Chelsea are so quick to wield the axe but Arsenal are too cautious

 
14 December 2012

There are surely no prizes for defending the reputation of Arsene Wenger. If his work isn’t enshrined in our understanding of football’s capacity to enchant, we should long since have found another passion.

His Invincibles created a benchmark of excellence in the English game. The signings of Thierry Henry and Patrick Vieira, Nicolas Anelka and Cesc Fabregas carried the indelible mark of perceptive genius. It was a touch that created such a huge burden of expectation the current meanderings of someone like Gervinho simply will not do.

The problem, of course, is that football, like life, moves on. It means that when the great man’s staunchest admirers say he is immovable as manager of Arsenal, they are forgetting something crucial to the health of any club. It is not the fond memory of yesterday but the excitement of what might happen tomorrow.

This — if you put aside the dubious pleasure of paying top-price tickets in the cause of an impeccable business plan which might one day in an indefinite future produce again serious contention for major prizes — is something that disappeared over the Emirates horizon quite some time ago.

The reality of this week’s shocking defeat at League Two Bradford went so much deeper than a mere random ambush. It entombed Arsenal in another year of futility, almost certainly an eighth one of failing to win a trophy. It brought another season of jam tomorrow, egg on your face today.

How long can such a shortfall of ambition be sustained? The Arsenal hierarchy issue their apologies, paint themselves as paragons of a new rationality in the affairs of the English game but they keep missing the essential point. It is that a football club have a dynamic all of their own.

Ultimately, it is created by what happens on the field and who can say that anything like enough is occurring at the Emirates Stadium?

Wenger had never before looked as discomforted as he did in the wake of defeat in Yorkshire. He talked of his near full-strength team’s dogged efforts. He said there was no embarrassment if you could be sure you had given it your best.

Best effort? Wenger quite brusquely concluded his post-match interview. Perhaps he had instantly reviewed his argument and, like so much of the rest of the football world, found it quite untenable. There is talk of dressing room dissension, of exasperation with an edict that demands the old prettiness but without the means of inflicting a thrust or two of new cold steel. Wenger is being portrayed as a man who cannot let go of a single rein but where is the carriage charging?

Inevitably, there are comparisons with events at Chelsea.

But if in west London we have seen a galloping of institutionalised disrespect for the office of manager, there is some reason to believe that Arsenal have erred too far in the other direction.

No, of course you cannot unceremoniously pack off the man who has created a superb set of values, whose football is relentlessly aimed at the stars. But you can assess his current viability and the need for some new force in directing and shaping the team. You can, and you must, consider the most vital asset of any football club. It is that sense of momentum without which the most basic ambitions die on the vine.

Not the least poignant aspect of Wenger’s situation is the fading memory of his once bitter rivalry with Sir Alex Ferguson. At the peak of it, someone put the latest piece of Ferguson propaganda forward for Wenger’s consideration.

He glowered and declared: “Never mention that man’s name in my presence ever again.”

It was a flash of enmity in a beautiful balanced contest. Now, if Ferguson speaks of his old competitor his words are accompanied by a kindly glow.

They are couched in the respect due one great football man by another but they do not have the edge of a man who feels even a breath of the old threat.

If this sounds harsh it is certainly no more so than Ferguson’s cherry picking of Robin van Persie, the move which has been so vital in United’s march to a six-point lead in the Premier League. Ferguson has momentum all right. Despite the tightening of his own financial situation, at least relative to those of Manchester City and Chelsea, he has continued to win, to remain at the heart of the most serious action.

By comparison, Arsenal have never looked so fragile in the face of serious competition. They still have players to admire in Santi Cazorla, Jack Wilshere and Aaron Ramsey. They still offer the promise of a team committed to the principle of fine football but the practice of it is becoming remote.

The desire to praise Wenger rather than bury him is something that will continue to precede every game in which he is involved. But this, it was impossible not to conclude when he came out of that cold northern night, is no longer any more than the legacy of what he once did. His, and his team’s, hold on the future had never seemed so slight. It is something Arsenal have to engage on a day quite soon.

Take it on the chin, Amir, you’re not world class

The hyping of Amir Khan’s latest comeback fight is, naturally enough, somewhat light on the subject of his opponent Carlos Molina’s most conspicuous deficiency.

It is the lack of anything resembling a serious punch.

This was a necessity after the latest evidence that Khan lacks a chin to maintain a career at the highest level and the selection of the lightly-considered Mexican-American is the way of boxing.

However, Khan, having sacked his hugely respected trainer Freddie Roach, would be wise to avoid too much triumphalism in the wake of what looks like an inevitable victory in the early hours of Sunday morning in LA.

His ability to take a punch has always been the irredeemable flaw in the career that started so promisingly with a silver medal at the Athens Olympics and it was a source of dread whenever there was talk of his relentless march into the company of men like Manny Pacquiao and his conqueror last weekend, Juan Manuel Marquez.

Marquez’s knockout blow was arguably among the most ferocious ever thrown. For the great Pacman it meant oblivion. For Khan it could only be the most sombre reminder of where the limits of his ambition should safely lie.

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