In a week when two of his counterparts have been unable to let sleeping dogs lie, something is still biting away at Arsène Wenger too. The injustice he feels at the penalty awarded to Eden Hazard during Arsenal’s 2-2 draw with Chelsea last Wednesday has not yet faded and, when the pair meet again in Wednesday’s League Cup semi-final first leg, any repeat of a decision he called “farcical” would risk something akin to spontaneous combustion high in the Stamford Bridge stands.
That is where Wenger will spend the match, as a continuing legacy of his similarly outraged reaction to West Bromwich Albion’s spot-kick on 31 December but he is not yet ready to view what he saw as a dive from Hazard at a remove. Initially misunderstanding a question about Antonio Conte’s claim that it was his “way” to query referees, he ended up inadvertently agreeing with the Chelsea manager while airing his grievances about Hazard again.
“I questioned the decision of the referee. Then, we are objective. You look at the picture. You see how Hazard goes down and you see how quickly he takes the penalty when he gets the penalty,” he said of the forward’s reaction to a challenge offered by Héctor Bellerín.
“If he was so injured why did he take the penalty? He made more of it, [like a] professional, basically, and shouts. I can understand that. I do not blame Hazard. He acted in a very professional way to get the penalty for his team, which he did well.”
Another objective view is that it was a clear penalty and that, Hazard’s overreaction notwithstanding, Wenger’s energy is misdirected on a call nowhere near as egregious as that taken by Mike Dean at The Hawthorns. Yet it is the latter that has cost him his place in the dugout and, as he watches his team battle to retain their only chance of a domestic trophy, there will be familiar feelings of helplessness.
Last February a four-match ban for pushing the fourth official Anthony Taylor – coincidentally the referee who judged Bellerín to have fouled Hazard – included a 3-1 league defeat at Stamford Bridge. He watched from a designated area in the East Stand and remembers the situation as “very uncomfortable” and “awkward”, not aided by his location near the home support or the time-consuming walk to the dressing rooms.
“I will try to find a different place,” he said of Wednesday evening’s seating plan and he will hope the same can be said of his players, too. Wenger was rattled by Arsenal’s lifeless FA Cup surrender at Nottingham Forest on Sunday, describing himself as “very disappointed with some individual performances”.
It is certainly not a good look when Alex Iwobi, a young player who has no business feeling sure of a future in the top bracket at this stage, is purportedly seen partying on the weekend of a Cup tie, especially when the manager subsequently felt compelled to defend his own attitude towards knockout competitions.
“Nobody has won the FA Cup more than I did but still it is [seen as] an absolute disaster,” he said of the 4-2 defeat. “Get somebody to win it more and then I say, ‘OK, well done.’ But nobody in the whole history of English football won it more, so I always took the competition in a serious way. I am unhappy to go out, of course, but you must accept as well that there’s no guarantee you will win it every year.”
Wenger’s next segue, though, told more about what is at stake over these two legs. His argument was unfashionable but compelling: the cups will grow in significance because, with so much money around and only one title winner, tangible reward becomes increasingly precious.
“Many, many teams today invest a huge amount of money and are all hungry for trophies,” he said. “Nobody wants to fold that away. I think it will become even more important because so many teams are hungry for trophies that everybody goes for it.”
The theory holds some weight, although it would require a recalibration of what, nowadays, is popularly defined as success for the top six clubs. For Arsenal anything will do at this stage and their recent attacking performances, certainly at home, suggest a return to their best cup form is not beyond them. The difficulty is that it would take supreme confidence to predict the makeup of Wenger’s squad for the rematch a fortnight from now: his eyes offered less confidence than his words when he said there had been no contact with Manchester City over Alexis Sánchez, a counterproductive presence this season whose future will be resolved if a £20m offer is accepted. Squad players like Francis Coquelin, Mohamed Elneny and even Theo Walcott could also move on; Arsenal can damage Chelsea but not if a team in flux has a significant first-leg deficit to claw back.
Up in the gods, Wenger will hope a combination of his defence and – if necessary – the officials can subdue Hazard this time. It will be tough viewing from afar but perhaps he will keep good company. When he took that unsatisfactory vantage point 11 months ago, he was wrong-footed to find himself sitting next to his own gardener. An embarrassed Wenger had failed to recognise him; in the event of a repeat arrangement he might feel tempted to ask whether, just this once, everything could come up smelling of roses.
