- Aug 5, 2006
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My problem with what he's done, is far less than my problem with what he is going to do.
Arsene Wenger won 3 titles and 7 FA Cups - should Arsenal have kept going with him indefinitely because of what he did?
I was talking about our league position progression so I don't think comparing to Wenger's cup wins is relevant. And of course nobody should stay indefinitely - that's an absurd argument to make.
Let's look at Wenger for a second though. He made Arsenal one of the greatest clubs in Europe and set that incredible unbeaten run which may never be matched. But they spent about 10 seasons in the top 2, then 10 seasons in the top 4, and most recently 2 seasons outside of the top 4 (or roughly those numbers). That's a decline in league performance which was not tolerated by their fans despite the recent FA cup victories.
And I think most importantly of all it wasn't a one season dip... it was a steady decline over the course of about 15 years. There will have been highs and lows in there, but the trend was most definitely downwards.
The reason I am focusing more on league position rather than silverware is that traditionally silverware is won by the clubs finishing high in the league. That league performance brings money and that translates to better playing/coaching staff and better facilities. The success feeds itself, even if it takes a while to come to fruition.
So I think that the idea of removing a man largely responsible for our upward trend over the past 15 years because you are worried about what he might do in the future is a touch naive. The doom mongers are out every season saying that Levy is holding us back, or that now is the time to spend loads of money, but time and again the club has progressed under Levy's stewardship.
The fact is that we don't know what the end of the season looks like yet. We might finish second and win the FA cup. We might finish 6th and lose every knockout game we play. With that in mind, I don't think it's a particularly logical point of view to want to remove the chairman who has overseen such an upward curve in the club's development over the past 15 years.
It seems to me that some people simply don't like the bloke and tend to over-inflate the negatives in order to justify wanting him removed. It's perhaps a bit like Steve Jobs being sacked by Apple - by all accounts he was a total pain in the arse to deal with and often described as not understanding the modern marketplace, but just look at the fortunes of the company with and without him.