Firstly, before you start reading this article, you should know that I am not a part of the AKB gang. Nor (as you may tell from the title) am I campaigning to get Wenger the boot. I am simply pro-Arsenal Football Club and to be honest I can appreciate the arguments from both sides of the apparent divide.
I would like firstly, to look at the reasons that players join Arsenal Football Club. I believe there are two; 1) because we compete in the Champions League regularly, and 2) because Arsene Wenger has an almost unparalleled reputation around the continent for developing players. The Oxlade-Chamberlain transfer is probably the most recent example of this, but there are a plethora. If Arsene Wenger was not in charge of Arsenal, it’s likely that our latest wonderkid would be plying his trade for one of our Premiership rivals. Simply speaking, if you take Arsene Wenger out of the equation, we don’t have much going for us in the transfer market, particularly with Champions League qualification this season in doubt.
Arsene Wenger makes mistakes. Of course he does. Is the man perfect? No. Will our next manager be perfect? No. Was Herbert Chapman perfect? No. I, like many fans, have been left pulling my hair out at our tippy-tappy, lightweight brand of football in recent years. It is a far cry from the dominant, powerful, one-touch stuff we saw a few years ago from the likes of Bergkamp, Henry, Vieira, Pires and Ljungberg. Of course the fans have a right to feel frustrated. At the same time, you have to appreciate that in the era of Bergkamp and Henry, it was essentially a straight shoot-out for the big competitions between us and Manchester United. It would be interesting to see how the same team would do with the additional competition from money-spenders Manchester City and Chelsea these days. I’m not trivialising the achievements of that great team, as we all know you can only beat the opposition in front of you.
When Wenger does eventually hang up his…glasses, his biggest legacy will be the Hale End Academy. Having watched the second leg of T*ttenham’s Ropey League tie against Hearts, one thing struck me. If that is the best that the Spuds academy has to offer, fear-not Gooners, they will be in our shadow for another 15 years to come and we will have Arsene Wenger and his staff to thank for that.
The 6 year (and counting) transitional period has hurt the fans badly, but it is not the worst period in the club’s history by any stretch of the imagination. For pundits like Frank McLintock to come out in the public domain and claim that this is the worst Arsenal team he has ever seen is utter tripe. I can tell you, Frank, the first Arsenal game that I went to, was at home to Swindon Town in 1994 when we managed to scrape a 1-1 draw… and I beg to differ!
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