WENGER... IN OR OUT?
Mirror football writers’ verdicts on the future of the Gunners boss after the holders’ FA Cup horror show
ARSENE WENGER is under increased pressure at Arsenal following their FA Cup exit at Nottingham Forest.
Sunday’s 4-2 defeat to the Championship side was the first time the Gunners had lost a third-round match in Wenger’s tenure.
For many Arsenal fans, the time for the Frenchman to walk away was at the end of last season. Instead, he signed a new deal. But this season has done little to appease those disgruntled supporters.
Is it time for Wenger to consider his future at the Emirates? Here is what our reporters think.
Darren Lewis – STAY
THE team were poor but the responsibility is on the players. They were shocking.
Wenger could not have fielded a fullstrength team as the game fell between two tough matches against Chelsea. So he had to make changes. To suggest he did not respect the competition by making changes is nonsense. There is a wider debate about the lack of realism with people calling for respect to be shown to the FA Cup when the game, for some, is the fourth or fifth in two weeks.
The focus now should be on players, not Wenger. His future should be decided at the end of the season – I am not in favour of judging him game by game.
John Cross – GO
WENGER should have gone in a blaze of glory after the 2017 FA Cup Final. He has been Arsenal’s greatest manager but all good things come to an end and it feels a bit stale. He should go out as a hero but maybe he’s lost that privilege.
The FA Cup has been Wenger’s salvation in recent seasons. When he has been struggling, the cup has come to his rescue. But that also reveals a downscale in Wenger’s ambition and success. It used to be league titles, now it’s the FA Cup.
Neil McLeman - STAY
NOT leaving after last year’s FA Cup triumph has come back to haunt Arsene Wenger. His next FA Cup tie has seen an avoidable humiliation.
The problem for the Frenchman, 68, is how to stage-manage a happy ending after so many successful years. Wenger shouldn’t leave now but this summer would be the time to make an orderly transfer of power before more decline.
He can’t step down at the end of this season by winning the FA Cup, the Premier League or the Champions League.
But even if he wins the Europa League, he would be determined to play in the Champions League one more time.
David McDonnell – GO
BOWING out with the FA Cup would have been the ideal way for Wenger to end his glittering Arsenal reign.
Now, on the back of the humiliating FA Cup exit and with the Gunners languishing in sixth spot and likely to miss out on a Champions League place for the second season running, the board’s decision to hand him a new deal now appears backward-looking and simply wrong.
The failure to tie down star men Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil to new deals illustrates perfectly the drift under Wenger and shows neither has any faith in his ability to revive Arsenal, which is why it is time for the Frenchman to say au revoir at the end of this season.
Mike Walters – STAY
HE should have walked after winning a record seventh FA Cup last May.
After everything Wenger has achieved – and for his progressive contribution to English football – he deserves to go out on a high. Now is not the time for him to leave because Arsenal are still in the hunt for a top-four finish, they are through to the knockout phase of the Thursday Night Cup in Europe and there is the small matter of an imminent Carabao Cup semi-final. There is still a chance he will end the season with a trophy, so knee-jerk calls for his head after the FA Cup defeat at Forest are ill-timed and absurd.
Andy Dunn - GO
The most damning aspect of the emphatic defeat at the City Ground was its predictability.
You cannot rely on Arsenal’s first-choice team to be consistently good so what hope have the reserves got?
The reaction to the holders’ third-round exit should tell Wenger all he needs to know. Few are surprised, few are angry. Most simply shrug, those with an interest are simply despondent. Arsenal are clinging on to their place in the top six, occasionally play some very nice football but, essentially, they are stagnating.
Adrian Kajumba – STAY
THAT latest contract is signed until 2019 and Arsene Wenger is going nowhere while those above him lack the courage to make a change.
There were at least two previous opportunities when he should have stepped down after seeing Arsenal’s hopes repeatedly fall apart for the same reasons. Now it is happening earlier and there won’t be an FA Cup or a top-four finish to salvage the season.