Wenger cannot continue with this shambles
The thrashing Arsenal endured at Anfield against a Liverpool team without its star turn Philippe Coutinho brought starkly into focus the question of why they clung on to Arsene Wenger as their manager. The past three seasons had all been deeply disappointing, despite FA Cup Final success, and the two 5-1 thrashings by Bayern Munich in last season’s European Cup surely told a tale of managerial failure.
Indeed, for the first time in so many years, the Gunners failed to reach even fourth place in the Premiershp, meaning that they were consigned to the secondary European competition.
Last May, in a defiant interview, Wenger ridiculed the idea that a director of football should be placed alongside him. He proclaimed that he and he alone should be in charge. A docile board, defying the demands of thousands of the club’s own fans, duly gave him another two-year contract.
When Liverpool walked all over Arsenal at Anfield, a team which for all its prowess in attack had been criticised for its failings in defence, the Gunners could not even muster a shot on goal. The belated return of Alexis Sanchez was of negligible value; he would be substituted after an anaemic display.
By one of the ironies common in football, and goodness knows I have been subject to them myself, Aaron Ramsey, the team’s Welsh international midfielder, had given a long Sunday interview in which he had eulogised the club’s use of a three-at-the-back formation. In the event, the Gunners’ defence looked pitifully porous while Ramsey himself was over-run in midfield.
Arsenal’s passive board have brought all this on themselves. Having reinstated Wenger with a new contract in the close season against all logic and good sense, they now find he had no intention to resign and none of allowing himself to be flanked with a managerial assistant. Were he to be sacked at this early stage of his new contract it would be hugely expensive for the club.
Perhaps the only recourse might be to appoint a managerial assistant, ignoring his protests, leaving Wenger the bleak choice between soldiering on under protest or walking out on a club for which he has beyond doubt done so much, but which has a team which no longer responds to his tactics or selection.