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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The Ice is Beginning to Thaw

The last time Wenger's tenancy was seriously called into question, the debate revealed a divide amongst the Arsenal faithful.

On the one hand were those who blamed Wenger for our inability to finish higher up the table, failing to win any silverware for almost a decade and losing our best players season after season.

On the other were fans who saw Wenger as the best candidate to weather the financial storm our club was facing, having to repay enormous debts running into the hundreds of millions. In fact our fourth place finishes were evidence of his brilliance rather than his failure.

Whilst other managers were spending between £30-80 million every season yet failing to make any real improvement, Wenger was making the club money whilst retaining Champions League football.

However this season has marked a shift in the club's and the fan's expectations. Perhaps it was Gazidis selling Wenger down the river by declaring that we were finally ready to compete with the big boys in terms of financial power.

Perhaps it was our storming start to the season which flamed the fans hopes that finally after long last our drought was over.

In actual fact Arsenal have been in hibernation for the best part of 6 years, and now that the ice is starting to thaw our senses are dulled and our killer instincts are slow to return.

This is the first year that Arsenal's spending has outweighed its return (from player sales alone). Look at the other sides above us and they are all hundreds of millions in debt, having spent far more on bringing players in. figures for last 5 seasons

Look at City, as Mancini attested, Pellegrini's title contending side is made up predominantly of players that he signed two or three years ago, with the addition of several other multi-million pound acquisitions in the shape of Negredo, Navas et al. By signing one or two world class players a season, City are close to building a side that is completely unrecogniseable from the one they fielded 4 or 5 years ago.

Chelsea too, with the exception of their defense are almost completely different to the side which took to the field 3 or 4 years ago.

Liverpool and Tottenham too.

Now look at Arsenal: Sagna, Gibbs, Wilshere, Ramsey, Flamini, Rosicky, Walcott, Ox and the like have been featuring in the side for the best part of half a decade.

Only this season have we made our first acquisition of a world class talent. We would argue that with the purchase of 2 world class players a season for the next 3 years we will have a side that will be more than equiped to finally take on the sides who have spent (in Chelsea's case) close to £1 billion on players in a decade.

You could certainly make a case that Ramsey, Ox and Wilshere have the potential to be great, great players. So too that our defense is one of the best in the league, however what has become apparent is that the diference in quality between our first choice 11 and the team we fielded against Stoke, Tottenham and Chelsea is vast.

We have to sign a marquee striker, a quality fast-paced winger, a 6ft plus monster in CDM and a reserve centreback who is capable of doing the same type of job as Mertesacker.

Now history would suggest that we don't go out and buy more than one or two players per transfer window so we're not expecting this to happen, however half of that quota must be met this summer, whilst the second half the next.

The question is do we still trust Wenger to be the man to sign the right type of players by being savvy enough to spot them and being ruthless enough to bring them in at any cost. Similarly as this season has shown does he have the tactical ability to outsmart the likes of Mourinho and shake off the hoodoo of teams like United.

We say yes. In an era that predated the petro clubs, an era that predated the ability to simply buy trophies through fielding a team that cost the equivalent of five of your opposition put together Wenger was second only to Sir Alex Ferguson.

Now that the playing feld is beginnning to be levelled we must give Wenger the chance to bring in an Ozil, a Draxler, a Griezman every transfer window until our squad is as strong as those we're fighting against.

Shake up the backroom staff, change the fitness team, bring in new scouts (whoever was responsible for Park, Squillaci and the like must surely be gone by now) but allow Wenger to attract the big names, continue coaching our stars like Ramsey, Wilshere and the emerging talents of Gnabry and Zelalem whilst building a side that can look to dominate the league in the same way we did with Wenger at the helm in the early noughties.

We're praying for success in the FA Cup as it will buy Wenger time enough to prove his doubters wrong and show signs that we have improved. The improvement is there for everyone to see but because of injuries we'll never know just how far this side could have gone.

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