Arsenal’s Problems May Not Start With Arsene Wenger, But They End There

Arsenal’s problems have been ongoing and nobody seems to want to be held accountable. With so many now defending Arsene Wenger, we have to dig deeper.

If you put together a team of the ten best psychiatrists in the world, exposed them to radioactive materials to give them superpowers and then sat them down with the whole of Arsenal to diagnose what their problem was, I think it would take them a good month or two to get to the bottom of it.

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And even then, I think it would be a split jury.

So many out there are voicing their opinions about what is wrong with Arsenal. It’s a conundrum and a half. Here you have this collection of incredibly talented players – a collection that differs from the previous collection – and yet you are having the same problems.

Late collapses, inability to follow through on potential, sudden and immediate limpness, spontaneous combustion – all of these things characterize the Arsenal of the past decade. So many glimpses into what should be offset by what the reality is.

And still we wonder – why? Why is it that nothing ever changes? Why is it that no matter who the Gunners bring into the team, they can’t seem to meet any sustained improvement?

Well, like I said, everyone has their own opinion, and Nicolas Anelka recently exposed his opinion.

Mentally, there’s something lacking,” he said, as quoted by the Daily Mirror. “They’ve always had great players, but psychologically, there’s always something. They never manage to hold out until the end.

“I think Wenger is doing a good job. There comes a point where you can’t always criticise the manager. Wenger is good.”

I have trouble with this assessment. Back in the drought days, I totally get it. He didn’t have the resources to maximize the club’s potential. He had to throw together a ragtag bunch and keep them in contention and he did that masterfully.

But here we have a team that he put together himself. He cherry-picked this entire team after years of building and still we have the same problems that he had in the debt years. Literally, the exact same.

I agree with Anelka that the players don’t have the right mentality. That’s a fine assessment. But how many years in a row can you claim that it’s the fault of the players and not an overarching problem?

I don’t think that the problem with Arsenal starts with Wenger. I see these players go into complete mental breakdowns when things get bad at times. But there are also times, like Bournemouth, when they buck up and make something of themselves.

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No, the problems don’t start with Wenger, but I can’t imagine a string of logic where they don’t end there. He is the guy that plans everything, that gives the talks, builds the squad and composes his best possible side.

If the players he sends out there aren’t doing what he thinks they should do, then one of two things needs to happen – either they need to be replaced or he needs to find some way to bring the best out of them, as they clearly aren’t capable of doing that themselves.

There is no other way to look at it. In the end, if something isn’t working, it’s down to the manager to change something. Give someone else a chance or find a new source of hope. But you can’t just keep blaming the players when he keeps sending them out there.

It’s like Olivier Giroud when he was struggling throughout his earlier years. Yes, it was frustrating and we wanted to see much better from him. We were incensed that he was being sent out there every single day. But seeing as how there was no other option, you can’t really blame him.

Same applies to this “don’t blame Wenger” theory. How can we keep blaming the same players for doing the same things? It gets redundant and pointless. You have to start looking higher up for answers and when you do, you end up seeing Arsene Wenger.

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It’s not an easy situation to diagnose because Wenger commands so much respect. He has done so much for the club and for football in general that it’s not at all enjoyable to speak out against him. But someone has to take accountability for this team’s inability to put the finishing touches on a season for the past decade and I just can’t keep blaming the same players over and over again.