Wenger's Final Years - Scorched Earth

If you're looking for an analogy of Arsenal's summer, the video above is hard to beat. Even more than ever, given our recent demotion to the Europa League, we were fed the same lines in June. "Early purchases," "catalyst for change", "statements of intent" etc. etc. Notwithstanding our FA Cup performances, we'd hit a low in the second half of last season, with one calamitous performance following another. Even our usual Spring uptick in form was not enough to save us this year.

And, as so often happens, the summer started quite well. We actually signed a striker and, by the looks of it, a half-decent defender. We were supposedly in for not one but two of Monaco's brightest talents making, it was alleged, a bid of a cool 100 million euros for Mbappe. This was statement of intent stuff. A well played game of chess.

Instead, our strategy has ended up resembling the random machine-gun fire that follows the supposedly careful plan. If there was one, we ballsed it up. We've been linked with Lemar all summer, yet have been unable to close a deal with a club that's clearly willing to sell its best players. As an upgrade to the summer of 2011, we've moved to 3 players (rather than 2) who are undergoing painful, failed contract negotiations that we've left too late to resolve. Ask yourself - does any other major club in Europe let so many of its major assets reach contractual crisis points like these. While I would dearly love Sanchez and Ozil to stay, if it was clear at the start of the summer that no renewal was on the horizon, surely cashing in and reinvesting would be wiser than subjecting ourselves to the caprices of two individuals playing for contracts at other clubs, who will clearly look to ensure they don't pick up serious injuries along the way next year. As for the Ox, he can do one, in all honesty. Barely ten goals in seven years, and no sense of his role in the team, says it all. Again, a player we should have let go and reinvested. And that is before we even get to the likes of Wilshere, Gibbs and Theo, who should all have been moved on years ago.

Indeed, Arsenal are in a fairy incredible position this summer of not being able to get rid of the players we want to sell, while not being able to get the players we want to keep to commit to the club. If we are periodically collecting huge stores of deadwood at the club, while failing to tie down the players we want to keep to long-term deals, something is badly wrong with our internal negotiating strategy. Yet nothing changes. Arsene bristles and acts indignant at the idea a Director of Football would deign to help out.

And this is all before we get to the problems on the pitch. The fundamental issue here, and it is quite simple, is this - Arsene will *never* change. He is stuck within a vortex of his own beliefs and prejudices about how football should be played, no matter the reality that faces him. This was fine as long as his brand of football was still among the best played in England. It no longer is.

That he would seek to self-sabotage a tactical formation that almost saved our season is no surprise. The man got to the final of the champions league using a tactical outlook focused on defence, and never repeated it because he was so disgusted at the quality of football it produced. He does not value the defensive side of the game. When a virtual cavalcade of centre-backs fail at Arsenal, it is not to do with individual quality; it is a philosophical decision to deprioritize the protection the team affords them.

And so we start a game against Stoke with a 3-4-3 formation including 1 centre back. We sign a left wing back who made the Bundesliga team of the year and shoe-horn him in at centre back. We play a right back at left back to accommodate a contract rebel who's not worth keeping. The one centre back we do play, the most expensive in our history, we are apparently looking to sell. We play two central midfielders who have no inclination at all to protect the team's defence. And we lose. We hog the ball, as Wenger loves, but we lose because we're not good enough to do anything meaningful with it. Wenger will soon return to his beloved 4-2-3-1 comfort zone, and we can go back to losing in the way we know best. All so we can sooth Arsene's arrogance.

And so we enter into the last week of the window in a state of total shambles. We could lose our two best players for nothing next year, along with a raft of squad players. We have, to my knowledge, made no effort to tie down any of the 2019 renewals, such as Aaron Ramsey.

I have read a variety of theories over the years about why Wenger refused to leave Arsenal. A popular one has always been that he wants to leave the club in as strong a position as possible. Instead, unless some serious signings or renewals happen imminently, he will have done quite the opposite. If we thought last year was bad, we still have a long way to fall over the next two years.

Gb