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Fans of schadenfreude will find it easy to enjoy Arsenal's current plight. There has been a certain pomposity about the club for a few years now. All that vaunting of purist football for all its obvious quality did get a little puke-inducing. For too long it was like being around a pretty girl who loves to tell you about how good-looking people say she is. Eventually her vanity makes her ugly and she ends up breaking her nose by staring too closely at her own mirror.
However, it is hard not to feel sorry for Arsene Wenger. Of course he is arrogant, of course he won't listen to advice, of course he won't change. He's in his 60s; people don't change in their 60s. Do you really think he will or even should?
Great managers have to have monumental self-belief and not be swayed by the various noises-off that are forever present in football. They go their own way and rightly so. Trouble is, of course, Arsene isn't a great manager and is some distance from that. He's the next rank down, whatever that might be called. His failures in Europe automatically disbar him from being called 'great'. A few league titles don't get you above 'very good', especially as they fade into the distance and the club's decline into mid-table mediocrity gathers pace, a decline halted only by one man, Robin van Persie.
So don't go changing to try and please anyone Arsene, stick with your beliefs. To see him squirming and being attacked for being, in essence, what he has previously been praised for is a cruel and unusual punishment.
He should stick to his guns and go down with the ship. It is the only noble thing to do. To change now and try and be something you're plainly not would be the ultimate humiliation. It'd be like when a rock band suddenly releases a pop record. It feels phoney - a plastic attempt to get a new audience
If the club no longer wants what you do, let them sack you. The whole club is moulded in Wenger's image from top to bottom. He is an old school club manager and is involved in pretty much everything. Sacking him will mean a revolution at the club. It will all have to change. Can anyone on the board be bothered with all that? Have they the energy or stomach for it? There is no sign so far that they do. Indeed, there's no sign of anything progressive from the board.
So keep on keeping on Arsene. No-one at the club has talked of an alternative philosophy and up until very recently neither did your fans. They all told us that your football philosophy was the best, the finest, the most noble, and even the most moral. That winning didn't matter if they were playing such magnificent football. Look how you passed the ball. Oh, the wonder of it. Nothing as beastly as a cross or a dirty tackle stained their boots. Surely they haven't turned against you now? Surely for them, you still know?
Yes, all the much-vaunted youth players have come and gone and not been anywhere near as good as you thought they might be. Yes, you have an appalling injury and more importantly an awful recovery record that suggests it is more than mere bad luck, but ever was it thus.
The pressure fans are putting on him isn't helping. The transfer window panic-up on August was a humiliating sight and helped nothing but he seems close to paralysed when it comes to buying new players. He has to keep saying and doing something, so now he says fourth place is a trophy. Bloody hell, how do you like that for a kick in the teeth? What next, a League Cup semi-final is almost winning a trophy? Tenth is actually the 82nd highest position in the league? If points were awarded for passes you'd be top of the league?
He sounds confused saying, "When everybody is available we have what it takes at the club and we will add what it takes." So do you have what it takes or not?
Arsenal were pretty average for a few seasons in the mid 60s, 70, 80s and 90s so they bucked the trend in the last decade. They should thank Wenger for that at least and until someone better with a bigger more impressive vision comes along and until the club has a board with the guts for a revolution, fans should get used to this new state of affairs. It will do you no harm to be average for a while again. You may get a new, clearer perspective.
Lay off Arsene, not long ago you thought he was a genius, a master, a sage. You don't assign that sort of label with such conviction only to withdraw it a year two later. You put him on a pedestal and you must live with the consequences.
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