Analysing the situation at Arsenal and deciding whether A.Wenger should leave the club

                                                                         

 

         I have always been convinced, that there is nothing easier than to sit down and write something about your favorite sports club (In my case, Arsenal). After all I am a fan of this football club, I support it with all my heart and I daily spend at least an hour (to put it mildly) in reading and reasoning about everything connected with the team.The truth is that like every other supporter when their team loses or wins it is hard for me to hold my emotions. As the old cliche says : "writers take their pain and emotions away by expressing it in a written form". So, that is what I am about to do now.

                                                 

                                                      Here are the facts:

    The curse of the “B”-s.

That is an insane theory. Arsenal leaves FA Cup, defeated by Blackburn. Before that loses by Bradford in The Capital One Cup. And in the Champions League the Gunners meet Bayern Munich. Three squads, whose names begin with the letter “B”. What is the possibility to be defeated by all of them? I do not really know, but it happened. However, to say that the reason for those failures is a letter is just wrong. But the whole situation in the club is similar to that theory  - it is a total absurd! I have a feeling, that emotions are taking their toll and that is the same as predicting the outcome of a football game by using letters from the alphabet.

 I believe that the facts cannot be confronted. Here are some of the most important ones:

-  For the first time since 1984-1985, Arsenal was eliminated from the two English knockout tournaments by squads, which are in a lower division in the football hierarchy.

-  For the first time during Arsène Wenger’s era, Arsenal is eliminated from the FA Cup, defeated by a club from a lower division.

- Arsenal had an enormous streak of consecutive matches without a loss in the FA Cup at home. The exact number was 34, which is a record. For instance, Sheffield Wednesday has had such streak  during the twenties. That makes the elimination from Blackburn even more shocking.

- After looking at the two failures against clubs from a lower division it is time to examine the situation in the Premier League. The team has the lowest amounts of  points at this stage of the season during Wenger’s reign.

- Last season marked the worst start during that era. A record loss against AC Milan followed in Europe and the rematch cannot compensate it. And I do not even want to mention the devastating loss against Manchester United.

- Moreover, there were a lot of bad move on the transfer marker Chamakh, Park, Squillaci, etc. The list is far too long…

The signs are clear and no one can argue with them. If it is one season, then there is nothing to worry about. But the Gunners’ free fall has been happening for a second consecutive season, without even mentioning the other six long years without a major trophy.

The Lack Of Trust

Unfortunately, the loss of key players, who leave the club, became a tradition. The first ones were the captain Patrick Vieira and the winger Robert Pires (2005-2006). They abandoned the project and decided to continue their careers elsewhere.  What is more concerning is that, the symbol and all-time leading scorer – Thierry Henry left the Gunners as well, in 2007. He left in order to pursue trophies (not that he  missed them with Arsenal), an action which showed that the French does not believe in Wenger’s project, too. A few years later he wanted to be a part of the team again! How comfortable! Actually, Arsenal needed Henry then, not now. But that is an another topic. During the next years Hleb, Flamini, Toure, Gallas, Clichy, Nasri, Fabregas and Robin van Persie all left the club. I wonder if Thierry Henry had not left the club, would they have stayed, but I cannot give an answer to that question.

That is too much of a talent! There is no team that can depend SOLELY on one player, but when your best players start to leave you in bunches, this cannot do no harm to you. And for me the real problem has never been the departure with so many valuable footballers, but when you make a list using all the players that have left in recent years, you will find that they are too many and the time interval, in which they have chosen to continue their careers elsewhere is too short. But even those departures would not have been so much of a problem if Wenger had found adequate replacements. Instead of doing that, he missed on players like Xabi Alonso and Juan Mata because of meaningless transfer fees and salary misunderstandings.

The Failure  

All this speaks of a lack of trust expressed by the players to the club. Not just the newcomers, but also the ones who have been a part of “The Invincibles”. The signing of the young British core (Walcott, Wilshere, Ramsey, Chamberlain, Jenkinson, Gibbs) shows that Arsenal has made some progress in trying to persuade their own footballers that the club is capable of getting silverware.

