STAN COLLYMORE For Wenger, winning FA Cup isn’t success ... it’s papering over the cracks

COLLY

EVEN if Arsene Wenger wins the FA Cup with Arsenal for a third time in four seasons, he still has to go in May.

Because finishing outside the top four, whether you are Jose Mourinho, Pep Guardiola, Antonio Conte or Wenger, has to be seen as failure.

In fact, scratch that. It has to be seen as abject failure.

And the only two big- name managers in the Premier League who would, perhaps, be forgiven for doing so, with the squads they have, are Mauricio Pochettino, at Tottenham, and Jurgen Klopp, at Liverpool.

I’m sorry to say this because I love the famous old competition, but finishing in the top four these days is far more important than winning the FA Cup.

As Arsenal fans have found in recent years, lifting the old trophy simply papers over the cracks, it gives people a day out and makes them think, ‘Ah, the season wasn’t that bad’, when, in actual fact, it was.

You need to win only six games to win the Cup and three or f our of t hem, realistically, could be against non-League or lower league opposition.

So, I’m afraid that great trophy – great tournament that it is – might be a success for an Everton, a Tottenham, even a Liverpool, to a degree.

But for Arsenal and Manchester City, who meet at Wembley today in the second semi-final, I’m afraid it is no longer par for the course.

Not without a top-four finish to go with it, anyway.

That is not going to happen for Arsenal, not by the looks of it, and it is why Wenger has to go in the summer rather than sticking around for another two years.

He needs to get himself off to somewhere like Paris SaintGermain or the France national job, to go and enjoy himself somewhere else.

He has been at Arsenal way too long and I doubt very much the players in the dressing room really listen to him any more.

Look how the Chelsea players appreciated a new voice in their dressing room when Conte arrived last summer and Klopp had the same effect at Liverpool.

At Arsenal, they have been listening to pretty much the same thing from Wenger for many, many years now and it’s no longer sinking in.

Guardiola will see today’s game as a chance to t ake a step towards his first trophy in England, but, again, it will count for nothing if they don’t finish in the top four.

And, with that in mind, today’s game is not even their biggest of the week.

Of far more importance for Guardiola and his men is the clash with Mourinho’s Manchester United at the Etihad on Thursday.

There is already so much at stake in the race for a top-four finish before we even get to the matter of local pride.

It promises to be a humdinger, with the knowledge that City concede goals and United, having beaten Chelsea recently and squeezed into the Europa League semis, will go there full of confidence and with a proper game plan. And it says much about our game that this afternoon’s clash means so little in the grand scheme of

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