Wenger Is Lucky To Be In The Champions League…
Today Arsenal were drawn in the Champions League knock-out round to Monaco much to the relief of the majority of the fan base. We’ve been hoping for a kind draw in the Champions League for a few years now and whilst many will say that is our own fault for not finishing top of our group you have to consider that Dortmund finished top and still drew Juventus and Arsenal and Man City are teams other sides will have wanted to avoid.
Of course finishing first gives you a better chance of a more favourable draw but it is not guaranteed. When were were drawn against Monaco, and thus our chances of progressing were improved upon the potential of drawing Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern, my mind wandered to a post by Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail… I know, the Daily Mail. I would completely understand if you chose to immediately navigate away from this page.
This is going to come across as a Wenger apologist-knows-best-protector-mediocrity-loving-problem-with-the-club type post and whilst I don’t think it is I have given up trying to project my ambivalence as those who dislike the manager will only ever see “I Heart Wenger” t-shirts adorning those who are not stood by their side spumescently screeching the same remarks they are or espousing trite cliches about competing, transfers or tactics. Yawn.
I take issue with what Samuel wrote because it’s the typical anti-Wenger rubbish designed to fuel the parochial views of the out crowd who offer nothing but the same tired prosaisms for why Wenger should go. I’m not tarring all with the brush because many simply state they are just tired of the manager and want a change. I don’t agree with that but I can support that view because it’s honest and reasonably considered. “I don’t believe in him any more” is far more powerful in my mind than “He needs to go because he is cack and because of these #FACTS” which is cheap and poorly argued.
The Daily Mail article is just another piece of ammunition – a factoid of intense torpidity – that will be trotted out by those extremists wishing to indoctrinate all into their way of thinking or bully and abuse those who disagree.
The article claims that Arsène Wenger would not have the Champions League record that he does if he had worked under the same conditions and restrictions that previous incumbents have. There is a basic and limited merit in this argument but how Samuel continued to elaborate irked me.
He focussed on the fact that before 1997 only the Champions were entered into the competition and Wenger has only won the Premier League 3 times. As far as anti-Wenger posts go it’s quite prosaic. It is incredibly limited in its considerations and probably why it was written for the Daily Mail.
Had Chelsea not been in the Champions League would Abramovich have bought them out? Had Chelsea been left untouched by a billionaire would City have seemed such an attractive proposition to the Sheikhs? Would Arsenal’s Invincibles have won the league in 2005? Would Arsenal have been knocked out of the 2004 Champions League? Would Arsenal have gone without a league title as long as they have with just United as their opposition?
The answer to these questions is “who knows?”. It is impossible to say but we can, with a degree of reasoned deduction, say that Arsenal probably would have won more leagues had the league not been injected with two money super-powers.
Also, we have seen with Liverpool last season, Manchester United to a degree this season, Liverpool, Newcastle, Spurs, Everton and Leeds of previous years that playing in the Champions League and sustaining a title challenge, or even getting back into the Champions League is difficult.
Attempting to diminish Wenger and Arsenal’s achievement of the past 18 years in this way reeks of agenda and click-baiting. Liverpool won the Champions League in 2005 without winning the Premier League. Where is the article saying they were lucky to even be in the competition? If the rules were still the same then United would not have won a treble in 1999. Where is the article saying their greatest ever season was pure luck (8 added minutes FFS! I’m not bitter.)?
Where is the consideration that Arsenal unencumbered by the exertions of fighting on more than one front would not have fared better in the league on multiple occasions?
It is churlish to suggest that previous managers would have fared better under the new rules whilst Wenger would not have done as well as them under the old rules. Wenger revolutionised Arsenal in 1997. Imagine if he was Arsenal manager in the 80s – every team would have been light-years behind in training methods and player conditioning. Are you seriously suggesting the manager who put the Invincibles together and won two doubles would not have been able to win multiple titles in the 80s? The effing 80s?
I’m sure Graham would have been a success in this era because we see elements of his fastidious approach to defence (let’s not forget his teams also played some decent football pre-1994 – although Nigel Winterburn recently told me he would choose to play for Wenger over Graham… make of that what you will) in successful managers in this era such as Mourinho. However, would he have been able to get Arsenal into the Champions League for 16 years on the trot? Who knows so who is Samuel and anyone else for that matter to suggest he would?
Under the current rules Arsenal would have qualified 9 times in the 18 years prior to Wenger’s reign – 6 of which would have been for the qualification stage only. For arguments sake let’s take it as a given they would have made it into the group stages. That’s 50%. Who can say if those extra games would have seen Arsenal struggle to finish in the top four again the next season?
