It’s the sympathy that will really hurt
THE first European tie Arsene Wenger oversaw at Arsenal ended in a 6-4 aggregate defeat by Borussia Monchengladbach. More than 20 years on from that UEFA Cup loss in 1996, Wenger would probably settle for a similar outcome as his team faces German opposition again.
Tonight it is damage limitation time. This Champions League tie was won by Bayern Munich in the first leg in Bavaria three weeks ago. For Wenger — poor, beleaguered Wenger — the task tonight is to get out of town with some kind of dignity still intact after a 5-1 defeat in the first leg.
Wenger has been low at Arsenal before but has he ever been quite as low as this?
There have been humbling defeats before. Stay anywhere long enough and you will run into a shellacking at some point. So for reference and context we have an 8-2 defeat at Manchester United in 2011, a 5-1 thrashing at Liverpool in 2014 and a 6-0 drubbing at Chelsea soon after that. It makes you wince just to type it.
Still, though, this feels different. Wenger has been under fire from a section of the club’s support for quite some time and now the feeling of restlessness has spread to his own dressing room.
On the surface, Alexis Sanchez’s contractual stand- off is about money. The Arsenal board have been presented with a request for £250,000 a week by the player’s agents, some £50,000 a week more than the club are prepared to pay.
The issue is not just about money, though. It’s about inertia, Arsenal’s inertia.
From that point of view, Sanchez’s concerns mirror those of the supporters who will arrive at the Emirates fearing the worst at the hands of a Bayern team not renowned for its compassion. Where are Arsenal heading under Wenger? Where they have been heading for years? Have they improved during Sanchez’s time at the club? If they have, the gains have been marginal and from this perspective it is no surprise that the Chilean feels his career may be better served somewhere else.
Listening to Wenger yesterday, it was hard not to like him. It is always hard not to like him. He carries himself even under the greatest pressures with more dignity, assurance and calmness than anybody else of his time.
But within the measured rhetoric were the clues. According to the Arsenal manager, Sanchez’s behaviour can be ‘excessive’.
Meanwhile, German central defender Per Mertesacker said Arsenal had been ‘absolutely not ready for a fight’ during the team’s recent struggles.
There, in an unintentionally damning soundbite, was a window opened straight in to the very soul of Arsenal’s troubles. Sanchez, no matter the rights or wrongs of his conduct, wants out because he does not rate this team. At 28, he does not want to finish second, third or fourth any more.
It is a recurring theme, too. The last great forward Arsenal had was Robin van Persie and he left for Manchester United in order to win a Premier League title.
So in essence Wenger is fighting against an enduring problem that players and supporters alike can see and he cannot seem to solve. He is a manager who no longer looks sure of his club’s destiny; a manager no longer in control of his dressing room.
Happy dressing rooms do not leak newspaper stories like this one does. It did not happen in the past at Wenger’s Arsenal but it happens now.
In theory at least this could be Wenger’s final Champions League game in charge at Arsenal and the preamble has been embarrassing for him. This is the only competition to which he has not at some point proved equal over the last 20 years and this would not be a fitting way for years of European combat to wind down.
Arsenal claim to have sold out the Emirates tonight and such is the enduring love for Wenger that the travails of the last few days are likely only to increase the warmth offered him by the vast majority.
That is only right, too, but the really horrible thing is that buried beneath the applause will be sympathy, too. Sympathy. The great enemy of all true sportsmen.
Tonight Wenger will be forced to wear it like a cloak of cement.