What the Arsenal manager should take from history
They always called him The Professor. But if the best teachers are the ones who never stop learning, then Arsene Wenger may be due for a name change. For there is one lesson that increasingly seems to have passed the famous Frenchman by: how to recognize when enough is enough.
One doesn’t have to be an Arsenal fan, or even particularly a football fan, to have felt for the beleaguered manager on his seemingly endless slide down the charts. Death by a thousand cuts is tough viewing at the best of times, but in the case of this amiable, eternal presence on our TV screens, the descent from Olympus to the Slough of Despond has been especially painful to watch.
Sure, the man has never been perfect. The pioneer of selective myopia – “Honestly, I didn’t see it” was a Wenger catchphrase while Mourinho was still fulminating in his nappies – he has allowed his fair share of grapes to sour the Gallic charm.
But the emergence of this new model Wenger – more cowed by events than controlling them, bobbing helplessly like a cork on the seas of fate – is too rigorous a punishment for these mild indiscretions. In recent years, while a series of FA Cup wins has kept the life-support machine ticking, the Arsenal boss has resembled a man fleeing the Minotaur: every apparent exit from the labyrinth only serves, in the end, to take him deeper into the maze.
The Professor should brush up on his history. If he did, he would know that a prescription of ‘one more heave’ leads more often to a hernia than success.
It is exactly 100 years since Erich Ludendorff, the leading general in the Kaiser’s army, launched the Spring Offensive that promised, albeit briefly, to bring victory in the First World War. Bolstered by troops from the defunct Eastern Front, and desperate to strike before the US could make its mighty presence felt, the Germans pushed west.
But Ludendorff, overbearing and self-obsessed, had got his tactics wrong. With no strategic target in view, most of the captured ground proved worthless. All possession and not a shot on goal. Moreover, the attacks had cost the lives of many crack stormtroopers, while the following infantry were too far behind to bring up much needed supplies. As for the free transfers from Russia, many of them never made it to the Western Front at all.
As I write, Arsene Wenger is rallying his deflated troops for a cup tie with AC Milan. By the time you read this the result will be known. But even as he prepares for his own, last-ditch spring offensive, he must know that the tides of war can be held at bay for only so long.
As the Allies fought back, regaining lost territory and bringing the German Empire to its knees, Ludendorff was quietly sacked. Spirited away in blue glasses and a false beard, he spent the 1920s worshipping Wotan, raging against Versailles and helping out with the Beer Hall Putsch.
For memory’s sake, one only hopes that Wenger’s exit from Arsenal will not be quite as inglorious as that.
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