‘Wenger Out’ supporters were given yet more fuel for their fire on Tuesday night. There were fans chanting anti-Wenger slogans before the match, and even more after. Arsenal’s European humiliation, having now exited the Champions’ League from the last 16for seven years in a row, may be the final death knell for Wenger’s Arsenal career.
March 9, 2017 10:47It is easy to blame everything on a manager, however, and I do believe that Wenger is unfairly the subject of every protest song inside and outside the Emirates. It is possible for a manager to change the fortunes of a club; Antonio Conte transformed a struggling Chelsea into unrivalled league leaders, and in the opposite case, David Moyes suffered the Manchester United plummet following Ferguson’s retirement. But it is not just the manager who controls a club.
Of course, the board’s frugality is to blame in Arsenal's case, despite the expensive move to their new stadium, and the players must also take responsibility. Arsene Wenger’s tactics are outdated and the way the club is run as a whole is not effectively designed for recent years.
Too often are these issues, many unrelated to the manager, glossed over in order to dedicate time to denigrating the club’s figurehead of the last 20 years. This is why I want Wenger to leave at the end of the season – not because of his personal failures, but because of the lack of intent to delve deeper into Arsenal Football Club’s fundamental failures while he is there to target.
So much of what occurs inside a club is unknown to the average football fan. As a result, supporters are forced to blame those who appear to be responsible – referees, players and managers.
However, there are often problems that cannot be seen – club structure, bureaucracy and other obstacles preventing new signings, training methods – which are responsible for a club’s failures.
Wenger is a facade behind which Arsenal’s more intrinsic problems hide, allowing abuse to be hurled at him week after week, as results go from bad to worse, to worse again.
If Wenger were to leave, it would be a tragedy for those who remember that renowned 49-game unbeaten run, headed by a young, exuberant manager with that youthful smile and those playful, old-fashioned glasses. In Arsene we trusted, and in Arsene we may seek reconciliation for our protests.
But for all that may come to pass, beautiful or not, without him, Arsenal will finally be able to be cross-examined, analysed for what was going wrong without the figure of Wenger seemingly begging to be made culpable.
Manchester United was essentially held together by the iron fist and managerial talent of Sir Alex Ferguson, and his mediocre team was dreadfully exposed in the following season under Moyes. I suspect this will happen to Arsenal too if Wenger leaves and this is a sacrifice that fans will have to make.
If United can fall from first to seventh place in one year, Gunners fans must be prepared, as Lenin famously said regarding the New Economic Policy, to take “one step backward to later take two steps forward”. Although the ‘Red Army’ in both cases is initially weakened, their aspirations lie firmly in a glorious future.
If Arsenal Football Club wants to progress, they must take a long look in the mirror. At the moment, their manager is obscuring their view.
Arsenal fans deserve transparency to look past the stoic figure on the touchline and examine the contents of their club. With Arsene Wenger, this simply is not possible.
Joshua Korber Hoffman is a 16-year-old football fanatic and Arsenal supporter. He writes a football blog called The Young Gun, in which his love for writing and the beautiful game intersect