It's farcical now really.
Unless you class Top 4 as a trophy, this Arsenal side, and the ones before it in recent times, are pathetic.
It's almost accepted by some Gooners that they don't need to be challenging for the league or in Europe now.
When was the last time anyone thought that Arsenal had a chance of actually winning the league?
I know football is different now. Finances are hugely important as is the allure of CL football. But the big clubs, the very big clubs - they win the Champions League. They win league titles.
Arsenal are no closer to winning any major title now than they were when Wenger was harping on about his '10 year plan'.
He has no Plan B. He is a tactical dinosaur and a stubborn one at that.
So when do the board say enough is enough, let's get in Diego Simeone or Thomas Tuchel (just examples).
The Board won't say that because the Arsenal board has been, ever since the Stan Kroenke takeover, full of money men with no footballing men anywhere on site. One only has to look at Kroenke's history of owning American sports teams to know he doesn't care about trophies, he cares about growing the asset value of his sports portfolio.
The problem is the disconnect between what the board wants and what the fans want. The board would much prefer finishing 3, 4, 3, 4 and never dropping out of top 4. The fans would prefer to win the league even if that means the league finishes look like 1, 7, 2, 6. For me its not even a question. I would much rather win the league and then finish out of top 4. But the board has the exact opposite goal.
So as long as Wenger gets top 4 there is zero pressure on him from the board. Its why we continue to make absolutely baffling economically inefficient decisions - like giving Mertesacker and Cazorla contract extensions, paying Arteta player wages to train as a coach for City, giving large pay raises to Walcott, Wilshere that they haven't earned, spending decent money on players like Joel Campbell and Lucas Perez and then exiling them to almost no playing time (and in Campbell's case why the hell didn't we sell him after the world cup when his value was high and Wenger didn't rate him anyway), not freshening up the squad last summer when all we bought was Cech, allowing his teachers pets to start no matter what form they are in, the continuing massive injury problems that have afflicted Wenger's squads for
12+ years- Ramsey should have been nowhere near starting yesterday with his hamstring, its just ridiculously poor squad management how after 12 years we still haven't sorted out when the freaking rest semi-injured players. It all adds up to the squad growing complacent and stale and its obvious to any fan.
The only hope is that the remaining reluctant Wenger In finally throw in the towel and Wenger starts to feel pressure from the fans or even better the few minority shareholders we have left. Wenger has in the past felt hurt when the minority shareholders have criticized performance on the pitch instead of just focusing on share prices as Wenger believes they should.
Its not even fun or exciting for me to watch Arsenal anymore because its just groundhog day for the last 7 years. i get more excited to watch a classic 1970s match I haven't seen than to watch Wenger's team nowadays which is really sad. He should have retired after the last FA Cup win. Was the perfect time for him to move on.