Arsenal: Arsene Wenger’s Greatest Strength Also His Undoing

Arsenal’s once great leader Arsene Wenger is falling under intense criticism and there is only one reason why. Can his legacy be undone by the modern game?

Arsene Wenger completely changed Arsenal and, whether you like it or not, he is the most successful manager in the club’s illustrious history. Herbert Chapman was a very close second, but believing that Wenger was superior does not make you a modernist glory hunter. It makes you sensible.

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However, we have to wonder what is happening to Wenger’s legacy with his continued and repeated “offenses” against Arsenal. Not once have I ever believed any of the nonsense that Wenger is only in this for the money or that he has any ulterior motives. This man loves the club and wants nothing more than for it to succeed.

It’s like a Shakespearean tragedy. Arsenal is his life and he has given everything he has for it, yet his refusal to morph it into a modern club full of overpaid superstars, which he does out of love, is causing this whirlpool of criticism and being close, but never close enough.

Certainly the situation is not a favorable one. The only thing that Wenger does wrong is he refuses to be controlled by the whimsies of the transfer market. I find it truly admirable and wish him success in this endeavor, but I’m beginning to think that success in such a stance is impossible. He is standing nobly against the way the game has modernized to be controlled by big money purchases, but without having prepared for it with alternatives, there is no other way.

There is nothing else he does wrong. Sure, tactically we question him at times but tactics are a constantly evolving game. No one is ever perfect with them. He cares about the players, he builds for the future. He does it all. But his inability to compensate for absences with Arsenal’s expansive bank vault is literally single-handedly dismantling his legendary start. He blamed the Euros for preventing match fitness on opening day yet he had all summer to find someone to give them fitness on opening day.

“Physically we are not ready,” Wenger said, as quoted by the Independent. “You’re in a catch 22 situation with the Euros because you give the players a rest. We are not ready to play this kind of game and they get injured like Ramsey today, or you give them a rest and you start the season without many of your players.”

There we see the problem incarnate. Wenger’s undying faith and loyalty to the players he has is nobility at its highest form within the game, but it is also his undoing. He wants to see these players that he has invested in pan out and become legends, but the greater they get, the more they take part in other competitions, which leaves them weary and needing of rest when the season gets underway.

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Yet Wenger won’t purchase anyone to cover for them because he does not want to block their progress in any way. That’s the true catch 22 he spoke of. In the end everyone suffers, even the players he is trying to protect.

Bringing back Ramsey and Alexis early was a telling sign. It was Wenger’s version of a transfer. Instead of spending money to cover for the weary, he instead rushed them back. Ramsey promptly got injured and the whole process is undone.

Wenger has a solution to this ‘monetary modernization’ of the game. His solution is signings like Jeff Reine-Adelaide, Donyell Malen and Gedion Zelalem. It’s no coincidence that last year he loaded up on something like ten wonder teens. This year he has added a couple more. Wenger’s solution is to provide so many world class talents for the future that he, or whoever succeeds him, will not have to mettle in the toils of an inflated transfer market. That these ‘one-off’ signings every summer will be enough.

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My only concern is whether that golden generation of youngsters that he purchased will come of age soon enough and with enough of an impact to save Wenger’s legacy. I would much rather see him remain an Arsenal hero than have to fade away as a villain.