Arsenal Should Keep Wenger Over Klopp

Arsène Wenger teams – any Arsène Wenger Arsenal team – at their best are capable of brushing aside any opposition like an irksome bit of lint on an otherwise pristine Oswald Boateng suit.

Wenger teams at their worst are capable of being made to look like a pub side cobbled together from a band of drunkards, Sunday morning dog walkers who have stopped in for a liquid breakfast and the barely pubescent youth with an unhealthy Top Gear obsession who does the bottling up.

Even the domestic powerhouse that was the Invincibles were humbled at Highbury by Inter although, granted, they paid them back with interest two months later.

Arguably every Arsène Wenger squad has had the inherent ability to win silverware but for 9 long years found themselves impeded by injuries, bad decisions, naïvety, inexperience, ego, richer opponents and perennial raids on talent. These are not excuses for Arsenal’s barren run as ultimately they just weren’t consistently good enough in those seasons.

No side is perfect – as evinced by no team winning all four trophies without dropping a single point – but Wenger’s sides have always had a real stinker of a performance loitering around even the best of runs waiting for the perfect chance to sneak punch us in the kidneys.

Such is the quality of Arsenal’s football under our no-longer universally revered manager that our performance troughs will always be considerably deeper than most to match our unbelievable peaks. Harsher critics may be predisposed to demand the smooth and vehemently reject the rough with an entitled sneer.

Fresh blood, new ideas, or even just a change of face has been demanded for quite a few years, surprisingly more vociferously since Arsenal’s FA Cup triumph, and yesterday Jurgen Klopp announced he will part company with Borussia Dortmund this summer.

The entertaining, studious, at times charismatic, and efficacious German has been at the top of many ‘next Arsenal manager’ wish lists and his impending availability has begged the question – from some quarters – ‘should Arsenal snap him up?’.

Arsenal’s most successful manager has 2 years left to run on what is most likely going to be his final contract with Arsenal. With an FA Cup semi-final against opposition who have failed to win or take a single point from Arsenal in all 12 meetings and a potential final against a side Arsenal have already comfortably beaten this season Wenger is in danger of winning two major trophies on the trot.

The season is not over yet but it seems Arsenal will be agonisingly close to the Premier League title too so would replacing Wenger this summer be a huge mistake?

Two trophy winning seasons on the trot and touching distance of the eventual league winners is not to be sniffed at and surely has more than earned Wenger the right to see out those two years?

Jurgen Klopp is a manager I admired for a long time and someone I have previously suggested could be Wenger’s eventual replacement but I maintain his replacement should be hired only when he is ready to step down.

Klopp is clearly a talented manager and in some circles he has been described as being cut from the same cloth as Wenger. He elevated Dortmund to new heights and secured back to back trophies, their first double and a Champions League final appearance but given remarkably similar circumstances as Wenger in the past two seasons and it can be argued he has not performed as well as his French counterpart.

Arsène Wenger oversaw the building of a new stadium, dealt with severe restrictions on funds as transfer fees exploded and average players sold for £15m+, watched painfully as higher wage paying rivals conducted annual raids on his playing staff like baleful vultures stripping the carcass of a wounded but not yet dead wildebeest, the introduction of not one but two oil funded clubs, rear-charging rivals like Liverpool and Spurs splash millions year after year, and cyclical injury crises.

Not once during that period did Arsenal drop out of the top four – which could have been a financial disaster for the club. Wenger kept the club competitive, maybe not for the Premier League title but they competed for honours in four of those nine barren years and remained an attractive club to play for despite their lack of silverware.

Two league cup finals, one Champions League final and an Old Trafford win away from clinching the title is evidence of the fine lines in football between success and ‘9 years of failure’.

Wenger has spoken many times of his awareness of how tough it was going to be for the club but he stuck it out when a lot of people didn’t want him to remain as manager and rebuffed the advances of richer, more powerful clubs who did appreciate his abilities.

Conversely, after a few years of selling on his best players, Klopp oversaw an unforeseen tumble down the Bundesliga and he has decided to jump ship. I do not wish to cast aspersions as possibly he felt his time had come and Dortmund would be better served under new management but it reeks of exhaustion to me.

Klopp has proven in his relatively short managerial career that he is up for the fight and at one time had the grit and determination to take a club beyond its expected limits but to do so and keep them there or thereabouts – as Wenger has done with Arsenal –  is exhausting. It is mentally and physically fatiguing.

He is now in a fantastic position whereby he could walk into most jobs at top clubs because he is not only proven as a successful European manager but also is unattached and therefore competitively priced.

A club like Manchester City, already impeded by FFP, may have found the idea of straining the funds they desperately need to improve the squad by paying Pellegrini off and compensating another club for their coveted manager quite unpalatable and may have given their Chilean manager another season to put things right. However, with a manager of Klopp’s reputation free to join up with whomever he pleases, it is not unthinkable to see a deal being done.

It is a situation I am certain Klopp has thought of, he would be a fool not to have considered his options and seen the blindingly obvious. I find the notion slightly worrisome and the idea of him usurping Wenger in the summer is an unsettling one.

Arsenal at their worst under Wenger did not tumble down the table as Dortmund did and Klopp managed to keep hold of most of his stars longer than Wenger did as he attempted to rebuild his teams. In the period between 2007 and 2012 I don’t think Arsenal would have been able to keep  the likes of Hummels, Reus, Gündoğan and Bender out of the clutches of Barcelona, Chelsea, Manchester City et al.

Given similar circumstances one manager has performed vastly more consistently than the other. Certainly Dortmund have been more successful in the same period but it looks like Klopp is off at the first sign of trouble.

For what it is worth, I still like Klopp and think he has the credentials to succeed Wenger but I don’t think he has the experience, ability or resilience to replace him this summer. Wenger is building something special and should a manager like Klopp take over from him when he chooses to step down he’ll have left all the tools necessary for that man to make himself look like a managerial God.

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