I remember watching Bergkhamp, Henry, Pires, Edu, Gilberto, Viera etc rip teams into pieces. I remember tham also having a bad day but the big cojones to fight to the end were never in question. Then, Wenger, Arsene Wenger. I could have sworn Arsenal was named after this great man. I revered him greatly, as did many of us, I am sure. Access to Arsenal matches on a regular was not as easy as it has become now, but that did not deter my/our resolve to catch every single game possible. When inaccessible, we’d listen to the matches on Radio. We’d read the papers the next day and cut out pictures of Ljunberg and stick them using glue on the next page of a wonderful collection book. A lot of evenings were spent going through the book, smiling.
The subsequent years have been thorny, with roses every now and then. Roses that whip up some hope of a return to the yesteryears, but then the thorns come pricking into the hopes so horridly, you give up ever hoping. Until a fresh rose emerges the next season, and the bloody vicious and exasperating cycle continues. I wished on so many days that I did not feel this much about a club so far away, feel this much about people that will never know or even care about by existence let alone my endless thoughts and emotions about them. I have contemplated and even discussed the possibility of this being a severe case of stockholm syndrome orchestrated by Arsene. Seriously. Until two seasons ago when I intentionally started working on directing my emotions towards my other favorite teams - Real Madrid, Hurricanes and Kenya Harlequins. It has been a transformation, mentally. My Mondays are more bearable.
That said, I still care about Arsenal, and what has transpired this season has been especially conspicuous from a data stand point. I could not help but notice a few things that reinforce my opinion about it being the end of Arsene’s road, sadly. It is a desolate situation. There are many pieces of information that I/most of us are not privy to besides what takes place on the pitch, pieces like this informative thread from @DarrenArsenal1 on twitter, but my sentiments are based on a strickly team performance basis. That is what matters to us in the end. Losing 8-2 to United with a solid bottomline might not be the worst situation for the club, but it is for the fans. My goodness, we have endured. 6-0 at Stamford Bridge. 15-3 aggregate against Bayern Munich. 5-1 at Liverpool. I could go on.
Let us look at the league performance, breaking it down into two periods.
1997/8 - 2004/5: The good old days
In the first eight full seasons of Arsene Wenger, Arsenal was exemplary.
Here’s a table of some important indicators:
| Season | Wins | Losses | Goals | Goals Conceded | Clean Sheets | Points | Winner Points | League Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997/8 | 23 | 6 | 68 | 33 | 19 | 78 | 78 | 1 |
| 1998/9 | 22 | 4 | 59 | 17 | 23 | 78 | 79 | 2 |
| 1999/00 | 22 | 9 | 73 | 43 | 10 | 73 | 91 | 2 |
| 2000/01 | 20 | 8 | 63 | 38 | 17 | 70 | 80 | 2 |
| 2001/02 | 26 | 3 | 79 | 36 | 14 | 87 | 87 | 1 |
| 2002/03 | 23 | 6 | 85 | 42 | 10 | 78 | 83 | 2 |
| 2003/04 | 26 | 0 | 73 | 26 | 15 | 90 | 90 | 1 |
| 2004/05 | 25 | 5 | 87 | 36 | 16 | 83 | 95 | 2 |
Ah, he gave us everything (apart from the ever elusive UCL). 3 league titles, an invincible season, world class players that could walk into any first team, a trademark counter attacking style especially between 2002 and 2005; we had it going. He clinched the double in his first full season, and again in 2002. Who can forget famously winning the league at White Hart Lane to cap an unbeaten season? Or the Wiltord goal to win the league at Old Trafford? We were competing, the fans smiled in pride, we had the right and armour for banter with any other fans.
Here is a summary of the 8 years:
| Average Wins | Average Losses | Average Goals | Average Goals Conceded | Average Clean Sheets | Average Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23.375 | 5.125 | 73.375 | 33.875 | 15.5 | 79.625 |
Arsenal finished second in the five seasons that they did not win the league. Also suffices to mention that in this period, Arsenal also won 4 FA cups. Not bad.
2005/6 - date: How far we done fell!
In the memorable words of Bunk Moreland, it makes me sick motherfucker how far we done fell! The invincible season hang over was barely gone when all manner of things started happening. The exit of club captain, Patrick Vieira in 2005, the move to the Emirates in 2006, the almost UCL winin Paris thanks to Almunia? Definitely Almunia. Sorry. Maybe it was time to pay the cost of invicibility. Whatever he case, it has been downhill these last 13 seasons, the 3 quick FA cups notwithstanding.
The clear trend is the scariest bit. Arsenal’s peformance under Wenger seems to have a step-like deteriorating pattern. After the first 8 years of 1st and 2nd finishes, the club finished either 3rd or 4th in the next 10 seasons, followed by that crazy season in which Leicester won the league. Arsenal finished 2nd, an outlier data point and season, really. For the first time in the Wenger era, Arsenal failed to make it to the UCL after finishing 5th in the 2016/17 season. Things seem to have gone from bad to WORSE this season.
Arsenal will have suffered 12/13 losses at the season - again, the highest in the Arsene era.
Arsenal sits at 6th position and remains on course to break some records based on the 29 games played so far, negatively so. Ayway, below is a summary of the likely stats at the end of the season:
- ~ 13 losses, highest in the Wenger era
- ~ 18 wins (47% win Ratio), the lowest under Wenger
- 50 or more goals conceded, the highest in the Wenger era
- ~ 39 points behind the winners, City. Again, the biggest margin under Wenger
- 6th Position, the lowest league position under Wenger
All this is despite ostensibly having coming out of the tough financial situation, spending money on world class players, getting rid of Sanchez with his dogs and apparent toxicity, etc. We love the man, most of us do. But the trend looks bleak. Failure to factually approach this, assuming the club cares about winning and the fans, will only lead to more spiralling. And no one knows where and when that stops. It’s about time, Monsieur.