What does Arsenal represent as a football club? It’s time the various stakeholders decided

Gerry Francis.

He was the Tottenham manager in charge when they last finished above Arsenal in the 1994-95 season. St. Totteringham’s Day — an Arsenal tradition created in 2002 — which denotes the day when Tottenham can no longer mathematically overtake their fellow north London rivals, wasn’t even a thing back then.

Back in 1995, the Scottish football manager George Graham was in charge of the Gunners (who was replaced by the caretaker Stewart Houston before the end of the season). His team, labelled as “boring, boring Arsenal” were quite adept at grinding out a 1-0 result with regularity, often playing for the result rather than expansive football.

All that changed in 1996, when Arsène Wenger was unveiled. His teams were not cut from the same cloth. He quickly overhauled the team’s dietary habits and their playing style. Boasting an array of impressive signings such as Theirry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires, Sol Campbell and others, his team took the Premier League by storm with an approach that combined power, pace, precision, flair, and a winning mentality. In Wenger’s first decade, they won three Premier Leagues (one of them unbeaten), four FA Cups, and were 15 minutes away from winning the 2005-06 UEFA Champions League with 10 men.

Their cross-town rivals must have looked on enviously; Glenn Hoddle, Jacques Santini, Martin Jol, Juande Ramos, Harry Redknapp and many other many other managers tried to grow Tottenham out of Arsenal’s shadow for more than 20 years. Even last year, Mauricio Pochettino’s Tottenham stumbled away to Newcastle and finished below Arsenal on the final day of the 2015-16 campaign.

Given this history, the latest 2-0 victory for Tottenham in the North London derby was the proverbial monkey off their back; that Arsenal couldn’t mathematically overhaul their points tally must have made the triumph doubly sweeter.

Has Wenger’s reign really been a failure?

For Arsenal fans though, the last decade has been more or less a case of déjà vu all over again. Barring a couple of FA Cups (and two Community Shields), the period has been quite fallow. Arsenal have been knocked out in the round of 16 of the Champions league in seven successive seasons, often in humiliating circumstances. The petering out of their challenge for multiple competitions has been a springtime ritual for a while; the results have contributed to the shouts of “Wenger Out” to grow louder by the day. But has his reign really been a failure?

An examination of the league position at the end of each Premier League/top division campaign reveals the story to be quite different. After World War 2, Arsenal have finished outside the top four 34 times in 70 years (15 of those below the ninth position); none of those years were under Wenger’s watch, though this may change shortly.

Wenger also managed to qualify for the Champions League tournament for 19 successive years (one behind Real Madrid’s current record of 20). It is safe to say that no domestic rival comes close to this level of consistency, barring Manchester United and Chelsea, to varying extents. They too have spent time outside the rarefied confines of Champions league football recently.

Tottenham may look like a youthful team on the upswing, with Arsenal on the way down with a lot of deadwood. But, to place this “drought” in Arsenal’s history, post the 1952-53 season, Wenger’s teams have won three of Arsenal’s six top division medals and six out of nine FA Cups. A case can be made for both the team having stalled, and for Wenger to be a victim of the standards he set a decade ago.

Even in Europe, if fortunes of footballing royalty Real Madrid are considered after the European Cup competition was branded as the Champions league, they were heavyweights at specific two time periods: one around the turn of the millennium, and the other is still ongoing (seven successive semifinal appearances). One look at their European campaigns shows the numerous heartbreaks in the nineties and the noughties. Additionally, they won the Spanish League only five times in the last 20 years. The situation wouldn’t be too different for other continental giants such as Juventus, Bayern Munich or Barcelona.

Arsenal’s value to stakeholders

All this begs the question—what does Arsenal represent as a football club to its various stakeholders?

The businessmen are more than happy with increasing revenues, profits, and a period of stability. Arsenal have been a stable presence in the Deloitte Football Money league. The club posted record revenues recently, and this was despite a significant outlay on transfers last season. The club handled a successful transition to the new stadium which brought in extra gate receipts. The new TV deal has brought in stratospheric projections of revenues and a lesser reliance on Champions league football. Needless to say, there is no blip on the horizon; it is no wonder that the board have repeatedly ducked the uncomfortable questions. And they’re loathe to make drastic announcements when changes in managerial personnel haven’t changed situations for the better at other clubs.

Unfortunately, the club’s recent results are at odds with what the fans have been accustomed to seeing for a decade — never mind that it was Wenger who was part of the reason all along. Is the club a domestic superpower and a European challenger in the manner of Wenger’s first decade or an overachieving top-table team content with its place season after season? Sure, Arsenal have played eye-catching football from time to time but do the results on the pitch warrant the unwavering support of their supporters? That Leicester City managed to win the Premier League must have been the last straw that broke the camel’s back. With progress being made by several teams such as Atletico Madrid, Dortmund, Napoli, Monaco — and not to mention, Tottenham — Arsenal seems to be standing still as the rest of the world is moving on.

Time to temper expectations?

Perhaps it is time for the fans of Arsenal to either temper their expectations for as long as Wenger remains manager, or move on by voting with their feet; nothing else will catch the eye of the board more than unsold season tickets, dwindling merchandise sales, and a smaller fan following.

One can certainly hope for a new managerial appointment — one who’s adept at squeezing great results out of a well-drilled team, and enjoys sparring with continental giants. Here’s what a remarkably prescient Peter Hill-Wood had said on the occasion of Wenger’s appointment:

“I believe Arsène Wenger is going to be a great success and drag football in this country into the 20th century. There is no doubt in my mind we are blinkered and backward as a sporting nation. Look at the British results in Europe, they were not good, including ours. We keep telling ourselves we have the best league in Europe, but it is not true. We need to catch up with the Continentals and we think Arsène is the man to help us”

Replace Arsène Wenger with Diego Simeone, and the quote wouldn’t be out of place even today.

Vyasa Shastry is a materials engineer and a consultant, who aspires to be a polymath in the future. In his spare time, he writes about science, technology, sport and society.