Pressure mounts on Arsenal coach
As Arsenal crashes out of the FA Cup and their league prospects fade, pressure is mounting on their veteran manager to shape up or ship out
HE’S spent a whopping 812 Premier League games screaming from the sidelines as his squad battled it out for silverware at stadiums across Europe. In his 22 seasons at the helm, he’s seen his club score more than 1 500 goals and rack up 468 wins – impressive when you consider that under him they’ve endured only 145 losses.
These phenomenal figures don’t belong to veteran Manchester United coach Sir Alex Ferguson, but long-time Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger. In a New Year’s Eve match at West Bromwich Albion, the 68-year-old Frenchman beat Ferguson’s record.
But instead of celebrating the milestone, Wenger spent the dying moments of the game against the No 19 team – a 1-1 draw – in a frenzy.
After referee Mike Dean gave West Brom a controversial late penalty that saw Jay Rodriguez fire a spot-kick past Petr Cech and into the net, the Gunners’ coach saw red.
He argued Dean “didn’t see” the incident – Calum Chambers’ supposed handling – that led to the last-minute call. And Wenger made sure the official knew his feelings as he ranted on the sidelines after the disappointing game.
“There was a player in front of him,” the hot-headed manager insisted after the fact. “That’s why I questioned his decision – he didn’t see it.”
But Wenger has been hauled over the coals yet again for his antics, and was handed a three-match touchline ban after being charged by the Football Association (FA) for his furious postmatch tirade in the referee’s room.
True to form, Wenger is sticking to his guns, vowing to challenge the FA decision.
He probably wasn’t doing himself any favours when, just days later, he hurled criticism at another ref, Anthony Taylor, for awarding Chelsea’s Eden Hazard a penalty after his foot was caught by Arsenal defender Hector Bellerin. The Blues scored, and the clash ended in a 2-2 draw.
W“We showed great mental resources [to draw] and got a farcical decision again on the penalty, but we knew that as well before [the game], so we have to deal with that,” Wenger ranted at a later news conference.
“At some stage in football you have to stand up to the referee’s decisions. I’ve been in football for 35 years, I know what I said after the game, I stand up for what I said,” he said.
He raised hackles further with a controversial comment about what he would have done had Chelsea won the game. “Maybe I would have gone home and committed suicide,” he joked. “I was so close to that.” ENGER has battled through plenty of bustups in his long years at the helm – but that’s not why he’s proved to be the Premier League’s longest-lasting coach.
Since taking the top job at Emirates Stadium in October 1996, he’s led the side to glory multiple times, earning his first Premier League title in the 1997-’98 season.
His team took home the trophy again in the 2001-’02 season, before making history in 2003-’04 as Arsenal went unbeaten throughout the entire campaign.
They clinched a third Premier League
crown under his watch, earning the nickname “The Invincibles” with an impressive 90 points after 38 matches.
Wenger has also seen seven FA Cup triumphs during his reign and was voted Manager of the Month 15 times, and Manager of the Year three times – more than any other Premier League coach.
With him having experienced highs like this, it’s easy to understand why the fiery Frenchman finds less-than-stellar seasons like this one so hard to accept – and why he rode out calls for him to retire last season after Arsenal’s disappointing performance in recent years.
Management is “like a drug”, he told SFR Sport. “It’s a drug that gives you highs and, naturally, brings you back down again, but you want to come back into it all the same,” he said.
“Even if the pressure weighs heavily on you sometimes . . . the worst pressure is not to have any at all. Life can seem very empty. It’s a real addiction, a real drug. You can’t do without it.
“There’s something magic in our job, which is to bring together energies for a common cause. It’s a sharing of emotions, and takes you to places that practically nothing else in life can, even if at times it can also seem extremely discouraging, that sometimes you feel you’re climbing Mont Blanc and that you’ll never get to the top, it’s that difficult. But there are those magical moments that bring you back.”
DESPITE his insistence that he’s not going anywhere, there’s been plenty of pressure on Wenger to deliver this season as Arsenal’s trophy prospects dwindle. The team suffered a sensational thirdround FA Cup defeat to Nottingham Forest recently. Forest beat the reigning champs 4-2 in a nail-biting encounter. And in the Premier League the Gunners’ drought has lasted 13 long years. As the season grinds on, it looks as if there’s no end in sight.
Is the clock ticking on the cantankerous coach’s time at Emirates? Amid calls least season by disappointed Arsenal fans for the veteran manager to be replaced, Wenger managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth.
Largely thanks to the side’s FA Cup success, he was awarded another twoyear deal.
Still, his critics seem to see this contract as Wenger’s last chance at Premier League glory.
“The past few years of Arsène Wenger’s extended Arsenal farewell have brought something new, a gradual piling up of gongs and garlands that have little to do with trophies won or goals scored but speak instead to his extreme, unyielding longevity,” The Guardian’s senior sport reporter Barney Ronay writes.
“Longest-serving Arsenal manager. Longest-serving manager in Europe. As Wenger ticks these marks off like some stately old slugger gamely rounding the bases, tipping his cap to the bleachers, there’s a feeling of end times about this.”
‘Even if the pressure weighs heavily on you . . . the worst pressure is not to have any at all’