Arsene Wenger is a gentleman, but Arsenal need to follow Chelsea model to chase success
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Updated 20/02/2017 at 10:34 GMT
Arsene Wenger's side have become an irrelevance in the Premier League and Champions League. The fans have every right to ask why, says Desmond Kane.
Arsenal's French manager Arsene Wenger takes a training session
Image credit: AFP
In an age when football clubs went without meaningful public relations departments and social media platforms, football managers were content to speak candidly and freely to broadcasters and the press.
Back in the 1990s and early noughties, one of the main beneficiaries of such a policy was Arsene Wenger.
Wenger has always been a likeable coach who had a reputation of being firmly aware of his commitments to speak to the media. He was also always very comfortable with such demands because he was a thinker, a learned man and, as most people will testify who have came across him, a respected gentleman among journalists.
Wenger is the sort of character who will always stop and say hello to people. He is a figure of impeccable manners that this onlooker can vouch for having come across him a few times on Champions League nights.
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Arsene Wenger: ‘I will manage next season’
Unlike Sir Alex Ferguson chewing gum furiously in his rampaging Manchester United pomp, he is also not an embattled figure who became paranoid in his belief that a rabid press were out to get him.
Not that it would matter. Wenger's singlemindedness remains admirable in the face of some fierce criticism following Arsenal's 5-1 flogging by Bayern Munich in the Champions League last 16 on Wednesday evening, a brutal moment of truth about what the purpose of this club actually is.
"I think, therefore I am," is Wenger's philosophy. More Rene Descartes than Remi Moses.
If only the Arsenal players displayed similar resolve in Munich as Wenger in a presser, they would not be on the cusp of tumbling out of Europe's premier competition. It would have spared him some furious debate about his future as a relevant manager over recent days.
Yet ahead of the side's FA Cup visit to a plastic pitch in the fifth round at Sutton United on Monday evening, Wenger did not speak like a man who was preparing for the guillotine.
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Arsenal players and their manager Arsene Wenger pose for a picture outside Islington Town hall with the trophy during a victory parade.
Image credit: Reuters
If you are accepting Wenger's comments at face value, it seems that he will sign a new two-year contract extension in March or April. He will again be manager of the club next season despite the European agony and the onerous 10-point gap between themselves and Chelsea in the Premier League.
"My preference is always to manage Arsenal and I have shown that," said Wenger. "I am adult enough to analyse the situation.
I do not want to talk anymore about my personal situation. What is important is the next game. We had a big disappointment, we lost, and we want to win the next game.
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Arsene Wenger and Patrick Vieira hold the Premier League trophy
Image credit: Reuters
If Fergie had been subjected to a similar level of vitriol, the Scotsman would have remembered those who stuck the boot in. He would have ensured his fiercest critics were be banned from the club's future media briefings. 'Don't like what they are saying, ban them' was the original Sir Alex Ferguson way. .
That is not Wenger's scene. He is too much of a rounded individual to see life in through such a parochial prism.
"No," said Wenger when asked if he was offended by the barbs of his detractors.
No matter what happens I will manage next season, whether it's here or somewhere else. I have strength and confidence to deal with disappointments.
“Ferguson has some other interests in life and (was older) than I am today. He was four years older. He retired at 71 and I’m 67.”
When asked if he would continue for another four years, he responded: "Maybe more, maybe less, I don’t know. Everybody is different.
I do not want to take anything away from Ferguson, he was an absolutely unbelievable manager, but he had enough. He had enough. And I’m not at that stage.
Being Arsenal manager since 1996, Wenger has straddled the decline of the sunset industry of newspapers and the rise of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to influence views while the Premier League has taken on new meaning as an experimental concept in 1992 to the world's richest football league in 2017.
Wenger has been a victim of the growth of the league in all sorts of ways. When he won three Premier Leagues and four FA Cups in his first nine years in the role, Manchester United were his main obstacle.
These days, Chelsea, Manchester City, Tottenham and Liverpool have come to the yearly party to provide searching questions in a league of largesse boasting vast financial resource from foreign lands. Anybody can challenge if they have enough reserve. Or in United's case, it can even be done carrying debt.
Wenger no longer needs to speak freely. Like other managers, he is stage managed in the modern era which is a shame because he remains a fine communicator.
His performance ahead of the Sutton match was outstanding. There was no shying away from the questions or the burning issue. He must surely understand why there is movement for change at Arsenal.
He is running an elite football club that has lost the purpose of being an elite football club.
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Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger (Reuters)
Image credit: Reuters
Arsenal have won only two FA Cups in the past 12 years. The ceiling of their ambition appears to be finishing in the top four to qualify for the Champions League, a tournament they depart every season in the last 16. As long as Wenger keeps the American owner Stan Kroenke happy by qualifying for the Champions League, all is good. Is that a healthy situation for such a club?
"Arsene Wenger should go at the end of the season. The owner has got to make a change. Of all the embarrassments Arsenal have had, this is the worst," said the former Arsenal midfielder Paul Merson about the massacre in Munich.
It’s gone on for long enough. But Arsenal are just a money-making exercise for Stan Kroenke. He’s got other sports clubs. It’s just another franchise.
Such returns are more damning when you look at what Claudio Ranieri achieved at Leicester in his first season and what Antonio Conte is doing with Chelsea.
Carlo Ancelotti has been and gone from Chelsea with a Premier League and FA Cup double. A Champions League has been won by Roberto Di Matteo, who has been and gone. Decisions are taken for the greater good whether they seem harsh at the time.
Roman Abramovich has been criticised for changing managers as quickly as fashion on Sloane Square, but it brings him hard results. Chelsea are a club who demand success, Arsenal are one who hope for it.
When you consider Arsenal are the seventh richest club in the world behind Manchester United, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, it is not offensive to suggest that, with revenue of £350m, they should be looking for a coach who can deliver what the other six seek.
A few weeks ago, Wenger suggested Arsenal fans should be more like Tottenham supporters because they unite behind the team. But they should really be more like Chelsea. The nouveau riche around Stamford Bridge do not accept old fashioned ways in an environment where honour is from an bygone era.
Arsenal fans pay well over £1,000 for a season ticket at the Emirates Stadium. Are they getting value for money? Do Arsenal have forward momentum under Wenger?
Arsenal fans respect, love and admire what the Frenchman has done for their club.
But there is a body of them, away from the manic theatre of Arsenal Fan TV, who cut a forlorn lot because they realise the second half of the Wenger era has increasingly felt like the wilderness years.
Desmond Kane
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