When Sir Alex Ferguson retired, everyone in football looked at Old Trafford to see how the club would cope without the Scot at the helm. Ferguson wasn’t just integral to Manchester United, he was the fabric around which it all revolved.
The board got it wrong. David Moyes, despite Ferguson’s recommendation – was too similar in outlook and too inexperienced to cope with a job that big. Then came Louis Van Gaal. A man with a big reputation but out of club football for three years.
Dull football ensued with little tangible evidence of closing in on the top four, let alone challenging for the major trophies. United fans, after the barren 1970s and 1980s, had become accustomed to being in the mix at the end of each season.
Settling on Jose Mourinho wasn’t a hard job for the United directors. He’d made no bones about his desire to manage the club nor was he shy in pushing for it.
Crucially, he has the personality to win over the squad he inherited and take the pressures of the job on his shoulders. But where United got it right with Mourinho was backing him in the transfer market.
Arsenal supporters had always claimed Arsène Wenger would leave the club in better shape than Ferguson at United, certainly in terms of the playing squad. While the Scot left as a champion, he also left an old squad behind, one where retirements were on horizon for the senior professionals.
Both Moyes and Van Gaal failed to sign the ‘names’ which a club of United’s stature demand. Mourinho changed that. Pogba and Ibrahimovic offered the status supporters desire, injecting a new-found enthusiasm into the stands as well as the squad.
They were the headliners; the rest were just good players. Bailly and Mkhitaryan addressed weaknesses and Mourinho shipped out those who weren’t going to feature. He said he wanted a core of no more than 23 players and set about selling or loaning those whom he didn’t rate.
United’s net spend this season was around £100m; roughly the signing of Pogba. That’s more or less what Arsenal spent during the same period on Granit Xhaka, Lucas Perez and Shkodran Mustafi.
In other words, the Gunners have the cash, it’s whether they have the will to dip into the luxury end of the transfer market. A regular criticism of Arsène Wenger is his dithering in the transfer market. The Frenchman has been known to lose out on players – Juan Mata, for example – because he got stage fright when it came to finalising the deal.
Appointing a director of football has long been seen as a necessary step for the Arsenal board to take if they are not going to pay the ultimate price. This season could be the one where Wenger’s metronomic top four finishes come to a crashing halt, calling into question the claims about the squad being among the best he has ever had at the club.
While many expect him to renew, there’s a sense that he is waiting just to see where the Gunners finish before finally committing to two more years at the club.
If he does, his squad needs major surgery. Out will surely go Ospina, Mertesacker, Gibbs, Wilshere, Coquelin, and Sanchez. Mesut Ozil is not quite so clear cut a departure with recent comments to the German media indicating he is prepared to stay in north London if his wage demands are met. Wenger may not want the latter duo to leave but it is out of his hands to a large extent.
Arsenal should raise over £100m from these players alone, possibly more. That can be used to replace them ‘like-for-like’ but on top of that, they need names. They need players who supporters can believe in. They need players who supporters get excited by.
Replacing Alexis Sanchez with Alexandre Lacazette might be good in a footballing sense but Wenger’s recent record with French strikers isn’t good. Yaya Sanogo, anyone? Even Olivier Giroud to a certain extent.
Growing numbers don’t believe in the manager anymore. Results have been bad and are getting worse. There are few positives for the fans to hold onto at present; new signings would offer that, surely? Wenger’s problem is that another season of failure chips away at the veneer, dulls the sheen of his achievements. And that shouldn’t be happening.
Wenger though, hates the transfer market. He doesn’t seem to have the will to spend big, frequently criticised for putting conservative values on players and dithering. Yet Arsenal have the cash and if they want to return to the big time, where trophies are won, they need to spend.
United have never been shy of doing that and hold the template for transitioning between Wenger and the future, ready for Arsenal to see. The question is, will Stan Kroenke read it?
