Pain in the Arsenal
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Wenger Facing Dangerous Point Of No Return

By Scott Johnson

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It seems to be the story every season, that at some point Wenger’s managerial career at Arsenal will be called into question. After the period of the invincibles people could point to recent history and say with comfort that winning ways could not be far away, look how good we were a few years ago. Then they pointed to the lack of spending as the reason for Arsenal’s poor performance in the league, and people agreed that Arsene Wenger did indeed spend less than his rivals but achieve almost as much. Now we’re running out of excuses.

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The only trophy we’ve won for the last 8 or so years was last year’s FA Cup, so we can’t point to any period of domination and say that we’re not far away from that any more. And after spending £40m+ on Ozil last year and £30m+ on Sanchez this year can we really say that we don’t spend that much on players any more?

It is becoming tough to defend the long serving Frenchman, who’s complete adherence to his ideals of football may be commendable at times, are starting to cost Arsenal in some of the big games. It is also increasingly frustrating when time and time again the problem with the team shows itself to be quite obvious: We are lacking in defensive strength throughout the team.

But for me the current tenure of Arsene Wenger relies on his dealing with the ‘If-‘ test. I will admit Simon Barnes’ article gave me the inspiration for this but as it is one of my favourite poems of all time, I don’t mind using it to highlight this situation. For those of you not familiar with Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If-” then I will highlight the main parts. For you tennis fans, this is the poem above the doorway to Wimbledon’s centre court and all the players will walk beneath it as they go out to play:

"“If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;…“If you can meet with Triumph and DisasterAnd treat those two impostors just the same;If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spokenTwisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:…“Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”"

Just giving it a quick glance over should tell you what I mean here. Wenger is going through another period of everyone in the club blaming him for the current downturn, and people turning his words against him wherever possible. So it’s not so much that he’s in this crisis that’s bad, but how he responds to the criticism.

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Apart from Chelsea, the Premier League is wide open, and Arsenal have a better chance than they have had in the past few years to move above their usual fourth spot before the end of the year. Plus, despite the awful collapse against Anderlecht, we are almost qualified for the Champions League knock-out stages and the ability to progress in the tournament.

Wenger has to realise that despite the poor performances of late he can still make this a season to remember for Arsenal fans, but he needs to act as soon as possible. He needs to set tactics that make sense for the game situation, and adapt them if necessary. Then he needs to strengthen defensively, ideally with a solid centre back and defensive midfielder; but if not both then at least one.

Wenger is unlikely to manage Arsenal beyond the end of his current contract at Arsenal, but it is in his hands to decide whether it will be a solid one or one that should have been over earlier.

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