Watched Atletico Madrid defeat Barcelona 2-0, advancing to the semi-finals of the Champions League. What a team of warriors they are. A true symbol of hope to the “whole is greater than the sum of individual parts” adage.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to use Atletico’s fighting spirit as a reason to attack Arsene Wenger. Well, not him as much as the entirety of our football club. Because let’s face it, focus has to shift from Wenger. There isn’t a soul on earth who believes he is capable of winning the Premier League and the Champions League. And if you don’t believe you can do it, you have no chance at all. (Look at me, using Wenger’s quotes against him).
Convincing people that Wenger’s relevance in Europe’s elite is equivalent to that of a shoe was difficult enough. But now that that’s done, what about the people who can fire him? What about the people who are supposed to hire somebody better? Let’s face it, if the board replace Wenger with someone like Manuel Pellegrini – it’s back to square one.
Pellegrini is too soft on players and isn’t really a great tactician. His character is a bit too similar to Wenger and indeed, on the football field, you can draw parallels between Manchester City and Arsenal. You wouldn’t even be surprised if Jesus Navas and Theo Walcott, what with their predictable crossing, lack of end product and huge reliance on pace, are secretly brothers.
The point being; believing Wenger is the only reason for Arsenal’s current predicament is ridiculous. He’s a major one – maybe 80% of the problem – but not all of it. Sacking him won’t solve everything.
Put it this way – managers are like entrepreneurs, but even every entrepreneur needs the best land, labour and capital to succeed. It’s as simple as that. David Moyes replaced his backroom at Manchester United and fell to Everton’s level. Southampton’s transition from Mauricio Pocchetino to Ronald Koeman was barely a hiccup because they already had the scouting system in place to replace everyone they lost. You can read my detailed thoughts on this subject here.
Arsenal have a lot of work to do after firing Wenger, but is there any guarantee the board will fire him this summer? Certainly not. Stan Kroenke doesn’t really give a rats ass about displeased consumers as long as he’s getting his money. Arsene Wenger has a track record of ‘fulfilling his contract’ until the last day.
Between now and May, what will it take for Wenger to be extradited?
(i) Falling out of the top four (ii) Ridiculously intense protesting
What are the chances of that happening? 10%? Logically, there’s a 90% chance of Wenger being Arsenal manager next season.
It’s difficult to predict, but if Wenger isn’t fired this June (owing to the above two reasons), you’d imagine the next possible date for his au revoir will be in June 2017. I would be very surprised if the board were to sack Wenger mid-season. Even if we were to drop out of the title race by November, it seems likelier that the club will let Wenger go after the season ends.
Assuming that Wenger stays at Arsenal for the entirety of 2016/17, there’s a 100% chance we’re not winning the league or the Champions League. (This point should not even be open for debate, but I’ll prove it.)
If you look at what we’re up against in 2016/17, there’s every reason to be frightened. Look at our competitors briefly:
Liverpool: Klopp is already chasing big-names like Mario Gotze. One summer may not be enough to rebuild a broken club, so you wouldn’t expect a title challenge so soon. Having said that, they’re probably top four contenders.
Manchester United: They’ll definitely get rid of Louis van Gaal, and Mourinho’s recent quotes suggest he’d be the next manager. He’ll be a scourge to Wenger, play the players in the right positions and in my opinion, will definitely finish above Arsenal. Maybe third, but certainly not sixth.
Chelsea: Antonio Conte is, in a nutshell, a much-more refined Pocchetino. Again, they may not win the league in his debut season, but they’ll come close.
Manchester City: They’ve been building a solid backroom for a decade, and it’s paying off. Their infrastructure is a generation above ours, and they have an entrepreneur like Guardiola to pull it off. Things look lovely for them.
Tottenham: There’s no way Champions League football will derail them. Spurs have played in the Europa League for ages and under Pocchetino, have the stamina to run comrade marathons. He’s built an Atletico-esque spirit that won’t disappear soon. Sure, he lacks depth in players, but he has a summer to remedy that.
