Same old Arsenal, always in crisis

It says much about the shambles that is Arsenal Football Club that the Gunners are in crisis and it's still only August. Hard to imagine how the club will look in September but one thing's for sure - things are not going to get better while Arsene Wenger is in charge.

It is many years since the Frenchman has looked like a football revolutionary. These days most commentators regard him as an embarrassing relic, a once innovative coach who has been overtaken by Old Father Time.

Devoid of ideas, inspiration and energy, Wenger is these days reduced to sitting in the dugout looking disgusted.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

For a club of Arsenal's stature it's a sorry state of affairs, but also utterly predictable. A huge proportion of the club's fans felt that Wenger should not have been granted a two-year extension at the end of last season, not after 13 years without a sniff of a league title, and particularly given that Arsenal had failed to qualify for the Champions League.

An FA Cup win was hardly enough to save him the ire of supporters, many of whom continue to advocate for a change of leadership.

In the lengthening list of humiliations suffered by Arsenal, there was something unprecedented about Sunday's 4-0 thrashing at Anfield. Liverpool were so vastly superior it was like watching the third round of the FA Cup when a Premier League powerhouse comes up against a team of part-timers.

"We're very disappointed with the way we performed but we have to accept it," said Aaron Ramsey, who was worse than most. "It's not good enough and we have to do something about it."

Arsenal fans have heard it all before. Usually, they have to wait until midway through the season before the club implodes, but for nigh on a decade the supporters have been fobbed off with feeble excuses instead of being given honest answers as to why the club is going backwards.

The anger is mounting, as witnessed on Monday when one furious fan daubed 'Wenger Out' in large letters on a wall outside the Emirates Stadium.

"Disappointed", was also the word used by Mesut Ozil in the wake of the Anfield annihilation.

"Gunners, I'm sorry – especially for the fans who travelled all the way up to Liverpool to see us fighting. But we will try everything to improve in the next game and bounce back from the disappointment we are all feeling at the moment."

There was no "fight" about Arsenal, only capitulation, and Ozil's talk of "bouncing back" seems unlikely. There is a rottenness at the core of Arsenal that has been there for a number of season and is spreading, as Thierry Henry explained on Sunday evening.

Asked if he was surprised by the rout of his former team, the Frenchman replied: "No I'm not. I said it at the beginning of the season. Stagnation. People looked at me sideways. I knew what would happen today, I knew what was going to happen against Leicester [a narrow 4-3 win], I knew what was going to happen at Stoke [a 1-0 defeat]."

There were similar sentiments from another Arsenal goalscoring legend, Ian Wright, who said it was time Wenger stepped down. "I do not believe now he can motivate the players," he told BBC Radio 5 live. "That team has not played for Wenger for years… it's an absolute nightmare. Where does he go from here?"

The Liverpool result couldn't have come at a worse time for Wenger as he tries this week to persuade Alexis Sanchez and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain to sign new contracts. In Henry's opinion it's a lost cause.

"They are not going to want to be part of this team," he said. "That is why players are not renewing contracts, they can see something is wrong at Arsenal. Why would you want to stay? Why stay at a club that puts in performances like that?"