Arsenal need to find a dignified exit for Wenger fast News

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Arsenal need to find a dignified exit for Wenger fast

By Daily Sports on August 29, 2017

It’s the start of a new season in England and already the familiar early season blip and crisis has engulfed Arsenal, one of the most illustrious clubs of the land. Arsenal, the club that over the last two decades have been admired and feared for their free-flowing, mesmerizing football as introduced by their French manager Arsene Wenger, are now the laughing stock of not just only British football, but the world as a whole. This is largely down to the staleness of their brand f football.

Since 2003 when the club last won the premiership, going a full season without a single loss, Arsenal have not seriously come near to winning the league.

The Gunners’ fan base these past years have been divided between ‘Wenger out’ or ‘Wenger Out Brigade’ and ‘Wenger knows best’ camps. Last season things came to a head as the division within the support base of the club reached a point of plane flying around stadiums both declaring support and unhappiness with the manager and frequent riots at the Emirates stadium home of the team. In the end, the culmination of the division was a distracted team that ended up finishing below the top four places which guarantees Champions League football for the first time under Wenger’s 20-year reign in the club.

But the glory of the FA Cup came as a face saver for Wenger as his boys put in a united and gritty performance to down Chelsea 2-1 in the final of the Cup in May.

Wenger’s contract situation has been cited as a big reason Arsenal failed last season as the uncertainty over whether he would renew his commitment to the club lingered. After the FA Cup final, an opportunity offered itself for Arsene and Arsenal to part ways in a dignified manner.

Wenger would have been leaving on a high as the most successful manager in Arsenal's history and the manager famed for reshaping the technical, tactical and managerial directions of English football for the better.

While all these successes of Wenger can never be erased, what is threatened now is a dignified exit for the old man. The shambolic start to the current season that has seen Arsenal concede 8 goals in three games and losing 2 of their first three matches without putting up a real fight means Wenger and Arsenal may well be in for a repeat ride of last season's unrest.

Now, it is becoming increasingly clear that Wenger just can’t rouse his players for a consistent good run in the premier league that makes winning the title a possibility. Whether it is because of a lack of tactical ability, or players’ unwillingness to play for him, or perhaps something else within the club that makes optimal performance impossible, the manager who the bulk falls on his table to deliver success on the major front of the premier league seems to the incapable of that task.

Arsenal board must be caught now in a tight situation. Stick with Wenger for two years and allow the staleness to continue because of an understandable lack of appetite to dismiss a manager that has so meritoriously serves for decades or show some unemotional brutality in letting the axe fall on the Frenchman and bring in a new manager now who could offer some much needed fresh ideas for the gunners?

The solution could be now to try to persuade Arsene to move upstairs to the board level in some capacity to allow for a new manager. The Arsenal board could be showing some class in reaching some kind of a mutual agreement which saves Wenger the embarrassment of being sacked and, at the same time, taking an important step in making sure that the club gets the very important fresh air that a new manager could bring into the club.

Should Wenger refuse to be persuaded to mutually take a bow from managing the team and poor results continue to be recorded before December, then the club could be left with no choice but to let the faith that befall all other managers who fail to steer the ship to a promising direction to be Wenger’s lot.

It is still early enough to save Arsenal’s season from total collapse. A good new manager would have time to steady the ship the way a Guus Hiddink usually does for Chelsea when they find themselves in need of a new managerial direction.

Source Daily Sports

Posted August 29, 2017