Arsenal: This season vindicating Per Mertesacker’s claim

Per Mertesacker claimed that Arsenal players let down Arsene Wenger and are a key reason for why he departed. This year’s performances vindicate his claim.

Arsene Wenger was ‘sacked’ by Arsenal. Yes, he may have officially resigned, but this was very clearly the club enforcing a decision on the 22-year manager. Wenger was allowed to resign to save face, but had he not, he would have been sacked. That is the very frank fact of the matter.

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And there was good reason for it. The performances, individually and collectively, had diminished substantially in the recent years under Wenger, the Champions League was no more, slipping to sixth in the table, and there was a growing disparity between the truly elite clubs in the Premier League and Europe and Arsenal.

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Obviously, when such extended and disparaging failure exists, particularly when it proceeds a wonderful period of vast success, the blame game immediately commences. The crux of the debate centres on one question: Were the players not as good as everyone believed them to be, underperforming and failing to meet expectation, or was Wenger a poor man-manager and tactician that did not put the players into the positions to perform best?

Well, Per Mertesacker believes that he and his teammates should take more share of the responsibility:

"“It was a bit surprising for us. He came into the meeting and said that he had decided together with the bosses to leave at the end of the season. It was a sad moment because I had the feeling I contributed my share to it. His farewell was also the players’ fault because we had many chances to get better results. We failed while he backed us all the time. I was the first who felt the need to say something and said I deeply regretted it. It was important for him to see that we had something to say as a team and that we stood by his side.”"

Now, I do not know if Wenger is to blame, if the players are to blame, if it’s some amalgamation of the two. But as the season unfolds and the level of performance continues to baffle somewhat, there is a clear vindication of Mertesacker’s claims.

Now, we are five games into the new campaign. It would be extremely naive and poor analysis to suggest that we can accurately assess the actual quality of these players under a new manager and not under the influences, systems and management of Wenger. But on an individual basis, there are signs that some of these players simply aren’t as good as many perhaps expected.

Hector Bellerin, Shkodran Mustafi, Granit Xhaka, Mesut Ozil, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Petr Cech, Nacho Monreal. Are any of these players better this season, thus far, than they were last season? It’s difficult to say that they are.

And so, Mertesacker’s claims do carry some credence. It will be interesting to see how this debate plays out across the whole of this season. A bigger sample size will provide a more accurate analysis. But, for now, the results do support Mertesacker’s hypothesis.