The Case Against Arsene Wenger

Pin It Now! My friend walked into my office looking dejected, frustrated and tired; he was furious and desperate. Why had he come to my office that early Monday morning? He had come to ask if I had Coach Arsene Wenger’s telephone number through which he could call him to express his disgust about Wenger’s indifference towards getting the services of world class strikers to improve the dwindling fortunes of the club.

Why would an ardent Arsenal fan come to ask of the coach’s telephone number from a Chelsea fan like me? I asked myself. Things were certainly falling apart and the centre could no longer hold for Arsenal fans. My friend could no longer pretend about the lingering dissatisfaction in the club and poor results for the past years; he was willing to seek help from anywhere. Chelsea had just added to the woes of the club after they were taken to the cleaners by Manchester United previous week.

His grudge was that the team’s manager/coach did not care to buy established world class players but kept going for cheap ones and was refusing to spend the club’s money even when given the go ahead to shop for good players. But are Wenger’s players really inexperienced and cheap? I do not think so myself. Cez Fabregas was FIFA best player at the U-16 world cup in Finland 2003 and for & years now he has really grown to maturity. He became popular before Lionel Messi who became the revelation of the FIFA U-20 world cup in the Netherlands in 2005.

Andrei Arshavin was already doing very well for his club side Zenit Saint Petersburg of Russia and had a classic performance at the UEFA cup where he was spotted by Arsene Wenger. Van Persie is also not amateur; he has been playing with the big boys for sometime now. Alexander Song made the CAF team list at the just concluded African Nations’ Cup tournament in Angola. William Gallas, Bacary Sagna, Nasri, Theo Walcott, Arshavin, Fabregas, Song, Van Persie, Emmanuel Eboue, etc all play for their national teams.

But why did Arsene Wenger dispose of Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure when they were an asset to the team? Now he’s going for Sol Campbell because it is obvious that he does not have reliable defenders even though he had told the world he had a list of reserved defenders when he asked Toure to go. Wenger is losing grip of the premiership and he may end up without hardware this season again. He needs to spend more money to get good players so as to get a better result and then my friend and other Arsenal fans would be happy again.

The Case Against Arsene Wenger