After winning the FA Cup on a sunny May day, giving Arsenal supporters a golden day out as well as a first trophy in nine years, Arsène Wenger deserved this season to show he could deliver more significant silverware.
Far from the noise of Wembley, the Mayday call is of a different sound now ringing in Arsenal ears.
Any criticism of Wenger is laced with frustration and almost sorrow, especially for those of us privileged to sit around the Highbury boardroom table in 1996 listening spell-bound as the new man articulated his vision. The wind of change blew through the marble halls.
Wenger has gone on to modernise a historic English club, improving the players’ diet, ending the “boring, boring” image of their football, overseeing the building of a state-of-the-art training ground and the most high-spec stadium in Europe.
As well as transforming his immediate environs, Wenger enriched the broader surrounds of English football, encouraging a more cerebral style, bringing a touch of class on and off the field. He has been a missionary, spreading enlightenment. His Invincibles stand as one of the greatest teams in history.
Wenger railed against referees and opposing managers, was myopic over decisions, but exuded purist principles respected by many neutrals, even rival fans. The game owes him a deep debt of gratitude. He has represented English football well.
It is sadly almost instinctive now to write of Wenger’s impact in the past tense. Unless he changes, Wenger has entered the end-game of his long, productive relationship with Arsenal. The sense of drift has returned and Wenger’s hand is uncertain on the tiller.
Unless he can get Arsenal pushing properly in the right direction again, instilling a better balance between defence and attack, then one of the most iconic managers of the modern era, and the most revered in Arsenal’s 128-year history, must accept he has taken a club he loves as far as his waning strengths can. He will have to consider his future next summer.
Some supporters want him gone now, and two unfavourable polls run on leading fans’ websites, but any split must be in the summer, particularly as the right successor, a Jurgen Klopp or Roberto Martínez, would surely not quit their current employers mid-season.
Even then, complications intensify. It is a decision that only Wenger can take. Arsenal’s board will not dismiss Wenger. It is too in awe of him. It is too content with the culture of finishing fourth, guaranteeing the lucrative rewards of the Champions League. It is too soft.
It was against all sound business logic that Wenger should have been allowed involvement in the recruitment of his boss. Ivan Gazidis, Arsenal’s chief executive, is very competent in many areas of running a major sporting institution but will he stand up to Wenger? Will he point out the glaring faults in the 65-year-old’s buying and tactics, flaws that every fan can see? Unfortunately, Wenger has gone from French revolutionary to Sun King. Everybody tiptoes around him, paying homage, not calling him to account. It is an unhealthy situation.
If nobody possesses the leadership qualities to refocus Wenger, then the sad impasse looks set to continue. For all his honourable traits, it is hard to see him standing down. He is too stubborn and not many walk away from a handsome contract that runs until 2017. It is also difficult to see where Wenger, a man addicted to football, would go.
Nowhere else in the upper echelons of the game would he be granted the free rein he enjoys at Arsenal. Paris St-Germain, oft-mentioned as a future abode, hardly chime with the past noises he has made about FFP-busters.
If a regime change seems unlikely, then all Arsenal can hope for is a change in Wenger himself. Maybe David Dein, a man he really did listen to, could do his beloved Arsenal a favour and tell his friend and neighbour to see and confront the errors before his legacy gets tarnished.
Wenger needs to acknowledge and act upon the inherent tactical weakness inhibiting the team’s chances of dealing with the more accomplished, better-balanced opponents around. He needs to lose that ludicrous obstinate streak that increasingly resembles arrogance when the man himself is one of the game’s most well-mannered, charming and self-deprecating individuals.
Watching Wenger behave like this, ignoring the faults that others see, is painful to behold. He has yet to acquire either the nous or defensive personnel to come even close in the Premier League or Champions League in recent years. Arsenal will probably still finish fourth in the English title race, albeit furlongs adrift of better-trained thoroughbreds. They will probably go out early in the knock-out stages of Europe’s elite competition, depending on the draw. Where once they sought to scale the heights, they are now happy with the passage across the plateau. Fourth is the new first.
Questions intensify over Wenger’s suitability because he now has money to spend and the team show little sign of progress. The dynamic has changed since Wenger spent £42.5 million on Mesut Özil (and then played him wide rather than his preferred No 10 role). He cannot plead poverty now in transfer funds or salaries.
Alexis Sánchez has been an enormous success, yet it is dangerous for the team to become so reliant on him. Wenger bought the promising Calum Chambers and has fielded him at right‑back where his lack of pace was immediately highlighted by Edin Dzeko in the Community Shield. Chambers deserves using at centre-back. Nacho Monreal is an average full-back out of his depth at centre-half. Why sell Thomas Vermaelen? Why send Carl Jenkinson out on loan? So many questions.
The failure to recruit a centre-half and holding midfielder is a misery-laden mantra among fans. For the 125th anniversary crest in 2011, the club attached one word to the iconic emblem, the word “forward”; it was never going to be “defend’’, a word Wenger does not seem to understand, a concept that underpins title campaigns.
Wenger called his team’s defending “naive” against Manchester United on Saturday when the accusation should most be levelled at him. Such an experienced manager is failing at the basics of his trade: setting up the team properly, coaching them, drilling them, ensuring there are players covering, guarding against the counter-attacks.
His full-backs push up far too high, exposing the centre-backs. His holding midfielder, Mikel Arteta, is no Patrick Vieira or Gilberto Silva. There is no muscle in the middle. He has few real leaders on the pitch. Arsenal threw away goals as well as wine on Saturday.
Mitigating circumstances, such as misfortune with injuries, must be acknowledged. Olivier Giroud’s return (domestically) will help. Theo Walcott’s directness will help. Arsenal should qualify from Group D. But even a good result over Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund on Wednesday cannot mask the fault-lines.
From next summer, Arsenal need fresh ideas and impetus. The suggestion that Wenger should move upstairs, overseeing the new era from the boardroom, is insane. The break needs to be total – even if reverence for his fabled feats will never, ever leave Arsenal.
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