Poor Arsene Wenger.
It seems as guaranteeing Champions League football every season just isn’t enough for fans at the Emirates.
The Frenchman is coming under increasing pressure to step away from the club he has transformed in twenty years, after another disappointing Premier League campaign.
At the turn of the year, Arsenal looked on course for league success, but early 2016 has seen them exit all cup competitions and slip off the pace in the title race.
‘Le Prof’ is under pressure to quit, but Jamie Carragher feels one single man could have changed it all for fans, and Wenger.
The Londoners made a pathetic attempt to sign Luis Suarez in the summer of 2013, when they bid £40million, and a single pound, in order to try and trigger the rumoured release clause in his contract.
The bid was laughed at by everyone at Anfield, and led to one of the most infamous tweets of all time.
What do you think they're smoking over there at Emirates?
— John W. Henry (@John_W_Henry) July 24, 2013
Writing in today’s Daily Mail, Carragher feels the failure to sign Suarez has to be rated as the bigger error of Wenger’s time.
‘If you look back at Wenger’s 20 years in English football, there are so many highlights, but that day in July 2013, with the bid that enraged Liverpool, cannot be ignored. Not signing Suarez is the biggest mistake of Wenger’s reign.
‘Had Arsenal pushed the boundaries for Suarez, perhaps with an offer of £50m, I believe they would have won the Barclays Premier League in two of the last three seasons. That’s the thing about Suarez: whichever team he plays for, he drags them to a higher level.’
Carragher makes reference to how Suarez almost helped Liverpool, win the league in 2014, while he had a transformative effect on both Ajax and the Uruguay national team when he broke through at the start of the decade.
The former Reds defender also feels the best exit strategy for Wenger would be to stay through this summer, and then announce he is quitting next year to give the club time to organise his replacement:
‘The ideal scenario would be for him to say in August: ‘This is going to be my final 12 months.’ Doing that would get rid of all the uncertainty about his contract; it would hopefully prevent the atmosphere becoming toxic.
‘Most importantly, however, it would provide the time frame for Arsenal to begin preparations for a new era. Wenger is so intrinsically linked with the club that his stamp is all over it and we have seen with Manchester United the problems that can occur when one long reign ends.’
