Did Arsene Wenger leave his exit too late?
Arsenal fans were for a long time split on the Arsene Wenger situation, and quite likely still will be.
The legendary French tactician had a difficult ending to his Gunners career, and eventually ended up leaving the club at the end of the 2017/18 season, though some will feel he should have gone much earlier.
For all Wenger’s great work in the first half of his Arsenal career, there can be no escaping the fact that he oversaw a big decline in the second part of his reign.
It would have been nice for our greatest ever manager to go out on a bit more of a high, and Bob Wilson told The Athletic the precise moment he feels the boss should have called it a day.
Speaking to The Athletic, our former goalkeeper said: “I wish, like mad, that when we lifted the trophy in that FA Cup final against Chelsea (in 2017) he had realised that was the time.”
It’s hard to argue with this – it looked clear for some time that we needed to start a major rebuild, and Wenger leaving at that point might have left us in a stronger position to start that process.
Wilson also paid tribute to the great man, calling him a ‘visionary’.
“Arsene was different to everybody else who was around at that time,” he added. “He changed the philosophy of managers, of clubs, of players. He brought football into a totally different era. The man was a visionary.”