Yesterdays embarrassing defeat at home to a very poor
Blackburn team saw, not for the first time this season, calls of ‘Wenger Out’. ‘Wenger Out Now’ tweeted Piers
Morgan as he led the calls. (Though some gun wielding Americans may think the
same towards Piers himself).
And why not Wenger out now?
If you ask these people why AW should go, once you sift through their
barrage of clichés of “Wengers lost it” they’ll nine times out of ten give you
the same response, Arsenal haven’t won anything in 8 years, and that’s
simply not good enough.
Managers are fired more quickly than Donald Trump can fart
out another series of the American Apprentice. (Whilst I’m on the subject, TRUMP
OUT of Scotland). Nigel Adkins gained back-to-back promotions from league 1 to
the Premiership with Southampton and that still wasn’t enough to keep his job.
So why should AW lets this mediocrity continue at such a prestigious club like
Arsenal?
Modern day football is a soap opera where turmoil within a
club is anticipated as though it were Kat Slater’s Eastenders wedding. It’s a
soap opera where villains like Barton threaten to drive the Platt family in to a
lake. Even the boo’s that rang out at Full Time on Saturday were reminiscent of
a pantomime. It’s a soap opera where a 4th
place quality team aiming to
finish 4th place constitutes a “team in crisis”.
That’s what Arsenal are now a consistent “4th
place team”. Yesterday Arsene was reminded (in case he had forgotten) about the
8-year trophy drought, he replied, “ We are not the same team as we were 8
seasons ago”. For the last 4 or 5 seasons the quality of the squad hasn’t been good
enough to be even thought of as league champions, sure we’ve had RVP and Fabregas
but all in all there has always been some department on the pitch lacking. For
the last 4 or 5 seasons we have been a 4th place quality team who
finish in and around 4th place.
Though a 4th place team shouldn’t be losing to
Blackburn or Bradford in the domestic cups. So it could be argued that it comes
down to a lack of motivation from the manager, and that maybe the case. Though
I find it hard to believe that the same man who inspired a group of men to the
league title whilst going unbeaten has completely “lost it”. I believe it is an
acumination of things that are going wrong at the club and not just one thing.
Within this current crop of players there is some real
talent, though there are improvements needed still in each of the areas of the squad.
As much as I love Giroud, if we had been stubborn enough and kept RVP for his
final year, with this crop of players I feel we would be achieving a lot more.
Though saying that the squad is not just lacking in talent but there seems to
be a lack of desire at times during matches. Once you take Jack Wilshere out of
the picture, and to his credit, Walcott also. We seem to get passionless. It is
naïve to blame all of our problems just on our squad not being good enough. If
I asked you at the beginning of the season “is Bradford Citys squad good enough
to reach the final of the capital one cup?”…
It’s down to a large part of it being about desire. Desire
from the board to assert their authority and be insistent that Arsenal should
again be home to world class footballing talent (yes that does mean spending
money). It’s down to the management to inspire, motivate and give the players
the to want to win. The players also have the responsibility to be self-motivated
and know that they’re good enough to beat the likes of Blackburn. We’re lacking
a lot of things currently but in most of the defeats this season it has been
down to a lack of fight.
I still believe AW is the right man for the job with the
right players and the right team focus he can recreate a world beating team, or at least I hope so.
