It may not be officially over but Arsenal are limping along on life support while coaches like Pep Guardiola demonstrate what's required at this level
Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal will exist – officially – at least until the end of this season. But there’s no life there. It’s gone; all over. Anyone can see that now.
Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang came in January but they are CPR signings. There's no plan for them. Under this man, this club is limping along on life support. Please, someone, come in June and have enough humanity to pull the plug and let it die. Then the club can rise again.
The great irony, though, is that Wenger deserves all of the credit for modern Arsenal but – perversely – all of the blame. It was Wenger who delivered the trophies, the stadium, Henry, the invincibility, the history. But it was Wenger who oversaw this inexcusable decline.
He was – in title terms – always second-best to Sir Alex Ferguson, the odd double aside. But one area in which Wenger has thoroughly out-performed his Scottish rival is how to run a club into the ground.
Manchester United are five years into their post-Ferguson era and are no closer to being restored to their perch at the top of English football. Some of the blame for that decline lies with the man himself and his failure to prepare the club for the day he would no longer be there.
Most of the blame.