This is the quote that rankles the most:
Wenger has done wonderful things at Arsenal but he has been aided by an era that has placed Europe’s most prestigious club tournament beyond the reach of all but a few. If his predecessors had been given that advantage they would surely have played more European football; had Wenger worked with their limitations he would boast nowhere near 180 appearances.
It is so definitive in its conclusion about what would have happened under either era. Of course Arsenal have benefited from an expanded format but so have Chelsea, City, Newcastle, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester United, Everton and Spurs. Of the 9 clubs who have played in the Champions League from England this century only two can, in my view, truly claim to have earned their place in it because Chelsea were nowhere near winning the league before Abramovich came and it’s widely documented that he chose to purchase them because of their location and status in the Champions League. What other London club fulfilled that criteria? Arsenal.
City were languishing in lower divisions not so long ago. When they were bought by the Sheiks I said to my City supporting colleague that they would win the league within 5 years with that sort of cash injection and I was right. Stick the best part of £500m into Stoke and they will win the league within 5 years too. Money talks and that’s a fact.
It’s not easy staying in the Champions League year after year and such an achievement should not be dismissed or belittled just because you no longer support the manager.
Why can’t we just appreciate Wenger’s achievement without comparing him to previous eras and managers?
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there is no thought about the qualitative of Le prof (wenger) we all know that he is the brain bus of arsenal success I see him as a special coach in the world that is why I always call him a genius
I don’t think it’s reasonable to talk about what might or might not have happened had the rules been different. It’s a redundant debate – you can only play by the rules that exist at the time and trying to suggest Wenger has been fortunate, or that he would have been less successful in a different era is a moot point.
Equally, your argument of suggesting that we might have won more titles had we only been fighting Man Utd as opposed to the cash injected Chelsea and Man City is also flawed – other than last season when Man Utd imploded, there has only been one season since 1998 where we have finished above Man Utd but not won the League (2004/5).
We would have had more runners-up spots but no more titles. It’s almost like saying fourth place is a trophy. And that’s where I believe most fans’ frustrations lie at the moment.
Why make such a fuss about qualifying for a competition that we have no realistic chance of winning? Yes, we may be favourites against Monaco, although I think that is a rather conceited opinion of the media given our form this season. But if we do get past Monaco, do we really think we’ll get beyond the Quarter Finals or possibly the Semi-Finals? Do we reasonably believe that over two legs we could beat Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Man City or PSG?
Yes the Champions League is great for financials, but not if the money just sits in the bank and doesn’t get used to build a team / squad that has the potential to win the Premier League or Champions League. And let’s be honest – as much as we have some fantastic players at the moment, we do not have a squad anywhere near capable of winning either of those titles.
If we didn’t have to worry about being in Europe could we have maintained a better charge, and ultimately won, more titles? Possibly. But then, if that was the case how is it that the top 4 positions have, more or less, been occupied by the same four teams for the last 5+ years? Yes, occasionally other teams have qualified (Spurs & Liverpool), but they’re the exception rather than the rule. The same four teams have managed to maintain a charge for a top-four spot (or indeed the title), and play in Europe without too much difficulty (except Arsenal who have scrapped in by the skin of their teeth a couple of times!).
Don’t get me wrong. I’d rather be in the Champions League than not. And I’ll be as excited as anyone in the run-up to our games against Monaco and anyone else we may come up against in further rounds. But scratch away the surface of that inner 16 year-old’s excitement and there lurks the realism of the last 9 years of ‘fourth place is a trophy’ attitude of our manager.
You’re right. I am tired. I do want a change. Because regardless of the arguments of money changing the game, you have the likes of Atletico winning against the odds in La Liga. You have Dortmund winning the Bundesliga. And Liverpool almost pulled it off last season in the PL. Look at the resurgence of Roma in Italy. We haven’t looked like we could do that in a long time, regardless of having money or not.
I think we could and should be doing better with the squad we’ve got and I’d like to see someone given the chance. What’s the worse that could happen? We don’t qualify for a competition we’re not going to win under Wenger anyway? Oh dear.
Your argument is just as flawed Matt because you are taking previous results as definitive if things were different. The whole point of the article is we just don’t know. You can’t say we wouldn’t have had more titles if City and Chelsea hadn’t injected millions into their teams just because we finished behind United because it doesn’t take into consideration the players we lost to those teams either from our own ranks or because we couldn’t match wages – for example did you know we had a deal for Cech but Chelsea offered double salary and fee? What would have happened to us had we a goalkeeper like Cech instead of Almunia?
