Friends, Romans, Arsenal men, lend me your ears I come to praise Arsene, not to butcher him. There is feeding frenzy involving second rate hacks, Billy big bollocks bloggers, podcasters and hate filled attention seeking halfwit fans, all picking over the not yet dead corpse of our greatest ever manager. A man that is a legend in the game, a visionary and easily the most intelligent, classy man I’ve ever know in football.
They say he must go! Nay, he must be driven out, ridiculed and his greatest moments disparaged and downgraded.
After 22 years at the helm his work is done, we need him no more, off with him, drive him into the wilderness, once we have tarred and feathered him of course!
But here is the thing, it’s with a heavy heart that I accept the end is near, and that a tipping point has been reached. I don’t think he has the time, or the backing from the board, fans and players that he would need to turn the ship again. Perhaps after 22 years a new voice is needed. Maybe it is all stale. But what I don’t accept, and will never accept, is that Arsene Wenger is not a great manager, let alone that he never was one. I’m simply calling bullshit on that much used soundbite.
How many times has José Mourinho gone stale at clubs? I can think of three occasions where he has been sacked, where his tactics have failed, and he has been cast aside. But what happened next? Another massive job. People claiming he was one of the world’s best managers, and yet he couldn’t survive beyond 3 years.
Were people claiming he was not the manager he once was when he won the CL in 2004 with Porto?
No, they were not. They were using this 14 year-old achievement as evidence of his greatness.
Jürgen Klopp lasted almost 7 years at Borussia Dortment before flirting with relegation and being sent on his way. Did people say he used to be great and now he isn’t? No, they didn’t, and it doesn’t look much like it either, now does it?
Carlo Ancelotti, currently unemployed after being sacked for the umpteenth time. Yet many people are suggesting he could replace Arsene. Why, if not keeping success going is evidence of a decline in managerial abilities?
Even Pep Guardiola ran out of steam at Barca and needed a year out, and felt 3 years at Bayern was enough before he got stale.
So if we accept that Arsene’s race at Arsenal is run, it does not follow that it’s because he is no longer a great manager, visionary and football intellectual. In fact I suggest the very opposite, that he has taken 22 years to reach the point that these so called great mangers reach in a fraction of the time, means he has most likely proved he is greater than them, rather than their inferior.
Oh and by the way, there is only one ARSENE WENGER.
Positively Arsenal 
Sadly, I would imagine PSG could become a no brainer for Wenger and his people if he really is under so much threat at Arsenal if he doesn’t qualify for next years champions league.
Would still leave a slightly bitter taste though.
I hope our board know what they are doing
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Danny Welbeck said today that he is unaware of any split in the camp, or any rat leaking stories to the media
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Arsene @ PSG you say?
Would work but it’ll take an eternity to work through the bile.
The next gaffer would have to work twice as hard and win the PL or CL asap.
Some of our players would be devastated @ the prospect of having contributed to chasing our greatest manager out of Dodge.
Koscielny would leave and return to France for sure.
Bellerin could give up fashion, shave his hair off & become a monk.
Yes I can see Ozil moving with AW, win the CL & Ligue 1 then f**k off to China to cash in.
Jack would be given the armband and be back to shisha within weeks.
It would take a brave man to follow a great man to be ravaged by the twats @ AFTV
Arsene @ PSG you say?
Seems a tad early don’t we think?
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That’s a great post George – and I love the argument of your penultimate paragraph, unarguable logic in my opinion.
There is the most imperfect storm swirling around Arsenal these days and whilst I’m no expert in tipping points I’d still argue that a few decent results will settle those natives currently restless for change and/or mischief. Equally, another bad result, even after an extended run of wins sees the usual rock-dwellers re-emerge to attempt to corral all, with an interest in the club, towards mutiny and disharmony.
The idea that the owner would jettison the Arsenal manager mid-way through the season is laughably naive at best especially with a route into next year’s CL still very much up for grabs.
And I’m sure I’m not alone in remembering how bad our earlier, brilliant sides were after any kind of disruption – summer break, inter-lull etc. At one point you could almost bet on an AFC defeat following the internationals.
And so it is still today, with the disruption caused by the departure of numerous long-standing players leaving, as new first-teamers arrive. The delicate machinery of Wengerball is almost seemingly terminally disrupted until Arsene gets a firm grip on things.
And it can take a few months to settle things down which is why AW hates buying/selling in the Winter Window, the timing is always awful for his brand of football.
