The Emirates is a stadium with no history, no big nights, no trophies.
But that could soon change.
The stadium opened four years ago but the “Wow! factor” has worn off and the punters have been restless for a while. There has been a lot of apathy and the ongoing recession doesn’t help.
It is, of course, a massive achievement to build a super-stadium in London. I always said on ANR that the new stadium could be built and should be built and the debt could be paid off. As we have recently seen, Arsenal are paying back their debts with commendable speed.
The stadium move was made possible by Arsene Wenger agreeing to stay on and cut costs. He had to manage a traumatic and expensive transition period, and take the flak after he had sold all his highest-earning players.
Predictably, the loss of those experienced players means that the stadium is now better than the team.
As you know, Wenger was given colossal power by the board. He can wear many hats because he’s a workaholic and a polymath and he’s done 25 years work for Arsenal in the last 14 years. He has been very good for Arsenal and Arsenal has been very good to him. They gave him so much power that he turned down one potential CEO before he approved Ivan Gazidis.
Quite simply, Wenger is bigger than the club. It’s Wenger’s club and Gazidis came as CEO on that understanding.
A new calendar year has started and it’s time to ask : Where are we now?
Well, this 2009-2010 season has been different because the top teams have dropped far more points than ever before.
One or two clubs normally break away from the others. In the duopoly years it was Arsenal and Manchester United.
Since 2004 it’s usually been Chelsea and Man United. Chelsea won the title and retained it and then Man United won it back and retained it twice and now Sir Alex is going for a historic fourth consecutive Premier League title.
Man United play Chelsea at 12.45pm on Saturday, April 3.
There will be 75,000 at Old Trafford and it’s one of those we like to call ” a big game.”
A week later, on Saturday April 10 at 12.45pm, we have Spurs v Arsenal, another big game, depending on the points situation at the top of the table. Spurs are obsessed with Arsenal’s success and if they could beat their superior neighbours and stop Arsenal winning the league it will be, for Spurs supporters, almost as good as winning a trophy themselves.
After the World Cup, Manchester United and Chelsea will probably recover their dominance. And if Jose Mourinho goes to Manchester City they might win their first 12 games. There will be even more competition for third and fourth place, as Spurs and Aston Villa intensify their efforts to rise above Liverpool and Arsenal and get into the Champions League.
After 28 games, Arsenal are surprised to be where they are, having lost six games. Most fans are amazed to be only three points behind Chelsea.
For a long time Wenger’s strategy has been to buy wonder-kids and nice boys he can control. Unfortunately, it’s been one step forward, one step back. If you don’t win trophies, you lose key players. Hleb and Flamini walked and he sold the superb Lassana Diarra, who is now playing very well alongside Cristiano Ronaldo, Higuain and Kaka for Real Madrid.
But, all of a sudden, opportunity knocks. Saturday was Arsenal’s biggest win of the season. The game was poised at 1-1 and then they lost Aaron Ramsey with a broken leg but, this time, the players kept their nerve and went on to win 3-1 against ten men. That victory at Stoke suggests they might have the bottle to take 15 points from Burnley, Hull, West Ham, Birmingham and Wolves. That would make it April and May very interesting.
I’m convinced it will be harder for Arsenal in 2011 and 2012. If Wenger’s strategy is ever going to work, it has to work this year, when the competition is weaker that it has ever been. This Premier League is the worst we have seen, although I was not one of the first to spot the deterioration. Some my friends saw that decline clearly in the autumn.
In general, football fans know that all clubs have injuries. Manchester United haven’t had Vidic and Ferdinand together, and Ryan Giggs broke his arm at the wrong time, just before their games against AC Milan. Michael Essien is half the Chelsea team and he has been missing since January with a knee injury. His deputy Mikel was badly at fault for two of Man City’s goals in that 4-2 defeat on Saturday. Petr Cech is out for a month and Hilario is no goalkeeper. Every team has injuries. So Wenger cannot hide behind an injury to Robin van Persie. He told us : I’ve got Bendtner, I’ve got Eduardo and Vela, Walcott can play down the middle as well.
He said last year : If we don’t win something next season, my strategy will have failed. In October he told the AGM : We will win a trophy this season. He looks and sounds stressed because he can’t afford to fail this time.
But now Wenger has a chance to win the title from this unexpected position. He has to grab this opportunity.
Failure will prove that you cannot grow a band of brothers who can improve collectively and win major trophies. The board allowed that experiment for five years and his five years is almost up.
There might come a time of reckoning, a moment when the board looks at this Arsenal team and says : this madness can’t go on. When they say : Walcott belongs in a lower division, Nasri has been absolutely average for two years, Diaby beats one man and loses it to the next, Song hasn’t been the same player since the African Cup of Nations, Denilson wouldn’t get a game for any of the top eight English clubs, and both our French full backs have gone backwards.
Clearly, the board has had no Plan B for a decade. They just handed the whole club to Wenger and let him get on with it.
What does Stan Kroenke think of a one-man soccer club? Do Kroenke and Danny Fiszman think it’s now or never for this team?
Will they ask : Is this the end of Wenger’s strategy? If it’s the end of his strategy, is it the end of Wenger? Have we got the balls to make a big decision? Have we got the balls to hire a new manager who can take Arsenal to the next level? Or do we want to potter along as also-rans?