‘Waaaaaahhhhhhoooooohhhhhhuuurrrggghhh isn’t it all horrible!’. That’s the noise being made at the moment by Arsenal Football Club fans, the most brattish and entitled set of supporters in the country.
Twenty consecutive top four finishes in the Premier League and an uninterrupted stream of appearances in the Champions League, Europe’s most prestigious club competition, two league and FA Cup doubles, three Premier League titles in total including one season undefeated as the ‘Invincibles’, six FA Cups, six Community Shields: in all, Arsene Wenger is Arsenal’s most successful ever manager.
Of course there are mitigating circumstances. Arsenal’s last league triumph came in 2003-04, and their FA Cup wins in 2004-05 and 2013-14 were separated by nine years without a trophy. Their style of play is not as vibrant as it was when Thierry Henry spearheaded a counter-attacking setup, and there is some justification to the perception that they have spent too sparely and on occasion unwisely in the transfer market.
But the shrieks and whimpers of discontent over Wenger’s handling of the club are more than a little ridiculous. Last season they finished second in the league, securing for the twenty-first year in a row a place above their local rivals Tottenham Hotspur. The murmurs of dissatisfaction this time around became voluble after a last-gasp 2-1 home win over Burnley. Then Arsenal were second in the league, if eight points behind leaders Chelsea.
But after they succumbed in their next home game 1-2 versus Watford, they dropped one place in the table and their fans became impossible to console. They were then soundly beaten 3-1 at Stamford Bridge, and pundits who have never warmed in more than two decades to the idea of a foreign manager – led by Ian Wright, a supposed Gunners hero – all but wrote off Wenger’s future.
Wright, an intolerable xenophobe, even insinuated that Wenger had admitted he would not continue in the role beyond the summer – willfully extrapolating if not deliberately misinterpreting comments made by the manager during a corporate dinner. Now after Arsenal’s crushing defeat over two legs in the Champions League Round of 16 versus Bayern Munich, Wright has proclaimed this period the worst in Arsenal’s entire history.
So let’s look back to a time when Arsenal were the greatest side in the world with Ian Wright their star striker. Wait what’s that! Alas, it never happened. Arsenal actually won the league title at the end of the 1990-1991 season, but when they bought Ian Wright the following September, he scored goals but could only help them to a fourth-placed finish.
The following season and the advent of the Premier League saw Ian Wright’s Arsenal in lowly 10th position. They then finished 4th, 12th, 5th, and 3rd, Arsene Wenger arriving early in the latter season before finally enabling an ageing Ian Wright to claim his one and only Premier League winner’s medal. Otherwise the highlights of Wright’s unremarkable time at Arsenal were a domestic cup double in 1993, and the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup in 1994, although Wright himself was suspended for the final.
Instead of instigating a tirade of abuse and destructive speculation, Wright should prostrate himself at Wenger’s feet, or do us all a favour and remove himself from the television. If that would be too decent, too self-effacing, at least in the future he might let Wenger chew on his food in relative peace.