The whole point, which I’m sorry to say you have woefully missed in your haste to prove how poor Arsenal have been in your eyes is that you cannot compare one era with another and say better or worse results would have occurred with this player or that manager. Little things affect big things. Eduardo lifts his leg in time and doesn’t get hacked down at St Andrews and maybe we don’t capitulate. United don’t get 8 minutes in 99 and they don’t win a treble. Van Persie doesn’t get set off in the Nou Camp and well you get the picture.
My overall point is that we can only appreciate or criticise things in relative isolation. It’s the only fair way. Remove Wenger from the equation and just look at the achievement of 16 consecutive years in the knockout rounds.
You may wish to demean it by saying we’ll never win it but without copious amounts of money you are unlikely to persuade players to join you without Champions League football and realism smealism… it’s a cup competition, anything can happen.
The problem with overpaying to get players without CL football is when you eventually get it they want even more and before you know it you can’t afford it.
Also, this “our manager thinks 4th is a trophy” is banality that having met you in person and shared a few drinks and laugh I consider beneath you.
I’m not interested in Wenger in out or shake it all about debates, I’m just as tired of them as you are the manager but surely we can all agree that it’s a marvellous achievements that shouldn’t be reduced into something as trite as “another manager would do better”?
But yes, you are correct. It is a redundant debate, I fully agree with that. My issue was with the agenda laced direction of Samuel’s article.
Addendum:
My apologies, I don’t mean to get personal or go on the attack. I just felt you were deliberately skirting over the point to make a case for a change of manager which people do to me all day on Twitter and I find incredibly irksome. The skill the show is a wonderment to behold – ie “I’m off to the cinema today” “ask them if they have a film on tactics you could take Wenger to”
My apologies, I never meant to get personal I just felt you were deliberately skirting over my point to make this about a change of manager. It happens to me daily and it irks me – “I’m going to the cinema today” “ask them if they have any films about tactics to show Wenger”
Bugger – just wrote a long reply and lost it.
The long and short of it is that I agree with the concept of comparing one era to another. It’s impossible and therefore worthless. And Martin Samuel is a d**k. But I think it’s indicative of the current media trend at the moment – they’ve given unswerving support to Wenger over the last few years, but the tide is now turning.
There’s lots of ‘what ifs’. What if we’d paid Cashley the extra £5k to stay? What if we’d made a couple of quality acquisitions to the squad that RvP so desperately wanted before moving to Man Utd? What if we’d replaced Vermaelen in the last transfer window?
The ‘fourth place is a trophy’ thing may be banal but it was coined by Wenger himself (to an extent) – placing importance on a top four finish above other trophies.
Please don’t misunderstand me – I am a proud Gooner. I love that we qualify for the CL. I’m constantly impressed, and chuffed, that we qualify from the group stages. I do not wish to demean that accomplishment at all. I’m pleased as punch that we are the current FA Cup holders. I wish we’d won more. And I’d be equally happy with a couple of League Cups too.
And that’s the point – as a passionate Gooner, my hope at the start of every season is to win a trophy. To win the PL. To win the FA Cup. To win the League Cup. To win the CL. Unfortunately I don’t think those are the same targets as the manager. I can’t get into the argument of why they’re not the same targets as the manager without starting to spout out those #FACTS you dislike mention of, but let’s be honest…
It might be a knockout competition now. And you’re right – anything is possible in that format. But over two legs, did we start this season with a squad capable of winning the PL or CL? With fully fit starting 11, possibly. But 11 players is not enough to win anything is it? There are fundamental flaws in the Arsenal set-up and until Wenger overcomes them his position will be increasingly questioned by fans, players, and more and more often, the media.
I don’t think Wenger enters any season aiming for anything less than trophies. During the early years at the Emirates he did prioritise CLQ over cups but I don’t think that is the case now. 4th is our minimum target and most years we finish with the minimum but I don’t think that is the sum of his ambition.
I know its a derigeur subject but something I always find unbelievable is the Wenger out brigade, have the temerity and audacity, to presume that a new man (whoever it is), would automatically start to do wonderful things and the rest of football would just let him !! When the chances of getting an upgrade on Wenger are very very slim, far more chance that the ‘manager out’ boys would just have a new target to moan about.
one of the WOB has told me that when a new man comes in to replace Wenger, if he fails then the WOB will have two points to blame one will be Wenger for leaving us with a mess and the second will be the board for appointing the wrong man, regardless of who the new man is. Really sums up a lot of the WOB and their agenda.