Arsene Wenger discovered once again last week that there are no prizes for being rational in an irrational world. Yet even pure reason has its limitations when Gervinho is the front-of-house man for a philosophy.
If Arsenal are going to take the League Cup seriously, the least they can do is beat a team from the fourth division of English football or go down trying.
Arsene Wenger may just be the scapegoat for the club’s entire financial model, but scapegoats usually end up, well, as the scapegoat. “I am here for that,” Wenger said on Friday when he was asked if he had a problem being blamed for everything, “and you do it very well.”
Wenger is being squeezed from all sides. For years he had a preternatural ability to remove himself from the criticism and screaming headlines. Each week he would meet the press and act like their world had no bearing on his. He did this in the most beguiling way, answering every question, expanding on any topic.
In recent times, he has become less relaxed and it is easy to glimpse the strain he feels.
This is entirely natural but Arsene Wenger’s genius allowed him to move beyond the normal.
Tomorrow night, Arsenal play Reading in a game that offers very little for Arsenal except more despair. Arsenal are trapped between mediocrity and crisis. If Arsenal win as they should, Wenger is likely to say, as he did when they beat West Brom last Saturday, that this was the mark of the top-level sportsman. His side had won when facing a crisis.
Yet even that answer provokes questions. Arsenal beat West Brom last weekend when the external pressure was great after the defeat at home to Swansea. This seemed to inspire some sort of effort in Wenger’s side but it had disappeared by the time of the Bradford game. Are the team only reacting now when the pressure outside becomes great? Are they still listening to the manager and what is the manager saying?
Did they also believe that it was okay for them to lose at Old Trafford because they certainly approached that game without ambition? Wenger’s philosophy has many strands but he remains admirably committed to defending his players in public. Yet there are variations of this that don’t involve remarking after the Bradford game that he could not fault the effort of the players.
So Wenger took the criticism for his players and he takes the criticism for the failure to spend money and the apathy of majority shareholder Stan Kroenke.
Wenger may not be the reason of Arsenal’s failure to spend but he might enjoy having a non-interventionist owner. Yet he is not just the face of Arsenal, he embodies everything about the club and its recent history.