The Madness of Arsene Wenger
We have seen it in Politicians who are in a position of power for too long, the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair were prime-minister for too long to no real purpose but to perpetuate their own legacies and seemed almost deranged in their inflexibility.
The same is now the case with Arsene Wenger, a man who all of us had the upmost respect for, for his intellectual capacity and his dry wit and his ability to nurture young talent seems little more a figure of fun enveloped by his inability to break out of a pattern of behaviour..... to the point where he has become a parody of himself with his insistence that this is a young team with a lot of quality willfully ignoring his and it's failure to break out of an alarmingly similar pattern of collapse season in, season out.
The most risible of which being the defending the indefensible defence, nothing wrong with the defence apart from it conceding more goals from set pieces than any other team in the league, and his insistent that despite this it's an incredibly strong side at open play (it's an absurd suggestion even if it were true). The back four is just as culpable for conceding goals from open play with it's vulnerability to aerial attacks, holding high lines that leave us exposed to pacey counter attacks, the inability to clear the ball properly inside the box........the whole defence being taken apart by one long ball......the full backs bombing forward too often leaving us exposed at the back.
We are an attacking side! he proclaims......well i'd actually even question that if the awful Bendtner goes, and we are left with the attacking options of Chamakh, Van Persie and Gervinho (assuming vela is sent on loan or sold), an attacking side doesn't play a 4-5-1 formation against the likes of blackburn and sunderland and then look confused when we fail to break down a side intent on defending and settling for a creditable draw at the Emirates, it certainly doesn't employ Van Persie as a sole striker when he's a player who naturally drifts wide.
Either he is the most stoic mouthpiece for a board who refuses to spend money at the risk of having less to line it's own pockets with, or he's so desperate to protect this reputation as a man who can win things without spending the cash that he's willing to risk the sustainability of the team for on the field success in order to protect this thinly veiled masquerade, or maybe he's afraid of spending and yet still failing.
I am of the opinion that only root and branch change within the first team can bring about guaranteed success, however i am not a zealot and would compromise on a few key signings.......and when that's painfully obvious that despite it being necessary to the point where wenger's own players have told him it's necessary it simply won't happen.
