opinion – as, by extension, will their managers – but like him or loathe him, serious followers of the game have to recognise the extent of his talents and applaud the legacy he has established in North London.
But, enough, as yesterday’s pitiful capitulation at Bolton all but ending his side’s title ambitions for another year suggests, is enough. What was until recently a club which prided itself on free-flowing team football and a winning attitude is now a group of individuals caught in a mode of stasis, going nowhere and crippled by an angst-ridden fear of their own potential to self-destruct.
At the full-time whistle yesterday afternoon, among the hands on hips on the pitch and the bottles flying on the sideline, we witnessed the end of an era. Challenged with five massive shows of character to at least show running-away leaders Manchester United that they mean business as a club, Wenger’s side belied their pre-match bullish rhetoric and showed themselves to have all the fortitude of a wet baguette.
Harsh words, perhaps – but Arsenal fans are rightly sick of this. Year after year, they make it to the end of March in the reckoning across the board and, inexplicably, lose it. On Sunday last, they collectively cut the figure of their manager: an animated bundle of nerves instilled with the confidence of a dog cornered by a hoover. They have supported their club through six barren years and the sales of their biggest stars and deserve better.
With Stan Kroenke’s takeover nearing completion, the club can afford itself a much-needed overhaul of personnel. As much as Wenger’s admirable long-term-nuanced recruitment policy has won praise, this is a club in need of big players now, not in five years time when his stalwarts have developed. They need a manager who will go out there and splash out on the required one or two bigger players and trust that he will reap the spoils come trophy time.
This is in essence what has made Manchester United successful in the long term. Sir Alex Ferguson is similarly fond of a bargain buy – Nemanja Vidic for £7million, Patrice Evra for £6million, Javier Hernandez for £6million, the list goes on – but he is not afraid to pay larger sums for the likes of Wayne Rooney and Rio Ferdinand. It doesn’t even need to be that extreme in terms of figures, but Arsenal are in dire need of a reliable goalkeeper, a dominating centre-half, and a 20-goal striker.
This will not happen with Wenger in charge; at this advanced stage of his tenure, he is set in his ways. The greatest criticism the former Grenoble Foot 38 manager has faced from the footballing world is that he has too much control over the running of the club, and he is unlikely to relent in that regard. Kroenke can either allow Wenger to maintain the same degree of control or, more likely, diminish it by appointing a Director of Football, a position in natural conflict with Wenger’s particular brand of management. If you want evidence of Wenger’s stubborn nature, take a sample of press conferences from across the years and note the resistance with which he steadfastly refuses to accept fault and gratuitously imparts blame.
Too many transfers need to be made to make this club successful again for conservative Wenger to remain. Without wanting to sound like too much of a pro-United hack, it is a willingness to shed the unnecessary components of title-winning sides which has ensured enduring success for Ferguson’s side. Wenger has attempted in the past to rebuild a side, following the 2004 unbeaten league campaign, which resulted in the selling-off of record scorer Henry, captain Vieira, Robert Pires, and Freddue Ljungberg with inadequate replacement. The result is the current state of affairs: a side bereft of title-winning experience and whose longest-serving player is Manuel Almunia.
In any other country in Europe, Wenger would be long gone. Like any long-term relationship, an ending will either end bitterly or be drawn-out and dramatic. Sections of Arsenal fans will remain loyal and back Wenger to lead the club into a new era so he is unlikely to suffer immediate fan backlash, for loyalty’s sake if for nothing else. If Kroenke takes the club overhaul option, however, Wenger could find his P45 coming sooner than he might have thought.
