Wenger: Should He Stay or Should He Go

The only way to radically change this team’s mentality would be to alter things massively. Getting rid of Wenger would no doubt change everything. This is definitely an overplayed reason for keeping him, but who would replace him? People looking into the “he hasn't won anything in 7 years argument” seem to be looking at an incredibly specific frame of history. If the history of not winning things for 7 years matters, then why does that history of winning 7 trophies (plus 4 Community shields) over 16 years not? If we are going to look at Wenger’s reason for having this job, it should be looking at going forwards. Is Wenger the man who can lead Arsenal on to the most success?

Whoever has the job will have limited funds to spend on players, the same way that Wenger has always had. I find it very hard to believe that any manager would not spend money on players if they had it. It has now got to the stage where it seems like brilliant players may not even make the difference. Say we did sign someone such as M’Vila in January, would he have helped us to beat Bradford? Probably not, the midfield we have is possibly one of the best in the league. Arteta, Cazorla and Wilshere are all thought of as a more than adequate midfield. The real question is: why isn't it working? On paper, our starting line-up should be sound. Looking at our front three, we have the top goal scorer in the French league last season, the youngest ever European to reach 100 caps for his country, and a player who, that now we risk losing, seems like he has always been the best winger in England. The defence is a more difficult with our recently appointed captain looking incredibly shaky. Looking at the Bradford game, however, it is not the defences’ fault that we only scored one goal in two hours of football against a league two side… with that goal coming from a defender.

A large amount of the blame for this season has to go down to the players failing to perform how they should. While all of the fans are quick to say that Gervinho had a shocker against Bradford, I would not personally say that his game and Oxlade Chamberlain’s were all that different. They both had a few dribbles that went reasonably well, beat a couple of people then lost the ball much more often than not. It is just easier for people to say that Gervinho is awful because they never said he was that good in the first place. Not entirely relevant to this blog, just a point worth making. Lukas Podolski, more often than not this season just disappears in a game. Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of him as a player on the whole, I just think that he has been not living up to his expectations entirely. We seem to be a team under-performing rather than a team who is not good enough.

The only person I can realistically see Arsenal affording and wanting to replace Wenger (in the long run) would be a reasonably similar swap in terms of mentality and style. Jürgen Klopp has done phenomenal things at Dortmund, winning successive league title and beating Munich in the FA cup equivalent final in 2009. He is used to promoting and nurturing players from youth, and is largely responsible for Mario Gotze’s (someone Wenger has always been very keen on signing) great success. While signing players like: Hummels (one of the best young defenders in the world), Lewandowski (one of the stand-out players in euro 2012), Kagawa (sold to united last year), to do great things. I could have gone on about some of the great transfers that he has made… but this isn't a Dortmund blog. The point is, Klopp is doing for Dortmund what Wenger did for Arsenal, singing players from across Europe that nobody else had necessarily heard of, and getting the best out of them. Oh yeah, and winning trophies.

Another possible name linked to the Arsenal job is Pep Guardiola. It is incredibly difficult to see why he would want to come. As much as we, as Arsenal fans and listeners of English punditry would like to believe, Barcelona do not think of us as rivals and copiers of the game they play. They are far too arrogant and self-absorbed to really pay enough attention to the rest of Europe in their league games. Admittedly in the games that we have played them in recently, at the Emirates at least, we have given as much as we have gotten. But they think of us no more as rivals than we do of Swansea, who like to pass the ball and cause us some trouble. The fact that we had and essentially raised, Cesc was no more than a loan as far as they were concerned. Guardiola is much more likely (in my opinion) to be looking for the Chelsea job when it becomes available in the summer. They have more money to spend on players and himself, a young squad with large potential, and much much more money. They also have more money.

If we have no money they don’t we get a manager who is renowned for getting the best out of players? Someone who is English maybe, has lots of experience of premier league? What about ‘Arry? no, no, no dear god NO. He would be an utter disaster. Hiring that illiterate oaf would probably be the biggest spit in the face to Wenger that Arsenal could give him. He is the anti-Wenger; runs clubs into the ground financially, has virtually no concept of tactics, “writes” for the Sun, managed the spuds and is just utterly clueless.

Sacking Wenger now for the sake of it would simply be a mistake. There needs to be a plan of how to go about replacing him. Ideally Wenger will chose his own replacement and oversee the whole operation… then again, ideally we would be winning every trophy we went for every year, but hey, we aren't  There are no suitable replacements for Wenger, that would be willing to take the job at short notice, which is both a testament to how good Wenger is as a manager, and how much Arsenal are struggling at the moment. If we are unable to attract the best players, it is difficult to see how we would attract the best manager. However, if someone had said in 1996 that the best man for the Arsenal job would be the manager of Nagoya Grampus Eight I would have laughed in their face. Partially because I was 3 at the time and the name sounds kind of funny, but I would have thought that it would just be a step too far for a relatively inexperienced Wenger to take over at Arsenal. I would have been wrong.

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