da bet vitoria： With Chelsea closer to the relegation zone than the top four, Manchester City incapable of defending in the absence of orchestrating skipper Vincent Kompany and Manchester United stuck in a purgatorial search for their post-Alex Ferguson identity, this should be the season in which everybody’s talking about Arsenal winning the Premier League title.
da bet7： Except, they’re not. Five points ahead of the pack with just 13 fixtures left to go, the talk of the town is the miraculous rise of Leicester City and whether it will be completed by claiming this year’s crown.
That’s no disrespect to the Foxes, who deserve every credit for ignoring the imposing tide of history to disrupt the established order at the Premier League’s summit. Clearly, they’re a more talented side than most people realised, with a more capable manager than many assumed. But if Claudio Ranieri’s ordinary boys beat them to the title this season, what does that say about Arsenal?
It not only condemns their failure to capitalise on the inconsistency of their divisional rivals this term, but also the decade they’ve spent in the wilderness of fourth-placed finishes. Perhaps most importantly of all, it confirms what many have argued for some time; that Arsene Wenger will never lead the club back to its former glories after somehow missing his best chance to do so since 2003.
Of course, until the title race is mathematically over, we’re talking about a hypothetical scenario and momentum could swing drastically next week when the Midlands side travel to the Emirates.
But nonetheless, the notion that Arsenal have spent the last ten years on the fringes of the title race because of their inability to compete with Chelsea, City and United in the transfer market has already been undermined by a Leicester squad that cost less to assemble – just £60million – than the north Londoners paid for Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez.
It also undermines the idea that ‘the right players’ weren’t available last summer or during the January transfer window, when Wenger made just one signing apiece at a combined cost of £18million. There’s an obvious hypocrisy in suggesting Arsenal couldn’t have addressed their insufficiencies up front, in defensive midfield and at the heart of defence during the last two windows, when Leicester picked up N’Golo Kante, who has averaged more ball-winning actions than any Premier League player this season, for just £6million, and the ever-industrious Shinji Okazaki for a club-record £7million.
Don’t get me wrong, that doesn’t just reflect badly on Arsenal. In fact, it says a great deal about the Premier League’s culture of ever-escalating transfer budgets, shared by pretty much all twenty clubs. But if Wenger’s spent the last few years delicately assembling this current Arsenal squad with incredibly precise additions and the last decade refusing to spend big because he knew a chance like this would eventually come along, then he won’t have a leg to stand on come the summer if the Gunners somehow pass it up.
After all, every other major Premier League club is amid major structural change, but Wenger’s Arsenal remain a beacon of continuity. Their starting XI has been exactly the same since the start of last season, barring a marked improvement between the sticks in Petr Cech, their style of football has been exactly the same for around a decade, most of their players have been at the club for four terms or more and Wenger’s reign is encroaching upon its 20th anniversary.
A familiarised team in familiarised surroundings should be carving up the league this year as the rest of the title-contenders do some soul searching. It’s not a question of quality. Leicester City are testament enough, but this Arsenal squad is talented enough to claim the title anyway and in stark contrast to recent seasons, they’ve actually survived this year’s injury crisis with relatively strong results.
Yet, there is still a lack of ruthlessness about Arsenal – particularly evident during draws with Southampton and Stoke and yet another defeat to a now 13th-placed Chelsea – and considering it’s been a recurring criticism of the north Londoners throughout the last decade, for me, it can only be traced back to the man in the dugout.
Wenger is a great manager but when compared to the rest of the beautiful game’s modern greats – Sir Alex Ferguson, Pep Guardiola, Jose Mourinho and Carlo Ancelotti – he is not a great winner. Likewise, if Arsenal can’t win the title when Chelsea, United and to a lesser extent, City are out of the picture, it’s abundantly clear that firstly, he has not managed his squad effectively enough this season and secondly, he’s taken the club down the wrong path since their last title in 2003.
If Leicester City claim this year’s crown, Arsenal will require some soul-searching of their own and it should start with a change in management. After all, if Wenger’s not going to claim the title this year, he never, ever will.
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