Decision time looms for Wenger’s weakest links

This Sunday, April 10, our season will either grind to a familiar but necessary end depending on the outcome of the game against Blackpool. Or we live to fight again.  Whatever slim hopes Gooners everywhere have of us resurrecting our title aspirations, will either be boosted or buried for good on Sunday.

With us lying seven points behind Manchester United, Sunday’s game will determine whether this season was another false dawn or the sum of all our expectations. Arsene Wenger, more than anyone else, knows it. I’m not too sure if all members of his pampered ensemble realize it, or actually care enough. Players the world over know that no clubside ever clears the deck of its entire playing staff in the consequence of failure. Rather, it is always the coach or manager who gets the chop while the players ride through the carnage.

Well, we all know that  at Arsenal FC, Wenger is too important, too spinal, too fundamental to the fate and direction of the club to be sacked because of the failings of players. He towers over and above the entire club and its kow-towing directors. Forget Ivan Gazidis. Forget the five-man board. They all owe their fat allowances and sumptous annual dividends to the genius and vision of Wenger. In the particular case of Gazidis, he must be the only football club CEO in the world, who was handpicked by the coach. So clearly, there won’t be anyone calling for the head of the coach of Arsenal FC, if our trophy barrenness enters its seventh season.

Forever crocked....perennially fragile Rosicky succumbs to yet another injury

Rather, it is the players who may bear the brunt of another disappointing campaign. Of course, no wholesale,  firesale will be happening, but surely Wenger has to act to save both his reputation and avoid alienating the fans. That action will surely mean that some players, identified as perennial under-performers, will have to be moved on.

Already, the players must know who they are. Serial scapegoats such as Denilson, Manuel Almunia, Nicklas Bendtner and Emmanuel Eboue must be high on that list. Already, there is talk that Eboue is attracting interest from Tottenham Hotspurs. Well, it is just that – talk. But it is an indicator of who will be leaving the club as the transfer window swings open in June.

It doesn’t need a rocket scientist to identify that we have always been three-four players short all season. It was why we lost to the Carling Cup final to ‘little’ Birmingham, soon as a couple of key players succumbed to injuries. It was also why we got flogged by Barcelona and also why Man Utd ended our FA Cup dreams. Soon as the likes of Alex Song, Wojciech Szczensy, Theo Walcott and Cesc Fabregas – all starters – were knocked out by injuries, we never had capable replacements to fill their large boots. In the space of three weeks, the mythical ‘quadruple’ dream shrunk to a ‘singleple’ – if there’s any such word.

Since the weekend of January, we’ve staggered around like a bunch of drunken sailors. Goals have dried up and the players have lost their collective self-belief.

Martin Keown, an ex-player who has an inkling into what goes on behind Wenger’s ever tightly-shut doors at the Emirates, put it best during the week, just after the cowardly draw against Blackburn last Saturday. His words:

"The fans have become disenchanted with certain areas of the team and they want players to be replaced. But the club went with a five-year plan to invest in youth because of the constraints of building the Emirates Stadium. However, if the players don't win the league this year, there will be more money ploughed in. And there's nobody I'd sooner have spending money than Arsene Wenger because he spends wisely. He hasn't really been able to compete because of the demands of the new stadium but that must be changing now. I know from experience that Wenger invests a certain amount of time in you as a player and once he feels you are at the end of the line he gets someone else in to do the job."

Well said by Martin. And despite what may happen to the league title, Wenger must know that some of his well-trusted players don’t give a toss about the directions and aspirations of the club.

Now, clearly the under-pressure Alsatian is fast losing his aura of invincibility and endless latitude with the fans who have stayed faithful since he arrived here in 1996. That, simply put cannot be allowed to happen. Not even the bootlicking board members can stand up for him if the fans turn against him.

Which is why some of Wenger’s very-trusted players will have to pay the price and look for new employment elsewhere, regardless of whether we win the ‘singleple’ or not.

On a last note, add Tomas Rosicky to the afore-mentioned list.