And look, it’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that all of these teams won’t finish above Arsenal. Even though the above clubs have most of their cards in place, some will make a mistake and fall below expectations. One or two, perhaps.
But all five of them? Do you really think Wenger will win the league in a season where Conte, Guardiola, Mourinho, Klopp and Pocchetino are managing five very good sides? Lest we forget, the three times Wenger won the league was always in a two-horse race. And if he couldn’t wrest the league from Leicester, he’s not going to survive a potential four-horse race. Absolutely no way.
We’re getting fourth (third, if we’re really lucky), but that can’t be enough for players like Ozil and Sanchez. I’m almost 100% certain that when we don’t win anything, one of them will leave. You can already see the warning signs. Ozil’s body language looks more and more disenchanted, and Alexis isn’t tracking back as much as he used to. Ozil and Sanchez are no Tony Adams – if they’re not winning anything, they’ll probably be off.
Factoring the 90% chance that Wenger will manage Arsenal for 20 years, the 100% chance that Arsenal won’t win the PL and the CL next season, and the 90% probability that either one of Ozil and Sanchez will leave next year, what do the numbers tell you? There’s a 93.34% chance either Mesut Ozil or Alexis Sanchez will leave Arsenal in the summer of 2017.
This – according to the title of the post – is the problem. Few can ascertain if the board will sack Wenger in the summer of 2017. However, what we can say with 93.34% certainty, is that if we don’t sack Arsene this June, we’re doomed. We’ll be stuck in a league without our prized assets, an ageing defence and no contingency whatsoever.
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Often I’m criticized for not providing solutions to my problems, so here we are. The alternative? Here are some ideas:
(i) Sack Wenger as soon as possible and get a manager the players will actually believe in. It doesn’t have to be a popular manager, just someone who has an idea of what he’s doing. Whoever it is, he cannot have autocracy and must have some degree of control from the Board of Directors.
(ii) Decrease ticket prices. Sacking a regressive manager and not pricing out the locals would be a great step. It’s not even like the board need the money. It’s about time the Emirates Stadium was made a proper fortress.
(iii) Sacrifice 2016/17 to rebuild the club. It’s okay if we don’t win the league, as long as we’re trying to achieve genuine progress. Arsenal are backward in so many areas it’s unbelievable.
(a) Our injuries never stop. Shad Forsythe is a superb physiotherapist but for some reason his team isn’t working the magic. Why is that?
(b) Our academy is broken. How many Arsenal through-and-through’s have we had in the last 5 years? Jack Wilshere, Kieran Gibbs and Alex Iwobi? When you compare Barcelona’s, Ajax’s and Southampton’s academies to ours, it’s simply not good enough.
(c) Our scouting system is showing signs of recovery (Elneny was a great find), but it can be bettered. France have a Golden Generation ongoing but we missed all of them. Payet, Kante and Martial were all bought from the French league last summer. We missed/ignored all of them.
(d) There’s something fundamentally broken in our coaching staff. Welbeck, Walcott, Gabriel, Gibbs, Chambers, Ospina and Oxlade-Chamberlain should have developed better and quicker than they did. Look at how Barcelona develop players. Pique, Rakitic, Mascherano… all bought from other clubs. All stepping it up a notch. Why don’t our good players become great players?
(e) Lastly, the transfer market. Our first choice defence has the average age of 28, and that’s with Bellerin in it. Our midfield is facing a bit of an exodus (Wilshere, Rosicky, Arteta and Flamini need to go). We have the best chance creation in the league, but were notorious for not converting them. Coaching our players would remedy most of these problems, but signing marquee players from the market would give an enormous lift. Imagine the impact of signing a 6 foot midfielder Granit Xhaka, or a beast like Lukaku.
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Unfortunately, there’s no real inclination that the club is in any way invested toward footballing progress. It’s wishful and Quixotic thinking, to say the least, to think of an Arsenal that rises above fourth-placed purgatory to achieve something special. And that is why, despite having a problem, we won’t solve it.
-Santi [Follow me on Twitter @ArsenalBlogz ]
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