When Ian Wright announced on Friday night that Arsene Wenger had told him he was reaching the end, it appeared to change the atmosphere surrounding the debate about the Arsenal manager’s future.
Suddenly, it was time for some quiet reflection, a moment to concede that when Wenger does leave, even the most venomous will probably acknowledge all he has done for the club.
That is simply human nature. When David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister, though he had decided to hold and lose the most divisive and self-destructive referendum in modern British history, he was cheered from the House of Commons. He left looking like a departing Viking god, rather than, say, a magician who, having asked for a volunteer from the audience to be sawn in half, manages to disguise his bewilderment when he can’t put the severed volunteer back together, and hastily departs from the auditorium to groans, dismay and the sound of sirens in the distance.
On the other hand, Wenger will deserve his send-off, whenever he goes. Arsenal’s victory against Hull City on Saturday allowed the atmosphere to endure, even if good fortune and bad refereeing was required.
Afterwards, Wenger was relaxed and joked that “I appreciate you want me to rest but I’m not ready”, while dismissing Wright’s comments. “I didn’t give any indication to him about my future,” he said, even if logically it would make sense to leave at the end of the season.
“My job is to make these people happy and when I don’t do that I feel guilty,” he said on Saturday. Happiness, of course, often eludes us and often the most unhappy people in life are those who seem to think being happy is a human right.
It is likely that the end at Arsenal will come when Wenger wants it. He will leave on his own terms, a concession to his extraordinary accomplishments and the power he holds at the club, but what happens against Bayern Munich will have more of a bearing on his season and influence the soundtrack that’s played during his remaining time at the club.
Arsenal fans are said to be desperate to win trophies, but they may be happy at this stage if they could engage in an authentic challenge for them.
The tie against Bayern would appear to be the only remaining platform for Arsenal to demonstrate that there is something different about this season.
Those who warn about the future post-Wenger like to point to Arsenal’s permanent position in the top four as proof of the consistency they’ve shown. But all consistency ever does is raise expectations. If the consistency isn’t accompanied by any excitement, any memories of notable performances, then it isn’t likely to be appreciated by supporters who want more.
If Arsenal had finished fifth in the Premier League, but reached a Champions League final in recent times, there would surely be more supporters content with Wenger. As it is, the claims that Arsenal’s consistency shouldn’t be overlooked when considering the future sound like the warning of economists who warned of a fall in GDP if Britain voted to leave the EU while voters wanted some tangible evidence of success.
These abstractions won’t quieten the mutinous protests if Arsenal’s season goes as it always has, over the next few weeks.
If that happens, we will be back to where we were after the Chelsea game with pundits turning on supporters and supporters announcing that the game has changed, that their voices will not be silenced.
But supporters have always had this power, even if there are more ways of hearing their voices today while they provide complementary entertainment.
Last week, Craig Burley described Arsenal supporters as “mentally weak”, something which might have startled supporters everywhere who had assumed that this was a given.
After all, only the most deluded fans believe they are required to show some mental strength while they sit in the stands with a pie having paid for a ticket and assumed they were handing over all obligations on the character front to those they were watching.
Unfortunately, there are those who might think Burley has a point and resolve to step up their supporting, to show some fortitude while sitting in the stands.
Burley’s points were absurd, but when Gary Neville referred to a supporter as an “idiot” last weekend, he was revealing something of the uneasy relationship professionals have with supporters beyond the bromides.
There was a truth in Neville’s comments beyond the details. Players will often privately talk about the frustrations they have with supporters, but publicly they can never reveal them. They are like politicians and voters, they have to obey certain conventions, even if the truth is more complex.
Nobody wants to be Gordon Brown leaving a mic on and calling a woman a ‘bigot’. If he does, he will have to listen to the pompous suggesting he can’t speak like that, while immediately apologising for any offence caused.
For some angry Arsenal supporters, when Neville spoke all they heard was one member of the professional classes supporting another, circling the wagons and taking issue with the manner in which they showed their dissent.
Yet Neville was anticipating the future when Wenger is lamented and people appreciate all that he did for the club, even if that appreciation tends to be a secondary consideration for many at the moment.
Rio Ferdinand’s words this weekend were more damning of Wenger, highlighting again the different demands Robin van Persie experienced playing for Manchester United rather than Arsenal.
This dulling of the competitive instinct may be the greatest indictment of the late Wenger era. In building a new stadium and making the club financially strong, a new generation came along who lacked the urgency of those who played for Wenger in his great years.
Wenger, of course, would insist that nothing has changed when it’s clear that everything has. Unhappiness is everywhere and is merely postponed when Arsenal win.
For Wenger, it may be that the noise is indistinguishable from the perceptive advice at this stage. They are all distractions from the job he is trying to do, a car alarm going off in the middle of the night.
He has persuaded himself that the noise is not his concern, that the alarm will switch itself off, even if the noise is piercing now and any silence is only temporary.
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