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My view of the root cause of Arsenals current situation will always go back to the Hull FA Cup Final. A strong fearless board, with football acumen, would have known at that point that Wenger was a spent force, and that final offered him the chance to leave the stage with grace>
Wenger had lost his capability to deal with modern defensive systems. He was living on past glories. The situation literally left them with a blank page. Klopp was available, and I think it would have been a compliment to Wenger for him to pass things onto a similar manager
at the top of his game and with a blueprint around player development that wasn't massively different to the clubs existing culture. Unfortunately the owners could not offer any analysis of football, so went with Wenger, until it was unavoidably clear that he had to leave.
By which time the playing squad was full of all kinds of square pegs in round holes. By then, it was too late. Throwing good money after bad, with nefarious parties operating within the club, and a high turnover of players, and internal management.
Which now has led to ridiculously bad football decisions, and the club being completely tied to Arteta. Theres nowhere else to go. Arteta may very well be a good manager in the years to come, but very obviously you would want him to have done a few years at Portsmouth or somwhere
Just to make sure he knew what he was doing. Then he could have come in as an assistant to Klopp with a long term plan up our sleeves. All our decisions are now being made by people who have watched less football than you or I. Its a disastrous scenario.
Arsenal are literally a club left stumbling round in the dark, and it doesnt matter what smoke screens they put out from their PR dept. Its a rudderless situation with no visible solution.
And worse still, there have clearly been Trojan Horses operating from within the club, hence the Willian signing, and to a certain extent, David Luiz. It needs a change of ownership to sort this out.
If I owned an American football team, it wouldn't matter how much money I had, because I wouldn't have a fucking clue who to employ in my management structure. People could literally come to me and say whatever they liked. I wouldn't know how to challenge it.
And that, frankly, is where Arsenal are now, in my humble opinion.
Anyone who watched Dortmund in the Klopp period with even a loose understanding of football could see that he was the future Arsenal Manager. Unfortunately I shouldn't imagine Kroenke even knew who Klopp WAS.
Wouldn't have been helped by the hordes of Wenger supporters on the internet desperate to do down Klopps achievements out of allegiance to Wenger. When it shouldn't even have been an issue.
So now I sit here watching Liverpool bashing up Wolves with half a team whilst Arsenal sit near the bottom of the league. Arsenals situation isnt based in any one issue, its a slow decline of the kind we all worried about.
I like Arteta. I admire anyone with the bollocks to make the decisions that he has made. But as an owner you would surely want to make VERY sure he was making decisions that actually benefitted the club. A Director of Football that knew football inside out, for example.
Arsenal have collectively lost control, in my view, its a situation almost unparalleled in modern football. It could be unsolvable. In the short term at least.
In my view, the best analogy is that of a construction project. Major construction projects rely on a main contractor, that doesn't do the actual work, but coordinates everything to the correct timeline and budget.
Arsenal dont have that, so you have everyone turning up at different times doing different things, taking the piss, not working together, wasting money, and not working to a blueprint. Thats where Arsenal are now.
