Gunners fail to sparkle as pressure mounts on Wenger
UNLESS Arsenal can win the Europa League – and AC Milan, their next opponents, will have other ideas – this was surely the last big match of Arsene Wenger’s 22-year reign.
The only way he could stay beyond this summer would be for Arsenal to dress regression up as some kind of rebuilding.
They would have to fictionalise and rewrite everything we witnessed in a disturbing Carabao Cup final that saw Arsenal fans begin fleeing from 64 minutes in, when their side went 30 down.
For the last 10 minutes, the red zone of Wembley was only half-full as the beaten tribe traipsed out more in resignation than anger.
For there to be more finals for Wenger, Arsenal would have to lie to themselves.
“Who knows?” was all he would say when asked if the summer would bring regime change. He is good at presenting his own future as a guessing game, but the fun has run dry, because Arsenal’s fans can see their club sliding fast.
To them, Wenger’s abdication is not about preserving his dignity, or timing it so he can leave on some kind of high. They see a hollow team not even fighting to win a cup final.
The end of Wenger’s stay in the red part of North London has been predicted, demanded, debated and above all postponed for 10 years or so.
As a talking point, it is football’s Brexit – a topic you can never escape, and one without a resolution. Just when the flames rise highest, Wenger comes along with a bucket of cold water to half put them out.
The FA Cup, especially, has kept him in power, but that competition’s kid brother, the Carabao (or League) Cup has dealt a potentially mortal blow to his authority.
The 3-0 scoreline was the least of it. Anyone can lose 3-0 to Manchester City, who won their first trophy of the season without engaging top gear.
It was the nature of the defeat that tells the story: the negligent defending of a rearguard who seemed not to notice they were facing the best attack in the country, and snoozed for all three City goals.
Arsenal were so bad they made children cry. This will be the viral reaction after television showed a young boy sobbing at his team’s demise.
Strictly, children should be allowed to weep at football games without being turned into news stories and symbols of a team’s haplessness. But this lad’s sadness came over as an indictment of Wenger’s players, who were bizarrely timid, as well as mediocre. In his commentary, Gary Neville called them an “absolute disgrace” and “spineless”.
The worst Arsenal team of Wenger’s reign started the game 27 points behind City in the Premier League, three days after losing 2-1 at home to Ostersunds, though they had beaten the Swedes 3-0 in their Europa League first leg.
The FA Cup holders had already been knocked out by Nottingham Forest in another game that raised doubts about their appetite.
At the City Ground in a 4-2 thirdround defeat, Wenger’s understudies went through the motions. All three City goals undermined Arsenal’s claim to be a team who treat defending seriously.
For the first, Shkodran Mustafi was lightly bumped by Sergio Aguero and beaten by a goal-kick that Aguero then lifted over David Ospina’s head. Route one – one-nil. Ilkay Gundogan was then allowed to stand in space and shoot unimpeded into the path of Vincent Kompany, who stuck a leg out to divert the ball into the net. And for the coup de grace, David Silva turned Calum Chambers far too easily to kill the game.
None of those three blows came from brilliance.
They were routine forward moves that Arsenal helped to make more dangerous.
Arsenal’s attacking play, meanwhile, was a non-event, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang easily handled by Kompany and Nicolas Otamendi.
Aubameyang must be questioning the wisdom of choosing this route out of Germany. The disillusion Alexis Sanchez carried round with him in his last year or so at Arsenal suggested a lack of faith in Wenger’s ability to shake players out of their torpor.
At the end, Jack Wilshere was the first Arsenal player to go over to applaud a sprinkling of fans.
He was joined, slowly, by Aubameyang and Alex Iwobi. All three looked trepidatious – ashamed even.
The individual quality of Arsenal starting XIs has been falling for several years. Chambers, Mustafi, Granit Xhaka and Mohamed Elneny are just four players whose presence in an Arsenal jersey could be questioned.
The regression is measurable by league position. Arsenal are a Europa League team now and will be so again next season, unless they can win the competition, or close a 10-point gap to Spurs in fourth position.
The manager’s excessive loyalty to his players is simply not being repaid with performances.
The country watched Wenger’s team aghast, and supporters turned their backs en masse.
“Runners-up” flattered