Some of my friends think Wenger won’t buy experience in the next four weeks.
I reckon he will. I’m 100% sure he will.
Why? Because he wants to keep his job. Because last season was terrible and traumatic and doesn’t want another season like the last one.
The crowd booed Eboue and Adebayor, so he decided to sell both players. He realised that the crowd were booing him as well as the two unpopular Africans.
He played at Man United in the Champions League semi first leg and was lucky to lose by only 1-0 and said “You’ll see a different Arsenal in the second leg.”
But he was thrashed in the second leg 3-1.People were leaving after 10 minutes, after 15 minutes. His credibility was in tatters. His credibility was lower than it had ever been before, especially since those semi-finals started 11 days after Wembley, where he dropped Arshavin for the FA Cup semi and lost 2-1 to Chelsea.
I wasn’t surprised that he lost 4-1 on aggregate to Man United. The Arsenal team without Arshavin WAS three goals inferior to a Man United team with Cristiano Ronaldo. But I was stunned when he dropped the Russian for the Chelsea semi. Every Gooner felt staggered and betrayed by the manager’s crazy, self-defeating team selection.
Wenger’s done great things and brilliant things and silly things and mad things but dropping one of the five best players in the world for his biggest game of the season, in the only tournament he had a chance of winning, was really, really bonkers, a colossal error.
On the Richter Scale of Managerial Own-Goals you’d give it a 9.9.
Years ago George Graham switched Lee Dixon to midfield to mark a 17-year old Irish kid playing for Nottingham Forest.The kid was a very good box-to-box goalscorer, the best teenager anybody had seen for years, but you don’t change the best back four in football in a home game like that. I gave George’s mistake a 7.2 on the Richter Scale. The kid’s name was Roy Keane
Media-wise, things have been getting a bit strange of late.
Radio 5 Live gave airtime to Farhad Moshiri, Usmanov’s partner, and repeated part of his interview a few days later. Demand for tickets has been soft and getting softer. We now hear stories about the box office offering season tickets to people on the waiting list whose financial circumstances have changed since they went on the waiting list. So there are deals on offer. One punter was told he could buy two season tickets for £2,300 and defer payment for nine months.
This is a big season.
We say that every year and mean it but this is a BIG, BIG SEASON. I just saw my mate Alex Fynn, the author, on Sky Sports News, saying that if the manager doesn’t win something it could be au revoir. The stakes are high now. Wenger has never started a season in these circumstances.
At Arsenal, the fans want to win a trophy. The players want to win trophies. Fabregas and Arshavin and Sagna want medals and glory. So the fans and players want the same thing : silverware.
But the board want to make a profit. The board want to balance the books. Bottom line, the board don’t want what the fans and players want. It suits them to be also-rans. That’s how I would sum it up.
The board are still amazed by their own audacity in building a new stadium and turning the old stadium into flats.
They love Wenger because he takes pressure off them and balances the books. He keeps the Champions League money coming in, he fills 60,000 seats most of the time, and he buys young players and sells them at a profit.
He had £13 million to spend and signed Vermaelen for £10m. He also gave big pay rises to Robin, Theo, Ramsey and several others.
Yes, the booing and the Shareholders Q&A gave Wenger a reality check. He felt shocked, dismayed and offended. But he’s now had time to think about it. He wants to keep his job. He really wants to keep his job. And he wants to win the European Cup before he retires. He’s had four European finals and lost all of them but he still thinks he can win it.
Today the historic moment is bigger than the games. This moment is far bigger than the pre-season games. It’s bigger than Barnet, Hannover and Atletico Madrid. It’s a big moment, a huge August, a massive four weeks, maybe the most challenging August of his career
If Arsene Wenger does not buy experienced players in August, then Arsenal are a selling club and a spent force and The Professor is history.