Arsene Wenger: Just another nail in the coffin

Arsenal’s four-nil drubbing at Liverpool was a humiliation for Arsenal fans, players and anyone involved with the club. For manager Arsene Wenger, it was simply another crass mistake he will get away with making, and a lesson to himself of how not to manage a football team. The trouble is, he isn’t learning. He’s been at the top of the game for twenty-one years.

Arsene Wenger has been Arsenal manager since 1996.

Everyone’s talking about it, as they always do. But everyone has an opinion. It’s been three or four years now and the same fans are still there, plugging away at the board to get Wenger out of the club.

There are occasions when the manager cannot be blamed and still is. But this is different. He made countless mistakes against Liverpool and seems to have lost his touch. The only thing that is maybe more laughable than the team’s defeat to the Reds is the fact that the board haven’t sacked him yet, seemingly based off how he performed as a manager thirteen years ago.

What went wrong?

When Arsenal stepped onto the pitch on Sunday afternoon, they should’ve been brimming with confidence, because the squad is laden with a host of extremely talented players. Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil and Alexandre Lacazette is a forward line that on paper, boasts the sort of quality that can win you the champions league.

But the season had already gone awry. A 4-3 victory against Leicester City in the very first game of the season cannot have left them gloating, after scraping through with a late Olivier Giroud header. And another beleaguered performance against Stoke led to a dire 1-0 loss – meaning they (a team meant to be challenging for the title) had a goal difference of zero from their first two games.

But like all the best teams, they pick themselves up, right?

Wrong.

Arsene Wenger’s first bad move on Sunday was the team selection.

The Gunners in recent years have become accustomed to a 4-2-3-1 formation. But wenger opted for an unfamiliar 3-4-3 formation, played by champions Chelsea last year and now adopted by multiple teams in the league. Bad decision.

Mohamed Salah advances on the Arsenal goal
during Liverpool's 4-0 trouncing of Arsenal.

Then it was the decision to leave out Shkodran Mustafi, an older centre back, for Rob Holding, a young and visibly inexperienced player who has a distinct lack of first team experience, seemingly because of the rumours that Mustafi has been linked with a move to Inter Milan.

Similarly, Wenger also opted to deny new boy Sead Kolasinac a place in the side, a player who has been deployed as a centre back previously in his career, and instead field Nacho Monreal, a player not renowned for his defensive skills, nor his pace.

The centre backs, sandwiching a returning Laurent Koscielny, had a wreck of a game, struggling to deal with the pace of the wingers when their ‘wing backs’ failed to track back enough. This left them exposed to the speed and trickery of Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah, which they couldn’t deal with.

The catastrophic miscalculations were comical by a manager with such knowledge. It was a mistake to play 3-4-3 without any guidance to the players of how to actually play it; Hector Bellerin is an extremely attack-minded full-back and did not track back enough, whereas Alex Oxlade Chamberlain, while having been utilised as a defensive midfielder in more recent times, is a player who has played in forward positions for the most part of his career.

Mesut Ozil's poor perfomances of late
have left Arsenal fans dejected.

The next problem is that of Mesut Ozil. The temperamental German has always struggled with form since joining the Gunners, looking fiery one minute and like he is bored out of his skin the next. Some love him, some hate him. But the fact of the matter is that he is simply nothing special. In fact, he has a negative impact on the team, both in his play and his attitude. He gave away the ball on multiple occasions on Sunday due to a lack of awareness – but it is so much so that it almost seems like he forgets that the opposition want to win the ball off him.

Like one Wayne Rooney, who’s career (in my controversial opinion) has been largely hit and miss since his discovery and went downhill early on, Mesut Ozil has never matched the cosmic heights he achieved when he first stormed onto the scene at the 2010 World Cup with Germany.

The last notable thing he did was score that goal against Ludogorets, and he’s been average ever since.

So where does Wenger come in? He comes in at the decision to continue to play him, when he is performing nowhere near world class, and is in the team simply because of his name, and a reputation he holds from the past. His laziness and poor attitude undoubtedly rubs off on the rest of the team, but if Wenger continues to put up with it, the morale of the squad can’t improve. And unlike some players, he is not irreplaceable.

Another midfielder with a similar problem is Granit Xhaka. His needless high pass to Monreal on Sunday lead to Liverpool’s opener, and his nonchalance puts the team in a negative light. He is a player who has talent but still has a lot of learning to do, and above anything, gets way too many bookings. Wenger played him on Saturday when for such a big game, a wiser choice could’ve been made and the short of it is that he has not had enough management to mature into the player he could be.

Olivier Giroud and Alexandre Lacazette (right) were
 benched for the Liverpool game.

The final selection for the team that baffled pundits everywhere was the choice to play Danny Welbeck at the pinpoint of a front three, rather than a fully fit Alexandre Lacazette, a player who the club have just forked out £47 million pounds for. Welbeck is a player who is more used to playing alongside another striker, or even in a less advanced position on the left, and the fact that he has never even scored than ten league goals in a season speaks for itself. Meanwhile, benched Lacazette scored 28 in 30 for Lyon last year. Need any more be said?

To cap it all off, Wenger made some poor substitutions, bringing on championship-standard midfielder Francis Coquelin and withdrawing star man Sanchez after sixty minutes. Alright, he’s just returned from a hamstring injury, but miracles can happen from 3-0. They’re much less likely when your best player is taking an early bath.

This defeat was not Arsenal and it was sad to watch them play and be organised so terribly. And hopefully, it’s the long awaited wake-up call the Arsenal top dogs need that says not that Arsene Wenger should even be given until the end of the season; but that he needs to be removed from his position, as soon as is possible.