Arsene Wenger's Arsenal departure to be with wreaths or warheads?

Have Arsenal not tread this path before? A summer of hardened parsimony, painting the Sistine Chapel with their football in the opening months of the season, dropping their paintbrushes in the gutter come March, succumbing to annual injury crises, competition exits arriving like demoniacally punctual London buses, somehow hanging on to title race coattails in April, and giving the ‘Wenger Out’ banners another day out. It’s never-ending Groundhog Day in North London. Season after season, the red-and-white Frodos brave all manner of Mordor maleficence and reach the fiery foothills of Mount Doom before tripping over their Hobbit bootlaces and falling into the lava-pits of upper middle class mediocrity. They are the Maya Sarabhai of the footballing world.

He leaves us

It’s hard to make a case that exonerates Arsene Wenger in Arsenal’s showing this season. He put his faith in the players by refusing to buy outfield reinforcements – the only club in Europe to do so – while being aware that the striker and DM departments were understaffed. He has paid the price for these calls; Coquelin spent a large chunk of the season out injured, and Arsenal suffered in his absence, and Giroud burnt out after January as an off-form Alexis, a peripheral Walcott, and an injured Welbeck failed to contribute.

In the Champions League, Wenger again put himself in an untenable position by losing the first two games and struggling to qualify behind Bayern Munich. A second-place finish was always going to result in strong opponents in the knockouts, and a brave two-legged defeat to Barcelona seems less and less heroic with every iteration. Even the FA Cup, arguably the trophy that saved Wenger’s Arsenal career in 2014, eluded him this time as his team went down limply against Watford at home.

What makes this season’s derailing all the more cringe-worthy is that all of Arsenal’s traditional title rivals had fallen by the wayside in December. Chelsea’s implosion, Man United’s identity crisis, Liverpool’s managerial merry-go-round, and Man City’s anticipatory hangover for Pep meant that Arsenal had a golden chance to finally mount the league summit. That they chose to do their best clown-on-banana-peel routine once again, and that Leicester and Tottenham are ahead of them at time of writing, are damning indictments on the team and manager.

With Guardiola, Mourinho, Conte, and Klopp all potentially at the helms of PL clubs next season, plus strong West Ham, Tottenham, and Leicester sides, Arsenal’s title hopes seem all but dashed for a few years to come at the very least.

He leaves us not

Let readers be warned that this argument will be heavily right-brained. With most stats this season speaking against Wenger, it will have to be.

Is a hounding departure a fitting one for this man after two seasons of successive FA Cup wins? Coming to this season, one stat that does speak in his favour is expected goals. Arsenal have the highest expected goals this season, which speaks of the volume and quality of chances that they create. How much of the blame rests with Wenger if the Arsenal players were unable to finish the chances that Wenger’s team structure enabled them to create? Yes, he didn’t buy a striker, but the existing strikers and midfielders have missed far too often to repose the entire blame with the manager.

Wenger has left an indelible mark on the club, every cut grass of London Colney shimmering with his presence and persona. The players’ diets, the temperature of the team bus, the youth setup, the transfer policy, every aspect of this football club has been lit up by his beatific smile for close to 20 years. Of course he makes mistakes, but some parts of him are so endearingly human that Arsenal fans can’t help root for him. The sight of him at Old Trafford, arms aloft amidst a barrage of abuse as Arsenal lose to an own goal, does more to engender fan siege mentality than any Jose Mourinho trick can. His irritated answers after losses show how disappointed he is at the result, like the fans, but his constant shielding of players show a pre-eminence of principles that he won’t leave till his dying breath.

Coming to owners and shareholders, Arsenal fans are also wary of the chicken-and-egg problem in Arsenal’s upper management. With Stan Kroenke openly saying that he didn’t buy Arsenal shares to win championships, is the reluctance to spend a manager or a board directed decision? Do the club objectives stem from Wenger or the suits above him? If it is the latter, will Wenger’s replacement be able to do as well with the same resources and constraints? Is Wenger the Kevlar vest that has been shielding Arsenal from true mediocrity all these years, a mediocrity that would have manifested itself in moments with someone else in charge?

The footballing world has seen how tough it is to move on from a legacy manager. Man United are struggling to find their feet in a post-Fergie era, and Dynamo Kyiv have never been the same after Valeriy Lobanovskyi’s tenure ended. Even when a legacy manager’s time ends on the manager’s terms, as it happened with Man United, the club is likely to face teething problems. One shudders to think of the depths to which Arsenal could plunge if Wenger’s departure, and his successor’s appointment, are hastened.

In any case, whether or not Arsene Wenger should leave Arsenal is a rhetorical question for now. He will surely stay on till his contract expires in 2016-17. He has never reneged on a contract, and Arsenal will surely not fire the man who embodies most of what the club is in the modern era. Whether or not he should leave after his current contract ends is a more prudent question to ask.

With proper succession planning and a phased handing over of responsibilities, Arsenal can move into the post-Wenger era looking forward (or at least not looking fearfully back). But a clean break with Wenger this season, an eviction rather than a mutual parting of ways, would be doing a disservice to Arsenal’s most successful and arguably most influential manager of all time.