No More Encores, Arsene

When they finally write the obituaries for Arsene Wenger's career - and that 'finally' seems closer every day - what will they say?


It's a tricky one. For currently he bucks the trend of virtually every other club in Europe and retains his job despite really achieving very little. There are those who protest that getting into Europe season after season when the club is not spending dosh cos of paying off stadium bills is one hell of an achievement. Maybe so.


But it follows a period of success so impressive and indeed uplifting to the neutral footy-lover that simply finishing in the top four is little short of mundane. It's like Nigella Lawson suddenly presenting a show on the finer arts of arranging salad leaves. It still looks nice but it could barely sustain a rodent worth its salt.


Wenger continues to plough a particular furrow - every goal the team scores seems to be based on a Pythagorean principle. They can often seem like a session of keepy-uppy raised to the level of high art.


But football, as Barca's boys will testify, is not simply of matter of tippy-tapping around while the opposition stand off a fretful yard and wait. No, half of it (or a third of it in Barca's case) is about getting the ball back, and Wenger seems entirely to have forgotten this fact.


It should not be so easy for an astute manager to simply arrange for his players to chase the opposition around a bit til they cough up the ball like smaller, harried sea-gulls cough up stolen chips at the seaside. Mourinho's genius game-plan was simply to copy Brendan Rodgers's.


The truth is that Wenger's teams 'don't like it up 'em' and that has been the case for years. Stoke City have known this for years. Allardyce's Bolton were the same. Neither of those teams had the wit to exploit it with quite the incisiveness of Man City, Liverpool or Chelsea but nevertheless it still holds true.


It wasn't the same in the old days mind you when Wenger had the foresight to arm his central midfield with some firm-thighed no-nonsense Frenchmen. Vieira has never been replaced. Nowadays the quintessential Wenger boy has become a nimble-toed little lambkin that couldn't take the leg off a house spider, let alone the ball off a fellow professional footballer.


Wenger seems oblivious to this, somehow. This year, defensive solidity has improved for the most part with the re-signing of Flamini. His absence on Saturday was criminal. Arteta, Cazorla, Oxlade-Chamberlain - these are talented lads who meet a tackle like a bag of crisps meets a tractor tyre.


Look at rival midfields and you'll see what he's neglecting. Gerrard sits deep for Liverpool, sometimes with Allen for company. Matic and Luiz - or a similar combination - anchor Maureen's dogged Chelsea. Pellgrini has Fernandinho (and Yaya when he feels like a tackle) to give a bit of ballast. These are important players and to think you can do without them in a match of this significance is, well, a bit barmy.


It all points to the fact that top-flight football in this country - for all that Arsene contributed to it in the best of ways - is leaving Wenger behind. Or he is stubbornly refusing to go with it.


So you start to think - and surely the Arsenal board must be considering something similar - that 1000 games in charge is good going but he's won fuck-all for yonks and it might be time to send the old prof upstairs to a titular post as head of the Gunner Folklore Museum or some such.


Better that than allow him to sit in the stands and intimidate his successor. Moyes may insist he gets loads of advice and support from Fergie but I tell you no one wants to go to work every day with an angry Dad looking over your shoulder.


Mind you, I've been saying Wenger's days are numbered for about five years now - based entirely on such fripperies as the team's results and the players he's bought - and he's still there like some slender old owl, murmuring about the squad's technicality, physicality, mentality but never quite changing its personality into one that can put a trophy in a cabinet.


Yes, of course there's the FA Cup. That's in the bag, innit? Except... every time Arsenal have been asked a question in the last nine years they've come up with a surprisingly wrong answer. I still think Hull will do 'em. And if that happens it'll be time to thank Arsene for a truly wonderful decade and a less than impressive eight years and wheel him out to pasture.


Actually even if they do win the Cup, surely, Monsieur it's time for you to go. Hop Off. Klopp In. Job Done.