#2 Every season under Wenger follows the same pattern
Ever since their 2006 move to the Emirates Stadium, every Arsenal season under Wenger has followed a similar pattern. It goes something like this: sell a top player or two to a richer club – perhaps a rival – in the close season and replace them with cheaper alternatives while Wenger promises that he has the squad depth to cope. Start off in ropey fashion, hit form in the autumn, wildly crash in the winter months and appear to slide down the table before a late surge takes them up the table and into the top four.
Sure, it’s good enough for a Champions League finish each season, but a club the size of Arsenal should have higher ambitions, namely winning the Premier League and attempting to win the Champions League too.
The fact is that Arsenal’s seasonal slump usually coincides with the knockout stages of the Champions League – witness their awful capitulation against Bayern Munich this year – and also with the most important stage of the league season. It means they’ll probably never win the league while the pattern continues.
To break the pattern, the London club simply must dispense of Wenger. As the old saying goes, only a fool keeps repeating something that doesn’t work, hoping for different results. And to get different results, a change at the top is needed.
