Arsenal have gone into the international break on the back of a resounding 3-1 defeat to Manchester City and for three former Gunners it’s clear the club will remain in crisis as long as Arsene Wenger stays at the helm.
Lee Dixon, Kevin Campbell and Emmanuel Petit have all aired their concern at the state of their former club, who trail leaders City by 12 points and have crucial games coming up against Tottenham and Manchester United. Lose those matches and the Gunners will have been cut adrift from the top four before the demanding Christmas schedule begins.
For Petit, the hope engendered by the 5-2 thrashing of Everton last month evaporated on Sunday at the Etihad as City comprehensively outplayed the Gunners.
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“It has been a long time since I saw Arsenal play well from the first minute to the last,” said the Frenchman, a mainstay of Wenger’s successful side in the late 1990s. “This is surely down to a crisis of confidence among the squad. Arsenal’s problems are mostly mental, not technical...at the moment, every time Arsenal have the ball, they are a danger to themselves, because as soon as they lose it, they look disorganised. There is no balance in this team – they lack concentration. The fault for this lies not just with the manager, but also with the players.”
Dixon was more critical in his assessment of his former manager, telling Talksport that he wished Wenger had stepped aside in May after leading Arsenal to FA Cup glory against Chelsea. “I am a big fan of his,” said the ex-defender. “I played for six years under him. I like the man as a human being and what he did when I was there was brilliant for me....[but] I honestly think after the FA Cup, after that amazing performance against Chelsea, it was time for him to go.”
Dixon won two Premier League titles under Wenger but he can’t see the Gunners ending their 14-season title drought any time soon. “They are very good with the ball and pretty poor without the ball - and you don’t win anything like that,” said Dixon. “You nick a cup but don’t challenge for the big honours if the balance is wrong.”
Asked to pinpoint the difference between Wenger’s Arsenal of 2017-18 and that of 1997-98, when Dixon won the first of his two league titles, he replied: “He had a structure and he brought all that flair on top of what we did as a defence. But the mentality has changed. It has flicked into a more attack-minded, less defensive-minded team, and the balance is all wrong.”
Campbell never played under Wenger, making the last of his 166 appearances for the Gunners in 1995, the year before the Frenchman arrived in north London, but in his opinion the club is drifting. “I don’t know where Arsenal are going,” he said. “I don’t believe Arsenal have replaced a Patrick Vieira, Emmanuel Petit or even a Gilberto. In all those years they haven’t addressed it. If you don’t address your centre-half and you don’t address your centre midfield, which is the spine of your team, where are you going?”
Campbell lamented the fact that Arsenal have “not addressed the problems in a dozen years and it’s telling on the pitch”, and Dixon offered an equally gloomy prognosis. “I honestly think they’re unfixable under Arsene. What he’s got there is he’s created an environment which the players don’t really know what they’re doing without the ball.”