Meanwhile, the likes of Gary ‘Disgrace’ Neville and latterly even Lee Dixon and others are going into overdrive to try to push the fans, if not the club, over the edge.
I would like to see the club hold firm.
Partly for Arsene’s sake and partly for the sake of every manager that ever follows him.
Capitulate to the media and the miscreants now, and you will forever be beholden to them and we will inevitably go all ‘spursy’, for want of a better word until we stumble across the next Arsene.
Some like to claim the club is a laughing stock.
But this is nothing if we start to give in to the demands of those who know next to nothing about the realities of running any kind of club let alone the giant that resides off the Holloway Road in North London.
Hold firm my friends, hold firm.
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Arsene should phone Stan and simply say “back me or sack me”
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former Arsenal player Sanchez Watt sent off for dissent for saying his own name
Ref “name”
Watt “Watt”
Ref “name”
Watt “Watt”
Ref “Name”
Watt “Watt”
Ref “off you go Mr What”
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Charles Barber
@cwb1365
12h12 hours ago
Replying to @footballdailyuk @Gunner_D7
88% of 480 members of AST that bothered to vote. Total membership a massive whole one thousand. So about 422 votes in favour, hardly representative of a fan base
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reports that despite being in training this morning, Bellerin will not travel to Italy with the squad as he needs treatment on a knee injury, one he has has had for a few weeks.
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Great post Andrew. Like you, I’m not sure it is the end and I’ll only accept it when the club makes the announcement. AFC are clearly in the midst of a behind the scenes rebuild and succession plan so it would be very short-sighted to bring the change forward unless they are ready as the club could pay a heavy price in the short to medium-term. Appearing to give in to media and mob pressure could just make a rod for our backs going forward.
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passenal what I find disgusting in all this is that AFC have done nothing to support Wenger against the media savaging he is getting, not a fucking peep out of them.
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Responding to the media, mainstream and social, has the same drawbacks as wrestling with a pig eddy.
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Blackburn George truly has the biggest balls around
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It’s no more than they ever do Eduardo. The club has decided that their approach is not to respond to media speculation and I don’t see them changing that. I doubt very much that Arsene is on social media, so the bulk of the crap has no impact on him. I only wish he would stop answering those provocative and insulting questions at press conferences. But he’s too much of a gentleman not to.
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I suspect the board will be happy to sacrifice Arsene , rather than have the ire of the fans turn on them.
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That’s the job George. The manager serves at the board’s pleasure. As will the next man. No way will they look to take on the ire of the fans for any manager. Nor should they really.
For all practical purposes, they are the club. Wenger can take it and keep doing his job, even though it affects the team with the atmosphere/narrative. Imagine how much worse it would be if the fans just decided to keep protesting the board to force them out. It’ll fail of course, just like the Wenger out protests have failed year on year for over a decade. But how much worse would the atmosphere be when it has to do with protesting some vague rich suits who hide in the boardroom rather than the club’s greatest ever manager? The end goal of course being to get a perceived benefactor financier to take over.
The board is the real target for the wannabes. They want to be owned by a sugar daddy, and they want attention (Arsenal winning trophies is also a way of getting attention) If they can’t have the first they will take comfort in having the latter through shouting about it. Wenger is just the titan that has to fall for them to go about this. Anything the board can do to stop themselves going the way of the Wenger narrative, they should do. Not just out of self preservation (really I don’t think they care about the baying mob) but for the good of the club.
That’s why most clubs sack managers so quickly. Look we’re doing SOMETHING. I’m not saying Arsenal should do that. I don’t think they will. KSE’s record is not one of being reactionary. (I’m not even sure they’ll remove Wenger even after the way this season has gone) But take charge of the narrative early rather than look to protect Arsene’s unimpeachable reputation from the crazies.
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Sadly, I share your opinion PG, unless he does something a bit special in Europe this season.
The board should support him, after all he has always supported, and some would say, shielded them at times
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Really interesting observation about the “disruption,” Andrew.
That hit home for me on Sunday, when I was watching the match with my eight-year-old daughter. It’s been awhile. She sidled up to me that day because she was otherwise restricted from television.
She said, “There are only two Arsenal players I recognize from before. Where did all the other ones go? I mean, Alexis Sanchez even had a song.”
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The notion of Stan being influenced by the ire of the fans is laughable. Stan could not give a fuck about the approval or disapproval of the fans, never has, never will. If AW stays or goes it will be purely a business decision.
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Stan didn’t listen to my advice on the toupe.
Or the moustache.
Unbelievable!
I’ll be getting my bedsheets and a4 printouts ready for the next home game.
