Win or lose, Arsene Wenger must step down
Arsene’s house – the Emirates Stadium
Arsene Wenger – the greatest non-British manager in the history of the Premier League. Over one thousand matches as the headmaster of London’s greatest club (look at the numbers – despite not winning the Champions League, they have more trophies than all the rest), the one who changed the way football was played and trained, the way players ate, the way fitness was taken into account – he was a truly revolutionizing manager in every way.
Despite all of his success and his glistening managerial dossier, so many want him to step down come season’s end. Rarely do I allow myself the opportunity to be a supporter when I write, but today, I will be the Arsenal supporter that I am, and tell you that I for one think Wenger needs to go, even if we win the FA cup today.
When I think of Wenger, my mind breaks down his time in north London in two eras; 1996-2005 and 2005-present. Let us be fair here, there is no Arsenal fan on earth that truly does not adore the man deep down inside, no matter how frustrated they are with the current state of affairs at the club. Eleven trophies in eighteen years, Champions League football during sixteen seasons including fourteen in a row and he presided over some of the most attractive football the game has ever seen with players like Thierry Henry, Robert Pires, Dennis Bergkamp, Marc Overmars, Patrick Vieiria, Robin van Persie and Cesc Fabregas – he is truly a living legend. And who can forget his bitter rivalry with Sir Alex Ferguson which produced some of the most entertaining matches I have ever witnessed in the Premier League.
I could go on and on and on about Wenger’s success throughout his career and no Arsenal supporter would ever get tired of reading about it and having memories resurface. The point of this really, is to come to terms that, no matter how great a manager was in the past, should that really make him infallible when it comes to the rest of his career? After 2005, Wenger began to decline and as such so did Arsenal. Players started to leave, citing that the club and the manager lacked ambition, Arsenal no longer could mount serious title challenges after a while, and the club lost ground in the transfer window for the top players seeking to come to the country.
The harsh reality of the current state of affairs at Arsenal is that the club is no longer a prime destination for top talent or wonderkids, they have the ability to compete with the spending power of Chelsea and Manchester City but refuse to, Wenger has not freshened up his tactical approach to the game in years and even their youth set up is not the same as it once was. Many will cite that moving from Highbury to The Emirates was the root cause of all of this, but to be frank, building a new stadium should not set a club backwards. Arsenal have always been a club to watch their financials closely, so how come that prohibited them from spending regardless of the stadium, yet clubs like Bayern Munich and Juventus, who both moved to fantastic new grounds in recent years, still not only continued to spend to compete, but actually win trophies at the same time. The truth of the matter is, at Arsenal, winning no longer became the priority. Arsenal have become obsessed with the notion of making a profit, being a business, “winning the right way” and concentrating on developing their own talent to compete rather than buying pre-made stars in a league where every transfer window may as well be the Cold-War arms race, a race that Arsenal have fallen far behind in.
While morally Arsenal are doing it right, is football not about winning? Is being a manager not about challenging for honors every year? When Wenger came to the country, he had one ace up his sleeve – he knew smaller markets where he could find young talent and groom them into super stars, namely from France. As the years passed and more and more foreign managers came into the league, his monopoly on that knowledge fell by the way side. But Wenger, in his true stubborn fashion, did not allow himself to budge on his mentality – he was and always will be a developer of talent. Sticking to these ways have been one of the root causes for Arsenal’s decline in their ability to challenge for the title – while other top clubs are not afraid to spend to bring in top talent, Wenger would rather comb the globe for the next young talent, develop him into a super star, but then inevitably watch him leave the club for a club he can win something at. So often, it seems Wenger gains more satisfaction from being a father figure to those he develops, rather than a title winning coach to the stars he has at his disposal – this is not the way it should be.
On top of the fact that Arsenal prefer to take the moral high ground when it comes to transfers (and now with the FFP beginning to take shape, and the fine that rained down on Manchester City, Wenger feels vindicated), Wenger has never been able to adapt as a manager, and we see this in two ways – 1. he has never strayed away from his preferred method of football, which has seen Arsenal play the same tune year after year, and 2. Wenger has never learned the ability to adjust his tactics during the match so that he could have a plan B or C when he got his tactics wrong on the day. When you are a manager, being stubborn will never win the day, your tactics are not like novocain – the best managers are the ones that can admit they got it wrong, but adjust so they get it right.
The beauty of it all however, is that Arsenal are still in a prime position to capitalize on everything Wenger has done for the club – the stadium, the players who are currently in the senior team as well as the young players in the pipeline and the way he helped handle the clubs expenditures which has helped push them into the top tier of footballing financial power. Arsenal are primed for a rebirth of sorts, but perhaps all that is simply needed is a younger manager who is more in-tune with the way football has developed over the years when it comes to tactical flexibility, the transfer market and the idea that managers these days have to be man-manager and motivators. Arsenal are nearly there, but just like the empire of Alexander the Great, it would have never come to pass without the framework built by his father Philip – let Wenger be our Philip, and then let the next man in line be our Alexander.
For all his revolutionizing characteristics long ago, both Arsenal and Wenger are now in decline and it is no fluke that it is happening simultaneously. As much as I adore the man bringing our beloved club to a place few may have imagined, he is in the process of undoing the legacy that he worked so tirelessly to achieve. Winning the FA Cup today would be the perfect way to close the book on his storied career, end the trophy drought, and going out on a high. And while no one can ever take away his accomplishments, Arsene Wenger is the only one that can control exactly how he is remembered in the end – he can either be remembered as the man who helped build the club, or the man who helped tear it down.