William Gallas has stated that he believes Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger lacks that winning mentality needed to succeed as a top manager.
The former French centre-back has played under a number of top managers including Jose Mourinho, Arsene Wenger, Claudio Ranieri and Harry Redknapp, and moved to compare the attitudes of two of those.
Gallas claimed that Mourinho has a distinct fight to win at all costs, while having failed to win a single trophy in his time under the French boss, insisted that the same hunger is not found in Wenger, and this is valid reasoning in his opinion to warrant change.
“I don’t know what Arsenal are going to do but they have to win trophies again,” Gallas said.
“Maybe it is time to change something at the end of the season.”
“You get criticism when you don’t win trophies, when you don’t win games, and that is maybe the difference between Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger,” Gallas added.
“Mourinho wants to win every game and at the end of the season sometimes he has success but, for Arsene, Arsenal didn’t win from 2004 so everybody starts to criticise him because football has changed.
“Football is about victory, about trophies. Players want to lift trophies. If you don’t lift a trophy in your career, you will feel disappointed at the end of your career.”
Football has certainly changed immensely since Arsenal last won the Premier League title, with the whole English top tier having a large rise in income, and the level of all the clubs has increased.
There is now a top six clubs who are all realistically vying for the title, although Chelsea hold a nine point gap at the top of the table. Should the season start again with the exact same squads, I would expect things to go differently, as any of the top sides have the potential to be sitting in first.
As much as fans have turned on Arsene Wenger in recent weeks, the upturn in anger towards him has come whilst he has been sidelined due to a touchline ban, which could seem harsh, but he will need to make sure his side manage to win this weekend if he has hopes of a some let up.
Does Wenger still have the hunger to win?