Still, the biggest problem of the Gunners is their policy and philosophy. For that the blame should be put not just on the manager, but on the board of directors and the owner, as well. The owner is the one who should set the tone and define the club’s goals properly, but Stan Kroenke is definitely not doing that. Playing a creative but ineffective football and using the young players as a financial profit instead of trying to win at any cost just justifies that. The main problem is that, we, the fans just do not see that mindset – “trying to win at any cost despite all the odds”. The whole club is just struggling to establish an identity that can prove to be successful through time.

What needs to be done, is to give a clear answer, regarding the future of the club. 8 years without a trophy is not that bad. Arsenal and the other big English clubs have had bigger lackluster periods in their history. The most significant matter is to develop a working. ambitious plan for the future than can satisfy everyone connected to the club.

But let's talk a bit more about the failure of the French genius - Arsène Wenger. The team is going nowhere and the manager who for so long was a by-word for the brilliant reading and marshaling of young and sublime talent appears to be as lost as some of his most hapless players, the ones who were ejected from the League Cup and the FA Cup by Bradford City and Blackburn Rovers and were effectively ushered out of the Champions League by Bayern Munich so briskly they might have been disheveled intruders into some fancy party at the Ritz.

There is no more pleasure in saying this than in spitting in the face of a proud and distinguished man of the most impeccable achievement and values, but it is only to state the reality in which Wenger has been threshing so desperately these last few days.

It is also, of course, to concur with the inevitable verdict that it is time for Wenger to go.

Ideally, it would be by his own hand, his own decision when weighing all the options because who, deep down when the hurt pride and the angst over the lost days of that ineffable touch and judgement have been put to one side, knows better than Wenger that what he is doing now simply no longer works.

Surely he knows this more surely than the fine Arsenal loyalist Bob Wilson, the goalkeeper of that Double year of Charlie George and George Graham, who for some time now has been railing over the lack of respect for the man who turned the modern Arsenal into something far more than another winning team.

Jack Wilshere, the one Arsenal player who  might have augmented the strength of Bayern, made similar noises in the rubble of something that was less a defeat and more a shocking vision of what the future, on all available evidence, can no longer hold for a team that once adorned both English and European football.

Wilson and Wilshere were running up the flag for Wenger's past – not the effectiveness of his work for today and the future. It is, heaven knows, understandable that no one at the club has shown the least inclination to play Brutus. Everyone there knows that it would be seen by so many as an act of regicide, whatever the state of the king's wardrobe.

Arsenal were for so long the brilliant expression of Wenger's superb talent for drawing the best out of footballers of the greatest quality. Now, despite the constant claim that he has a war chest that, if it doesn't stretch to paying more than £30m for a holding midfielder of the quality of Bayern's Javi Martinez, surely provides the scope for something rather better than is currently being produced at the Emirates.

No, Wenger couldn't keep Fabregas and Nasri and Van Persie, he couldn't pay £200,000 a week for the best of his talent, but he could have acquired recruits that said rather more about his old insight than the likes of Wojciech Szczesny, Per Mertesacker and Olivier Giroud. Wenger is enshrined at the heart of Arsenal's business plan, the man who gave them a solid financial future and a shining stadium and, with the increased revenue from sponsor deals, declining stadium costs and extra TV revenue, the chance to invest in a new epoch of glory.

It is a beguiling idea but if football does cry out for sounder economics, if anyone can see the value of a club creating its own financial independence, it can never be reduced to some endless measurement of profit and loss. It cannot live without some significant stirrings on the field.

Ultimately, the old Wenger could not be about a shining set of accounts. He was always supposed to be about a genius for the game, the point of it all; about men like Henry and Vieira and Fabregas and if they can no longer be so easily acquired there is a need for some authentic quality. Wilshere, at 21, has the Wenger hallmark. He sees so many things so quickly. He can beat a man and take the fight to any opposition.

He proved that despite odds which would have drained the majority of talented footballers of any age and experience. Yet Wilshere can do only so much. He cannot make a team. That was, until these last few years, the glowing facility of Arsène Wenger.

He said this week: "You'll miss me when I'm gone."

That might be true enough, but what will be mourned most sharply: the enduring life of his work, or the memory of what he was?

This week it has been only the latter – and never more hauntingly so.

Despite the upcoming lucrative deal with "Adidas" and the famous financial profits of the club, Arsenal is not going in the right direction, for sure. So, is A. Wenger still the man who should call the shots and do the best for the club? I do not think so and I am not sure who should replace him, but a new face is desperately needed at "The Emirates".