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From Silent Stan to Stylish Stan… If only he’d listened.
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well if fan protest was to influence Stan, it would only be meaningless changes on the board, Stan and Josh completely safe, no amount of protests would see either of them off it, Ivan is Stan’s man, so looks safe no matter what, as for the others, ken friar is 83 and been working for AFC since he was 12. And reports lately is that he is not in the best of health and that this might see him step down. And how many people would be able to pick any of the rest of the board out of a line up, even sir chips. So probably all changeable or even interchangeable with any number of business men.
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on the lee dixon comments, I tweeted AST and some AST high profile members suggesting that to stop anyone taking what he had to say, out of context (as some of AST have claimed was done), that AST should release the full transcript of his comments.
Only one of them bothered to reply, and firstly it was a time issue, and he asked would I be willing to do it, and when I said I would if they gave me the recording, that it was no big job. and that I found it odd that so many of them had no problem tweeting every word of the AFC AGM year on year, but could not do this simple task.
So then it could not be transcribed as then “what would the point of membership be”
then someone else asked if they became a member of AST would they get access to the transcript
of course he was told “it don’t work like that” and some waffle about how AST will have to look at how these things are done if people are going to act like this.
The guy said AST is basically a private club, and us mere mortals are not allowed to know what is said or goes on with them. Odd then that they claim to speak for the Arsenal Fan Base.
Attention Seeking Twats
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Team News
Bellerin out with a knee injury, he had a scan yesterday and he tried to train today but the pain was too much so he went to hospital to have more tests done, but its not expected to be long term.
Lacazette still out
as is Monreal who returned to very light training today.
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over to you danny welbeck
Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport “New drinking game: Drink every time Danny Welbeck falls” “If a player has ever summed up Arsenal itself, it’s Welbeck. He is capable of doing something really good, then falling over on his own and ending up face to the ground.”
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Although I agree that fan protests are self-aggrandizing and futile, I do think one can criticize this board without pining for a sugar-daddy or -country or for David Dein.
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900 what criticism can be leveled at the board, I know that most that are protesting and waving banners and doing ranting blogs etc blame them for not sacking Wenger ages ago and for not somehow getting the majority shareholder to give AFC his money to buy success, so what is it you think they should be blamed for
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spurs players can’t understand why the ref is not giving them every decision
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so spurs whole season comes down to the FA Cup now, bet you won’t see that in the media
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I feel good, I knew that I would…
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I’ve posed this question to people who say The Arsenal board needs to be different
What board in the premier league is the right type of board a board to which Arsenal should aspire to be?
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I am not looking to blame anyone for anything. I don’t think that’s a terribly productive or interesting line of thought. And I’m not presumptuous enough to identify a different decision I would have made. All I know comes from reading a fair amount of research on organizational behavior, which strongly indicates a correlation between the breadth and diversity of groups and the effectiveness of their decisions.
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I don’t think you have to limit the question to Premier League boards. Why not include the most effective boards from other fields?
https://hbr.org/2012/11/a-more-effective-board-of-dire
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9921/3885858e727cc548f4e929573c3e1eab2dee.pdf
https://hbr.org/2016/11/why-diverse-teams-are-smarter
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well our board has two yanks, a south african and a few english on it, is that not diverse,
i have seen some claim we have to have women on it, and blacks and gays for it to be diverse. So we need to appoint a young black gay woman to the board, and then everyone will be happy.
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oh and if the black gay women could be a member of the traveling community that would be just perfect.
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Nelson and Nketiah both in the squad that traveled to Milan
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Is that a reasonable point of view based on any evidence, or is it your particular brand of humor? Something I’d expect from a Chelsea blog, not PA.
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900 if we appoint a black gay women who is a member of the traveling community on to the board we will have all bases covered re diversity
as my earlier post pointed out we have 2 yanks, and a south african on the board already, but certain attention seekers such as AST are always whinging about a lack of diversity on the board, they actually demand among other things, we appoint a woman, someone non white, and that these have to be young. Oddly no where do they say they have to be the best people for the job.
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Eduardo, some more diversity on the AFC Board would not be a bad thing. I believe the current Board is 100% white male. There would be no harm in looking outside that particular demographic for new members as long as they have something to add to the club and not just as ‘token’ reps in order to tick a box. London is a hugely diverse city and as a global club, surely a modern organisation would want to reflect that among it’s decision makers?
