Arsene Wenger is not the right man for Arsenal because of his poor decision-making – by Vlad Jensen (jensenvk)
There is a lot of talk among fans whether Arsene Wenger is still the right manager for our club or is he past his shelf date? If we analyze the last four years of Wenger’s reign, we can see a chain of events and poor decisions what made us fall short of winning the Premier League title. That same chain of events has built up frustration and anger among fans that is now transforming that into unpleasant spat and unrest at the Emirates. Here is why that is the case:
2010-2011: Refusal to sign a goalkeeper and experienced center back.
Wenger refused to sign Mark Schwarzer for £4m even when he knew that none of his goalkeepers were up to scratch. Szczesny, Almunia and Fabianski did not solve Wenger’s goalkeeping dilemma to much frustration of the fans.
Phillippe Senderos left in the summer and Vermaelen was having a long-term injury, the only experienced cover we had at the back was Johan Djourou and Sebastien Squillaci. Not exactly world class I would say… Laurent Koscielny arrived from a League 2 side Lorient and looked very shaky during his first season. The result was a 4th place in the league, knocked out of the Champions league and a shock defeat in the Carling cup final when a horrible mix-up between rookie keeper Wojciech Szczesny and Laurent Koscielny served Birmingham a victory on silver platter. Do you see where I am coming from?
2011-2012: Last-minute panic buys.
A terrible year for us as we lost Nasri and Fabregas… Besides Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gervinho, Wenger refused to strengthen a depleted 4th placed squad. After being slaughtered 8-2 at Old Trafford, Wenger went on a shopping spree adding Mikel Arteta, Per Mertesacker, Youssi Benayoun, Andre Santos and Park Chu-young. Only two of them are present in the Arsenal squad today….
Arsene did not sign a defensive cover in January even though the squad was ravaged with a defensive injury crisis. As a result Arsenal lost all of their games in January. Luckily we scraped 3rd place and got knocked out of all the other cups.
2012-2013: Failure to sign a replacement striker and defensive midfielder.
The departure of Robin van Persie and Alex Song almost caused a riot among Arsenal fans. The replacements of Oliver Giroud and Lukas Podolski failed to fill the void left. Wenger did not sign a defensive midfielder replacement for Song but rather relied on Arteta and Diaby to do the job.
The result is that we barely managed to scrape it to 4th place in the league above the Tottenham and got miserably knocked out of all the cups by Bradford and Blackburn. The fact that Arsene Wenger handed the Premier League trophy to Man United by selling the league’s top striker to them, left a very bitter taste in our mouths.
2013 -2014: Still no world class striker cover or defensive midfielder
The arrival of Mesut Ozil got us thrilled, hoping that the times are changing for our club. Unfortunately Wenger did not address the most pressing issue of getting a good quality striker cover for Giroud, but chose to sign an unproven youngster in Yaya Sanogo.
Arsenal was leading the league by New Year and we haven’t been so close to winning the title in years. However, with injuries ravaging our squad and failure by Wenger to strengthen the squad in January made us lose 6-3 to Man City, 5-1 to Liverpool, 6-0 to Chelsea and 3-0 to Everton.
The late loan signing of Kim Kallstrom enraged the fans as Wenger still decided to proceed with the transfer as the player had a broken back and would not be available for several months. Again Wenger left it to the last minute and made a mess of it. Defensive midfielder was also an issue as Mathieu Flamini and Mikael Arteta were not able to provide an adequate cover when playing against the top sides. We slipped down to 4th place again, but luckily we won the FA-cup and ended the trophy drought.
2014-2015: No defensive cover, no defensive midfielder and no world class striker.
Alexis Sanchez and Debuchy arrived and that was amazing news for us fans. However, Wenger would have never bought Danny Welbeck at the last minute if Giroud did get not injured in late August. I think Danny is a great player but is not a striker capable of providing 30+ goals a season. Thomas Vermaelen was allowed to leave for Barcelona without Wenger signing any defensive cover, and going into the season with only two recognized center backs is just asking for trouble. Wenger gambled again and it didn’t pay off.
Defensive midfielder issue is still not solved and Arsenal defense haven’t had such bad record in a long time.
Now we are a facing the worst start to a season in more than 30 years, after years of broken promises, increasing ticket prices and poor decision-making by Arsene Wenger & Co.
Do you know what defines a great manager?
Like in any business, a great manager is a leader that acts when he should, but a normal manager only acts when he must. Sometimes it is just too late to pick up the pieces, because you failed to act.
It is time for us to move forward and sign a great manager that acts when he should and can bring us back to the glory days. Why? Because we are a great club that has the world’s greatest fans and because we deserve it!
Vlad Jensen aka jensenvk