Leave, Leave Situation?

David Moyes' sacking on Tuesday has caused the question of our own manager’s destiny to resurface. However inevitable you feel the United board's decision was, this was certainly a historic moment. The club that once boasted the longest serving and most successful manager in pretty much the entirety of footballing history now finds itself looking ahead to a future plagued by the same managerial uncertainties as virtually every other club around, where the man at the helm is never more than a few bad results from getting the boot. The question is, to what extent are Arsenal still an exception to this rule?

A quick search for the stats on the longest serving premier league managers currently active will reveal some truly eye-popping statistics. In the post-Fergie era Arsene Wenger now stands alone and that has surely put him under even more scrutiny than ever before. Many have suggested that with regard to our impending cup final Wenger now finds himself in a leave-leave situation. Should we win, he will be presented with an opportunity to leave on a high, having finally ended Arsenal’s trophy drought. Were we to lose, Arsenal's inability to deliver on a promising first half of the season will sink the club's collective confidence to new depths, even lower than after the loss to Birmingham in the League Cup final.

In today’s cutthroat game Sir Alex and Monsieur Wenger are certainly rarities, and perhaps even relics. Indeed mercenary-managers like Mourinho and Guardiola seem to relish the challenge of taking an already world-class team and a massive pile of cash, winning everything in sight for a couple of years and then buggering off again. The art of sticking with a club and trying to build a succession of quality teams like Ferguson did and Wenger, well, tried to do seems to now play second fiddle to a kind of professional box ticking. It isn’t about how many times can you can win the league, it’s how many countries you can win it in.

A similar trend can be seen with players, who are readily swapping huge paycheques for obscene paycheques, and something about winning silverware, at the slightest hint of glory/enough money. Steven Gerrard’s unerring loyalty to Liverpool had bordered on the professionally insane until about 3 weeks ago when it became apparent that, holy shit, Liverpool may actually win the title, but I don’t think this fairy-tale ending will see the likes of Lewandowski and Falcao deciding to make their future career decisions with more integrity. On the subject of Falcao, were Athlético to win La Liga and the Champions League this season it may well serve as a cautionary tale to those looking to jump ship…or maybe not, because money.

On the other hand it will be most interesting to see whether Jürgen Klopp does indeed decide to spurn United’s advances over the coming weeks, and if so how long he stays at Dortmund in the years to come. Having managed the club for several years now, turning them into a truly formidable European outfit, he has now reached a critical point in his time there. Will he move on to pastures greener, having made a name for himself, or is he in it for the long haul?

Bearing all of this in mind and the inherent issues surrounding predicting the future, it is of course extremely difficult to say whether Wenger should leave at the end of the season. However we really can’t afford to rush the period of transition, and the key thing is that we have the right man for the job lined up when he does eventually call time. We can certainly learn a lot from United on that front.

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