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passenal I have no problem with some diversity being added to the board if suitable candidates are found, but should we just dispense with someone from the board for the sake of it,
also we only have on the board a couple of guys who are actually full time employee’s of the club, Gazidis and Friar, the rest are basically part time, and in fact donate their AFC salaries to charity.
Plus I would say that the make up of our board, just like that of many of the BPL clubs means very little as its the majority shareholder who has the final say on all things.
the whole diversity of the AFC board thing is just like the usmanov should be on the board so that we have opposing sides on the board. its balderdash, just another soundbite thrown out to attack the club with.
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Trophyless season for the spuds, media heartache ,even if they win the FA Cup, the media have told us it’s not a real trophy, so we can assume they would apply the same criteria should the spuds win it.
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also passenal as I pointed out we have 2 yanks and a south african on the board as it is, how diverse is that, how many BPL clubs have that many.
the boards of most clubs, and many business’s do not by and large reflect society or its customers etc, it reflects who owns the shares and who they want on the board.
Arsenal like most big business have lots of diversity in its staff, from top to bottom, AFC have women and non whites in many of its major positions, corporate, legal, media etc etc. Its the CEO and the department heads that really do the day to day running of the club, not a board that meets not even monthly
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mandy not only did the media tell us the FA Cup is not worth calling a trophy, but the spurs manager said the same recently too – remember his “we have bigger trophies to play for” interview
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When people talk about which players were you glad, or sad, to see go, I always feel a real pang when I think of Wojciech Tomasz Szczęsny. I am quite sure that there are better keepers out there, and am equally certain there were compelling reasons for letting him go. But I miss him and wish he was still our Number 1. In my own little parallel universe when I answer Stan’s call and take over from Arsene he will be my first signing.
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I’m with Eduardo on the board thing. Diversity for the sake of diversity is meaningless or even counterproductive. First and foremost the board should look at what they want to do, or what more they could do, and then look at the best candidates. After that they can pick the candidates who fit the diversity criteria.
Personally, I think the Bayern Munich board is a decent example to follow. Of course there are historical and current reasons why they have their structure and maybe we cannot or should not follow blindly.
But I like that they have an executive board (with supervisory members also) and a members board separately. The latter allows them to formally make use of the experience of their ex-footballers and coaches without being too dominant/disruptive to the activities of the board.
The other thing I like is that they have people from industry and academia. The industry thing is primarily (not solely) to do with their shareholding held by Audi, Adidas, and Allianz. And I suppose we have our own industry and banking experts on board. But I would suggest we consider getting some influential newspaper editors or owners also on board to help us deal with the PR aspect of the club. A large corporate entity might also help, but I suppose that carries its own risks, and sponsorships are a better way of tying up with them.
By the by, all these people are white males, and seemingly, all German (might even be Bavarian?)
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Interestingly that demand for more diversity on the board came after the AST sponsored an ‘independent’ study on the board structure of Arsenal, who advised this. To read the statements from that report was hilarious. They simply echoed, in not even different language, the AST. You just knew they compiled their ‘report’ from any of the AST flyers they may have picked up. I remember thinking its amazing that someone gets paid for this. Just echo what the client says and voila, you have the results of a study that was conducted…. how?
Arsenal would have told them to f*** off in no uncertain terms. No one thought to ask obviously. It was an ‘independent’ study after all. They got and needed no access to advise what can be done better.
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Chiellini “… It’s the history of Tottenham, they always create many chances and score so much but at the end they miss something to arrive in the end. We believe in the history. I think also yesterday in the game between Real and Paris, the history is important.”
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Happily I rather think that Chiellini quote will get trotted out every time spurs lose, draw or even concede a goal.
Whilst we wouldn’t want to over egg the cake, for the sake of clarity I’m referring to:
“It’s the history of Tottenham.”
Doubtless it’ll prove to be their future, too (with any luck).
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A proud day for Arsenal yesterday
Marcus McGuane a 6 year old
Made his debut for Barcelona
Proof that the developement work done to identify and produce high quality young players is working and being further enhanced.
The first English player since 1989
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I quite like that Chiellini quote.
It might seem a bit metaphysical but I think history matters. Chelsea and ManCity may have overcome that with many millions (billions?) but I think it carries a weight over normal clubs. For instance, I think our great teams of 15-20 years ago didn’t win in Europe because Arsenal lacked history there. No reason why it should have affected them, but I think it becomes part of the institutional memory, or club culture, and it needs something to go for you, or all your efforts to combine perfectly, to be able to change that. We almost had that in 2006 but things didn’t quite go for us (and Henry missed a sitter)
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