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Wenger has to change or go — for his and Arsenal’s sake

After winning the FA Cup in May and giving Arsenal supporters their first trophy in nine years, Arsene Wenger deserved this season to show he could deliver more significant silverware.

Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal. Photo: Getty Images

Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal. Photo: Getty Images

After winning the FA Cup in May and giving Arsenal supporters their first trophy in nine years, Arsene Wenger deserved this season to show he could deliver more significant silverware.

Far from the noise of Wembley, the Mayday call is of a different sound now ringing in Arsenal ears.

Any criticism of Wenger is laced with frustration and almost sorrow, especially for those of us privileged to sit around the Highbury boardroom table in 1996 listening spell-bound as the new man articulated his vision.

Wenger has gone on to modernise a historic English club, improving the players’ diet, ending the “boring, boring” image of their football, overseeing the building of a state-of-the-art training ground and the most high-spec stadium in Europe.

Wenger also enriched the broader surrounds of English football, encouraging a more cerebral style, bringing a touch of class on and off the field. He has been a missionary, spreading enlightenment. His Invincibles stand as one of the greatest teams in history.

The game owes him a deep debt of gratitude. He has represented English football well.

It is sadly almost instinctive now to write of Wenger’s impact in the past tense. Unless he changes, Wenger has entered the end-game of his long, productive relationship with Arsenal. The sense of drift has returned and Wenger’s hand is uncertain on the tiller.

Unless he can get Arsenal pushing properly in the right direction again, instilling a better balance between defence and attack, then one of the most iconic managers of the modern era, and the most revered in Arsenal’s 128-year history, must accept he has taken a club he loves as far as his waning strengths can. He will have to consider his future next summer.

Some supporters want him gone now, and two unfavourable polls run on leading fans’ websites, but any split must be in the summer, particularly as the right successor, a Jurgen Klopp or Roberto Martinez, would surely not quit their current employers mid-season.

Even then, complications intensify. It is a decision that only Wenger can take. Arsenal’s board will not dismiss Wenger. It is too in awe of him. It is too content with the culture of finishing fourth, guaranteeing the lucrative rewards of the Champions League.

Ivan Gazidis, Arsenal’s chief executive, is very competent in many areas of running a major sporting institution, but will he stand up to Wenger? If nobody possesses the leadership qualities to refocus Wenger, then the sad impasse looks set to continue.

For all his honourable traits, it is hard to see him standing down. He is too stubborn and not many walk away from a handsome contract that runs until 2017.

Nowhere else in the upper echelons of the game would he be granted the free rein he enjoys at Arsenal. Paris St-Germain, oft-mentioned as a future abode, hardly chime, with the past noises he has made about financial fairplay-busters.

If a regime change seems unlikely, then all Arsenal can hope for is a change in Wenger himself. Maybe David Dein, a man he really did listen to, could do his beloved Arsenal a favour and tell his friend and neighbour to see and confront the errors before his legacy gets tarnished.

Wenger needs to acknowledge and act upon the inherent tactical weakness inhibiting the team’s chances of dealing with the more accomplished, better-balanced opponents around.

He needs to lose that ludicrous obstinate streak that increasingly resembles arrogance when the man himself is one of the game’s most well-mannered, charming and self-deprecating individuals.

Watching Wenger behave like this, ignoring the faults that others see, is painful to behold.

He has yet to acquire either the nous or defensive personnel to come even close in the Premier League or Champions League in recent years. Arsenal will probably still finish fourth in the English title race, and will probably go out early in the knock-out stages of Europe’s elite competition, depending on the draw.

Where once they sought to scale the heights, they are now happy with the passage across the plateau. Fourth is the new first.

Questions intensify over Wenger’s suitability because he now has money to spend and the team show little sign of progress. The dynamic has changed since Wenger spent £42.5 million (S$86.8 million) on Mesut Ozil. He cannot plead poverty now in transfer funds or salaries.

Alexis Sanchez has been an enormous success, yet it is dangerous for the team to become so reliant on him. Why sell Thomas Vermaelen? Why send Carl Jenkinson out on loan? So many questions. The failure to recruit a centre-half and holding midfielder is a misery-laden mantra among fans.

Wenger called his team’s defending “naive” against Manchester United on Saturday when the accusation should most be levelled at him. Such an experienced manager is failing at the basics of his trade: Setting up the team properly, coaching them, drilling them, ensuring there are players covering, guarding against the counter-attacks.

His full-backs push up far too high, exposing the centre-backs. Mikel Arteta, his holding midfielder, is no Patrick Vieira or Gilberto Silva. There is no muscle in the middle. He has few real leaders on the pitch. Arsenal threw away goals as well as wine on Saturday.

Arsenal should qualify from Group D in the Champions League. But even a good result over Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund today (tomorrow morning, Singapore time) cannot mask the fault-lines.

From next summer, Arsenal need fresh ideas and impetus.

The suggestion that Wenger should move upstairs, overseeing the new era from the boardroom, is insane. The break needs to be total — even if reverence for his fabled feats will never, ever leave Arsenal. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

Henry Winter is a football correspondent with The Daily Telegraph.

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE ON MIO TV:

GROUP A — Atletico Madrid v Olympiakos, Malmo v Juventus

GROUP B — FC Basel v Real Madrid (Ch113, 3.40am), Ludogorets v Liverpool (Ch112, 3.40am)

GROUP C — Zenit St Petersburg v Benfica (Ch111, 12.55am), Bayer Leverkusen v Monaco

GROUP D — Arsenal v Borussia Dortmund (Ch111, 3.40am), Anderlecht v Galatasaray

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