Wednesday’s official announcement of a two-year deal for Arsene Wenger was hardly unexpected, even before the leaks that preceded it; a common ploy these days to dilute the effect of a statement that the authors know won’t meet with universal approval.
A growing section of Arsenal fans have gathered under the ‘Wenger out’ banner recently — and I was among them, metaphorically, if not actually physically. A large majority of my fellow Arsenal Supporters’ Trust (AST) members were with me, feeling that, while Arsene has a magnificent past, his time is gone.
A week is a long time in football, though, and an FA Cup win can change perceptions. It seems churlish — and to fans of other clubs reeks of an inflated sense of entitlement — to want to be rid of a manager who has just delivered a third FA Cup in four seasons.
Silverware is, after all, what football is all about. There were plenty of trophy cabinet jokes aimed at Arsenal through the drought of 2005-14, so I embrace the new reality of Arsenal as ‘Cup Kings’, and, personally, I’d be okay (maybe not happy) with Arsene being rewarded with a one-year deal. The AST’s upcoming end-of-season survey will reveal how many agree with that.
But the FA Cup is six matches; the Champions League is 13; and the Premier League 38. It’s been a long time since Arsene looked capable of producing a team that could last the distance in the big two competitions — and that’s where the problem lies for me and many fans.
There are fine margins in top-level football and whether your wage bill is £50million or £250m you can only put 11 men on the pitch — and they all need to be motivated.
Too often, Arsenal look lacklustre and uninterested, so they lose to far-less talented (and less expensive) teams. Couple that with a repeated failure to prepare tactically for the opposition and I’m in the group that believe another manager with fresh ideas could get more out of this squad than Wenger does.
It’s become clear that some on the board have reached the same conclusion, but the London-based board members are there only due to the indulgence of US-based majority shareholder, Stan Kroenke. It’s farcical that I, Arsenal’s smallest shareholder, have more shares than all the board, bar Kroenke, and when push comes to simulated dive I have exactly the same influence as Lord Harris, Sir Chips Keswick and even Ivan Gazidis.
Statements from Arsenal following Arsene’s reappointment are full of positive but ultimately meaningless phrases about desire, ambition and commitment, but Kroenke has shown his true hand often enough: he’s in it for cash, not glory. I don’t want ‘financial doping’, but as long as the money rolls in Kroenke will resist change: the top half of the Premier League will do — and on Arsenal’s budget most managers would find it hard to fail at that.
Ultimately, the boardroom problem is that Kroenke is in sole charge but he isn’t a fan and has no interest in fans; he’s an investor interested in dollars.
Supporters can — and will — continue to complain because they know that it wouldn’t even take massive investment to improve the situation, just a fresh, modern approach.
The titles were great and the football phenomenal for eight years but, to paraphrase Arsene, we’ve had caviar and we’re back on sausages. They’re tasty sausages, but they’re still sausages.