Tottenham, Tony Adams, Martin Keown

It was not just the defeat against Tottenham that rankled the nerve. Two weeks after, I still seethe at the events of November 20.
All teams, even the Barcelonas of this world do lose. Long as you decide to subject yourself to the emotional tupsy-turvy of sports, you are condemned to both the depths of depression in defeat as well as the heights of success in victory.
It was not the loss to our bitter rivals on a day when we had all the motivation in the world to win – topping the log.
It wasn’t the loss to a fellow North London clubside who have been in our shadows for almost eternity.
It wasn’t the loss at all, Mr Wenger.
The pain and anguish of it all was in the manner of the defeat.
What happened at lunchtime on the afternoon of Saturday, November 20 was an embarrassment of unbelievable proportions. It was also a betrayal. It was a slap in face. A kick in the guts. It was a mockery of everything that this great club has stood for in its 124 year history.
Mr Wenger and his players spat in our faces with a performance that would have passed as a fantastic early Christmas pantomime if it wasn’t so personal. And so real.
It was not just a defeat.
It was seismic. It was a watershed in our trusty and reverential regard for Mr Wenger. How could a man so respected and celebrated in this most-fickle of sports, assemble a side so lacking in the understanding of basic dos and donts?
It was not just the defeat that was the issue. It was, as mentioned earlier, the totally gutless way by which we handed over three points to a visiting team who didn’t deserve a point for all their afternoon’s work.
Can you ever imagine Manchester United or Chelsea throwing away a two-goal lead at home? The whole universe will implode first before that happens. And these are the teams we are supposedly vying for honours with - year in, year out.
Yet after the sideline tantrums of smashing drinking bottles, executed in full view of millions around the world, Mr Wenger still had the gumption to try to explain away this disgrace by claiming his players were suffering from fatigue. It sounded hollow as it was trite.
Then three days later against a very ordinary Braga side, with seven new faces to replace the ‘fatigued’ lot, we bottled it again.
Fatigue indeed. I would love to suffer fatigue if I get paid a fraction of what his players earn.
Mr Wenger fiddled – as usual – with our collective intelligence even more by later announcing that he himself was “giving every drop of his blood” to help this team achieve success. It was a statement dripping with the dramatic.


“I want so much for this team to win that I am giving every drop of my blood to make sure that they win. I want them to be successful because they deserve it and it hurts when you get so close as you did on Saturday and you don't manage to do it.”

Sadly, he needn’t go that far to show us how much misplaced our trust in him has been all along.
Why tell us he’s shedding blood? No one hired him to come to Arsenal to shed blood. The job of managing the biggest club in Europe’s biggest city surely does not require the skills of an abattoir manager. He was never asked to butcher anyone and draw blood, so the analogy of giving every drop of his own blood was very unnecessary. If he had talked about the millions of pounds paid to him every year to perform, I would have taken him more seriously.
All he was asked to do; all we ever wanted him to do, was to sign on players who would wear the shirt with pride, with spirit, with passion and perform likewise when selected. It is expected that such players would wear our colours with fire in their bellies and would be willing to shed a few pints of precious blood in the quest for victory.
Along the way of course, such players lucky enough to be called Gunners, would not be poorer for their efforts.
All that would have been explained in black and white. On paper. In the name of a document called a contract.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Yet after 14 years of Wengersque, it seems this expectation now looks beyond our reverred manager. Gone from the club is the aura of the Invincibles. Gone are trojans like Steve Bould, Tony Adams, Patrick Vieira and even Dennis Bergkamp. In place are musketeers; pretenders to the shirt. All of them bought, reared and supervised by Wenger.
It is quite interesting that this week, rumblings are emerging from another London club, who happen to be league champions, about the erosion of their manager’s powers. At exactly the same time, one of the most powerful managers in world soccer, Arsene Wenger cannot administer his absolute autocracy. Instead, he has been exposed as an emperor without clothes. So much power, so little results to show for it.
I still respect Wenger for all he has done for this great club. His time here has been epochal and I doubt if any other human being can wrought all the changes he brought about.
But for everyone and everything, there is a time and a season.
For five years now the great club that Arsenal is, has either been static or been moving backwards. It may be that the time has come to push it forward and Wenger looks short of ideas on how to go about that.
Tottenham themselves were caught in an unending morass of perpetual underachievement for so long, until they chanced upon the solution represented by Harry Redknapp.
There can’t be any shame in learning from them and change things at the top. It emerged during the week, that Pat Rice, Wenger’s man Friday will be calling it quits at the end of the season. It will be a great chance to usher in hardmen like Martin Koewn or Tony Admas as Wenger’s assistant.
In case he’s forgotten amidst his penchant for mind games and treble-speak, Arsenal football club boasts over 27million proud supporters worldwide; is ranked the third most-valuable and richest club in the world; and is worth over $1.2billion.
Yes, he himself has contributed to all those accolades, but as with time and seasons, even him cannot be bigger than the club.
Things have settled down a bit since November 20 considering the wins over Aston Villa and Wigan. Nonetheless, it hasn’t masked the flaws of lack of concentration; naïve defending and inconsistency that have marked our season so far.
Mr Wenger in case you are reading this, never let your bunch forget that we are still the pride of London. Never.