Time for Wenger to go?

Sitting hunched over in the White Hart Lane dugout on Wednesday night, Arsène Wenger cut the figure of a man upon whom the season is taking its toll.

Having not won a trophy for six years, it seems that the pressure is finally getting to the Arsenal manager. Indeed, it looks as if he is just one loss away from a belated mid life crisis.

However, it is the fact that Wenger still has a job at Arsenal that is remarkable. The fact that a club like Arsenal haven’t won any form of notable silverware for so long is nothing short of a disgrace, especially considering the fact that this is the same team that was once ‘invincible’.

Losing the Carling Cup in the dying moments to lowly Birmingham City and being outshone in the Champion’s League by their North London rivals, Tottenham Hotspur, isn’t quite the season that Wenger or the Gunner’s loyal legion of followers would have expected. As Cesc Fabregas noted on Wednesday morning, if Wenger was a manager in Spain, he would have been fired by now.

For so long he has promised the fans of Arsenal that he is building for the future. The fact that he has been building for six years and has still achieved nothing speaks volumes. As they look set to finish another season empty handed, Arsenal fans must surely be starting to question the man that once brought them so much success. But has Arsène’s ship finally sailed?

Indeed, it seems the Gunner’s manager is losing the plot. Sunday saw him become the one exception out of the millions of people worldwide when he admitted that he didn’t think Liverpool should have had the penalty that led up to their equaliser. To remind you, Eboue pushed over Lucas in the penalty area. To everyone apart from Wenger, it was a stonewall penalty.

Failure to achieve is costly and it is surely becoming a question of how much longer the Arsenal board wish their club to be known as the perennial under achievers. It seems the only remedy to shift this unwanted status is to fire the 61 year old Frenchman.

Wenger has had plenty of time to restore the past glory of Arsenal Football Club, but his failure to replace the prolific Thierry Henry must be the one thing about his reign that will haunt him the most. There is no question that Arsenal play beautiful football up to the edge of the 18 yard box. However once inside the box, they lack a real predator to score their goals. Henry used to do that week in, week out, but after he departed for Spanish giants Barcelona no one has been able to fill his boots and this ultimately has cost Arsenal dearly.

Unfortunately it seems that the only way the Arsenal board can restore glory to the Gunners, is to fire Wenger and find another manager that can make them invincible once more.