Why Arsenal failing to qualify for the Champions League might be the death knell for Arsene Wenger's reign?
It can be a very difficult time for the gunners manager if Arsenal fail to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in 17 years and go a ninth consecutive season without silverware.
There are doubts within the club, however, about what Wenger will do, with a contract offer still unsigned and the Frenchman unwilling to make a decision before the end of the season. Although Wenger did verbally outline an intention to stay, it is understood that other coaching staff and even some board members remain uncertain about the final outcome, particularly if the season ends badly.
Another dreadful performance from Arsenal against as Everton as the Toffeemen demolished the Gunners and ran out comfortable 3-0 winners at Goodison Park left the gunner fans in shock state of mind and made them think about the future of the club’s manager. Everton are now one point behind in fifth place with a game in hand, but still have a difficult run of fixtures to contend with in the battle for fourth. Arsenal would need to slide to unimaginable new lows in order to fail to make Champions League qualification; but the fans believe that anything’s possible when you have a manager like Wenger running the club.
If we compare the recent performance of the two managers i.e. of Everton and Arsenal, we can see that Roberto Martinez was the latest manager to make Wenger look a prized plum; he’d evidently learnt a lot from the FA Cup defeat one month ago, and successfully put what he’d learned into practice. On the other hand the gunner’s boss had made so many mistake in the last nine games but still did not learn anything it seems.
A poll of supporters last week suggested that a clear majority do want Wenger to stay if he can deliver both the FA Cup and Champions League qualification. A poll of 8,174 Arsenal fans organized by the Black Scarf Movement found that 68 per cent would want the club’s longest-serving and most successful manager to sign a new contract if he achieved those two targets. Support would fall to 61 per cent if Arsenal failed to win the FA Cup but qualified for the Champions League and to only 56 per cent if Arsenal won a fifth FA Cup of Wenger’s tenure but dropped out of the top four. Even if Arsenal failed to finish in the top four and lost out in the FA Cup, 54 per cent of supporters would still want him to stay, although many would then favour only a rolling one-year contract.
Contingencies have been made for Wenger’s departure, whenever that may be, with Martínez, Diego Simeone and Jurgen Klopp expected to figure on any shortlist. New sponsorship deals will help swell the transfer fund to around £100 million this summer, although fans have grown frustrated by Wenger’s generally cautious transfer strategy even when he has money in the bank.
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