Each season has its own goals an ambitions, and Arsenal, as strange as that sounds, have been lowering their standards with every passing year. Arsene Wenger is a big part of that “tradition”, as the club becomes more and more about ending the season with an impressive profit line, instead of trying to compete for titles or the best players available on the market. If Santi Cazorla is the best this club can find, it means someone is doing something wrong.
Not that Cazorla is a bad player – he’s the best on this Arsenal squad, and quite the entertaining midfielder to watch. But for a club like Malaga it’s fine to have someone like him be leading the ship. For Arsenal, whose fans see themselves as part of something much greater than a club that should be happy about finishing fourth, it’s certainly a lot less than enough. There are plenty of voices within the club admitting that even this kind of finish, if it does turn out well, is a failure.
Mikel Arteta, who is on his way to complete his second season with Arsenal, is one of those who thought he was signing with a club that has plenty of ambition, but turns out to be stuck in an unpleasant stage for most of those involved. The question is – have they hit their own personal rock bottom, or are thing going to get worse as the seasons go by?
Next season we have to improve on this current gap. United deserved it. They won the league with four games to go so they deserved the clapping. When someone does the job you have to congratulate them. This is the respectful thing to do. You want to be in that situation to walk on the pitch and the other teams show respect because you are the winners. Hopefully, along with our young players, we will have the chance to do it.
Wenger is the one who usually gets all the fingers pointed at him. He’s also not talking too much about whether or not he’s staying next season. There are talks of PSG, or Real Madrid, but it’s really hard to tell fiction from truth. One thing is certain – he certainly doesn’t want to leave nearly 17 years of work with one memorable failure at the end, completing the decline that began the day after they reached their highest point, in 2004, and the invincible season.
It’s all about money, but not only that. It’s the choices he’s made when it comes to signings. Raiding Southampton for Theo Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain which hasn’t really been worth it up to this point. Maybe its the ownership closing its pockets, as minority owner Alisher Usmanov thinks, blaming Stan Kroenke for everything that’s happened in the last few seasons.
Even if it’s not all about him, it’s hard to believe anyone being more of a figurehead to the decline in quality and results over the past few years, which would be quite a shame to see Arsene Wenger leaving the club he helped raise to a certain status in Europe without another chance to redeem himself. On the other hand, things can always slip even more downhill.