Friday, February 24th, 2012 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
What would happen if Mr Wenger were to leave Arsenal?
By Tony Attwood
There is a general assumption from many people who class themselves as Arsenal supporters that things would immediately improve if the manager were to go – and as we all know, this sometimes happens with clubs who get rid of the boss. A club that can’t win a game suddenly wins everything in sight as the new manager, or caretaker seems to work a miracle. It often doesn’t last, but occasionally it can be enough to solve the current crisis.
But in the Premier League these days things are more complex. Most people who count themselves as Arsenal fans and who want Mr Wenger to leave also put among their demands the spending of lots of money on new players.
So that gives us two issues if Mr Wenger went. First could we bring in the “right” manager, and second could we bring in the “right” players (with “right” in each case meaning the manager and players who would win Arsenal some trophies within the next couple of seasons).
After all it would be a total disaster if we got rid of Mr Wenger and then brought in a manager who took us to a much lower position than we achieve with Mr Wenger.
These are difficult points, because no one quite knows who is available as a manager, and if that person would actually come. And there is a question mark hanging over the transfer system and whether we would be able to get the “right” players in under any manager. There is always a simplistic assumption that of course we could – but I am not sure this is so.
Top managers of course can pick and choose where they go, and they look at the club, the salary, the expectations, the money being made available, the ground, the fans, whether they would be able to bring in the players needed and whether they would be able to pay the players enough to attract them. And they look at the way the media handles the club, the sort of life they could lead, where they could live, and so on.
It is a complex mix, and tucked away within this is a concern that the top managers may not want to come to Arsenal.
Top players can of course pick and choose where they go, and they took look at the club, salary, expectations, ground, fans, other players, the media treatment of the club, lifestyle and so on.
I will admit from the start that we can’t really judge these hypothetical situations easily, but I do think that the assumption made by some writers that a new manager would simply buy in the best players, and make everything work, at not necessarily right.
I have also heard it said that the quality of the football is so bad now that anyone would be better than Mr Wenger. Such a statement is often combined with a view that this is the worst football ever seen (usually combined with the writer saying “I’ve been a supporter since…”) Obviously everyone has their own view but for me the quality of football is still 1000% better than during the Rioch year, and the excitement is higher than we saw during some of the George Graham era. Certainly everything is much better than during the latter part of the Mee era, and if compared with the Darkness – that period with Swindin and then Wright in charge … well there is no comparison.
But what makes me think that a new man at the helm might not be able to pull it off – or indeed might not even want to be at Arsenal, and might turn down the offer?
The transfer system is one obvious point. Arsenal have money, but Chelsea, Man City and PSG have much, much more, as does Monaco and Anzhi Makhachkala. I have written at length before about how the transfer system now works with Arsenal having to keep very quiet about any player they want and their need to put out false stories about the players going elsewhere etc, while agents and other clubs also feed out false stories about who is bidding. Meanwhile if Arsenal ever do enquire of a player the selling club is likely to contact Chelsea, Man City, PSG, Monaco and Anzhi Makhachkala and say, “Arsenal are interested, are you?” and then put the price up. That is why you rarely hear much about an Arsenal transfer until the issue is signed and sealed. If you did, then other clubs would be in trying the spoil the deal, by suggesting they too were in for the player.
I won’t repeat a long article written on how this works, but in essence, Arsenal are clearly blocked from buying some of the better known players they want. True the pendulum is swinging back Arsenal’s way a little, with the limited success achieved by some players of late once they have been prized away from Arsenal, but even so, the transfer market is difficult.
Of course some scenarios suggest that Arsenal’s management and board will change at the same time – and so Arsenal will come under the domain of Mr Usmanov once the lock down agreement over share sales ends. Mr Usmanov only has to buy a handful more shares and then he has, by law, to make a very high offer to buy the rest of the company.
But Mr Usmanov comes with a reputation – of which I have no inside knowledge or personal insight – and it is possible that not every manager in the world would want to work with Mr Usmanov, perhaps in the same way that if Mr Cameron’s office asked me to write speeches for them I would refuse, no matter what money was on offer.
And we have the odd situation in which Chelsea, able to buy everyone, is still fractionally below Arsenal and Tottenham in the league. Which suggests that maybe all the money, and the choice of all the managers in the world, doesn’t always bring success.
Then there is the ref bias situation. Our analyses week after week suggest that there is something amiss with English refereeing, and that the authorities controlling the league and the refs are not taking the obvious steps to put these problems to right (increasing the number of refs, ending the geographical bias of refs, allowing refs to comment on matches as is done elsewhere in Europe, answering reasonable questions about how refereeing is run…) Not every club (as our reporters show) has the same negative impact from refs, and there are undoubtedly some managers who would think, “I am starting off at minus 15 points each season because of the refs, if I am with Arsenal,” and so turn the job down.
And then there are the fans. If you have been to a big match in Germany, or watch the fans in some parts of Europe where the dedication and belief in the club is overwhelming, you will know that Arsenal’s fans are just not in that league. Away from home we do quite well, but I have even been at away games in the last few seasons where our own fans have shouted abuse at our player. (Twice I have had to move very quickly to get out of the way of a fight resulting from such activity.)
Many such negative fans have joined forces with the press, and express themselves on blogs, in no uncertain terms about Arsenal being a sinking ship – and by and large top managers don’t take on sinking ships. Indeed I think most top managers know a divided club when they see one, and if they compare Arsenal with many other clubs again I suspect they will just think – no, it is not worth it. If the fans are getting so angry at the current situation in a League with two billionaire clubs and Manchester United (with their very high world wide marketing income) and with clubs in other leagues joining the multi-billionaire ownership league, then what’s in it for me?
So I would argue that what Arsenal now lacks, thanks to the activities of the AAA is the “unified passion” that other clubs have.
Of course it can be argued that this is not the fans fault, and that there is no relationship between Arsenal and its fans – but even if that is true, it is hardly likely to change under either a new manager or a new owner, so the problem, and the endless endless carping criticism of the club, will continue. Even when the stories put out by the AAA about season ticket sales collapsing (as we have heard each year for the last 3 years) and the like, are shown to be untrue, the criticism doesn’t stop, and the stories come round again.
I am not saying that if we had the support that some German, Italian and other teams enjoy all would be all right, but I do think that it is another pressure on any possible successor to Mr Wenger as it is to any successor to Mr Kronke, if he were ever to feel like he’s had enough of all the bickering.
But maybe if it is anything, it will be the Hazard situation that persuades a manager not to come. You may have seen the story before on this site – and on other sites that picked up our piece.
Hazard gave an interview in French in which he said wonderful things about Mr Wenger, and about Arsenal, and talked in a positive way about a possible transfer. The press and the blogs that follow them all ran the story that Hazard said he wanted to go to Tottenham. Even when we produced a full translation of the original, although the stories stopped, virtually no sites came out with an apology or even an admission of an error. Worse, some came out with, “Now Hazard says he does like Arsenal!” as if the guy had suddenly changed his mind and was clearly not to be trusted – whereas it was the blogs and their feeder newspapers that should not be trusted.
It is a world in which there is such a huge level of activity based on re-writing the news about Arsenal into a negative viewpoint, that I suspect some managers will say, “No, I’d sooner go to Real Madrid” (or a similar club). Arsenal has just become too much hassle.
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