STAN COLLYMORE Spend or it will be the end, Wenger
DYCHE AN IDEAL FIT Sam’s just right
Fwolwloww. Tew. eurk: @peoplesport PEP GUARDIOLA isn’t here to mess about. He has been stung by his failure to win the Champions League with Bayern Munich and the big question for English football fans is: Is he all that?
Jose Mourinho isn’t here to mess about either. He finally has the job he has wanted for at least four or five years, and make no mistake, he’ll still be smarting from the way things ended at Chelsea and has another point to prove.
Hunger
Antonio Conte isn’t here to mess about. He won three successive Serie A titles with Juventus, but had limited success in charge of Italy and has been champing at the bit to get back into club management. Particularly in England.
That’s three top-quality managers right there who are hungry for success and we’ve not even got to Jurgen Klopp, Ronald Koeman, Slaven Bilic, Claudio Ranieri and Mauricio Pochettino.
Nor Arsene Wenger and if I was an Arsenal fan going into this season of the super managers then the one question I’d be asking is: Does our boss have the same hunger as the rest of those guys? The answer would have to be “No”. That would worry me if I was a Gooner and, while I still believe that Wenger’s team could be right in the topopfour mix, I only thinknk that will happen if they sign a bosss central defender and/ or a boss central striker, otherwise they could just as easily miss out.
That, for a team m which relies on finishshing in the Champions pions League spots season ason in, season out, would be a disaster disaster.
It would also, I’m sorry to say, leave Wenger’s reputation shredded to bits.
It is as clear as day to the rest of us what Wenger’s squad needs, yet for some reason he is so stubborn with the Emirates cheque book.
So much so that it has been years since a truly great player arrived at the club’s London Colney training base. Come on, when was the last time Wenger signed someone and you exclaimed, “Wow!”? Thierry Henry (below) turned out to be a showstopper,showsto but no one realised h how good he would be w when he walked thro through the door. Sol Campbell, you c could argue. He offered great defensive stability. But I still don’t feel Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez or G Granit Xhaka are of th the highest level. They’re very good pla players. Xhaka is the right type of signing, mobile and aggressive.ag But his arrival didn’t light up the eyes of Arsenal fans in the same way that Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s did with Manchester United’s, or Paul Pogba’s will do, if his deal gets done. Wenger could have done it with Luis Suarez, the Uruguayan could be banging in goals for Arsenal now rather than Barcelona.
But Arsenal offered that silly “£40m plus a pound” deal to Liverpool and were rightly told where to stick it.
Of course, Pogba isn’t worth £100m, but the statement that signing would make to the world from United and Jose is, “This is how serious we are”.
Yet, Wenger and his Arsenal paymasters don’t seem to possess that ruthless streak.
Risks
We know he has money to spend, but he is unwilling to take risks. He would take it as a personal insult if he let a player leave for nothing then three or four years later Arsenal were paying £100m to sign him back. But sometimes you have to gamble and pay whatever it takes to get a Gonzalo Higuain or similar striker. Olivier Giroud is a good, but not great, striker, not in the same category as Higuain, whom you’d bracket with Suarez. That’s why Wenger needs those one or two “wow” signings and fast – otherwise Guardiola, Mourinho and Conte could taint his legacy for ever. I WISH David Moyes well at Sunderland … but I can’t help thinking Sean Dyche would have been a better appointment.
The Burnley manager might have been a bit more of a gamble but everyone scoffed when Leicester brought Claudio Ranieri back to the Premier League and look how that turned out for them.
If only you gamble a little bit more, do your homework a little bit more, you might get a little bit more out of it than you might have hoped for.
Moyes seems to have lost some of the personality and aura he had at Everton after his Manchester United and Real Madrid experiences.
And I can’t help but think Dyche’s work ethic, his desire to be watching players here, e, there and everywhere, e, wouldn’t outstrip the e Scot now as well.
He is proven oven in terms of budgets, , doesn’t take crazy risks, and his honesty would havee been appreciated d in Wearside. e.
SAM ALLARDYCE is the right person at the right time for England and I’m delighted the FA acted so swiftly in appointing him.
If we were ranked second in the world and had just reached the Euro 2016 Final, or even won it, then Big Sam wouldn’t have been my choice.
But, as I wrote last week, where we are at the moment, he just might be the man to put a bit of pride and passion back into the players.
All I want is to see English players playing for their shirts like their peers from Wales and Northern Ireland.