Arsène Wenger has just reached the doublethink stage. His pronouncements have been becoming more and more gnomic. He said we would know about his future “very soon”, for instance, yet we are still guessing more than a fortnight and an international break later, but his latest takes us into the verbal equivalent of a hall of mirrors.
“It is a good challenge [to achieve a top-four finish] but I think it is perfectly possible,” the Arsenal manager said. “I have done it for 20 years and it looked always like nothing. Suddenly it becomes important, so I am quite pleased people realise it is not as easy as it looks.”
Where to start with that? Trying to finish in the top four will be a good challenge for Arsenal this season, mainly because it looks as though for the first time in 20 years there might be four or five stronger teams in the Premier League, not just one or two. Full marks to Wenger for suave self-confidence but this does not seem like the season it is perfectly possible from Arsenal’s present position.
Is it really the case either that anyone in or away from the Emirates has been dismissing Arsenal’s consistency over two decades as looking “like nothing”? Most people have been impressed, especially considering some of the improbable situations from which Arsenal have managed to recover. What actually happens in the Champions League when the following season comes around is neither here nor there. It is not as if Arsenal are the only English club to have struggled in Europe in recent years but quite clearly if a big club demands the status and financial rewards of Uefa’s premier competition every year it needs a manager capable of engineering a regular top-four finish.
Wenger has been that man, he was even the one who invented the notion a top-four finish may be considered as good as a trophy. Arsenal fans tended to scoff at that theory in the years when the team could claim a top-four slot almost by default, but this season, as Wenger has just pointed out, even Pep Guardiola has echoed it. That is because, with six lively teams still in the frame, Champions League qualification may be both harder to attain this season and more satisfying than a trophy.
Guardiola was far too canny to be led down the path of claiming he would rather finish in the top four than win the FA Cup – at the moment he can still do both, so there is no need to prioritise – but were it to actually come to a straight choice a club like City would have to plump for the Champions League over Europa League qualification. If a top-four finish plus the FA Cup constitutes a good season, as Wenger has tried to suggest when selling 2014 and 2015 as business as usual in the league plus a sniff of the hotdogs at Wembley, it is the European placing rather than the item of domestic silverware that makes it so.
Were Guardiola’s City to win the FA Cup and miss out on the Champions League, his first season in England could not be considered a success. Champions League qualification is the minimum requirement, the FA Cup merely offers the opportunity to end the season in a certain amount of style. Arsenal and City would be reasonably happy to finish in the top four and miss out on the FA Cup. Winning the Cup and missing out on the top four would not be received nearly as cheerfully.
So why is Wenger, who knows all this perfectly well, arguing that a top-four finish is “suddenly important”. For Arsenal, it has always been important. “Not as easy at it looks?” Try telling Manchester United, who are in danger of missing out on the Champions League for the third time in four years and have admitted they may have to look at back-door qualification through the Europa League.
More than anything Wenger seems to be wilfully missing the point that is staring everyone else in the face. Arsenal’s usual falter and late run may not be enough this season, so competitive is the top-six situation. Two good teams will have to miss out, and while it might be said that has been the case from day one, in the past one or two, contenders would have started to blow up and fall away by now. This season is different, everyone is still going. Wenger must have noticed that. If he is really pleased people realise it is not as easy as it looks, is he admitting in the most roundabout of ways Arsenal will have a better excuse for falling short this year than most years?
That much ought to be obvious from a glance at the table, yet contradictory to the end, Wenger still believes a top-four finish is perfectly possible. Good luck to him, though the actual expression he is looking for is possible. Some may say just about possible, or even improbable, but in deference to 20 years of cracking the problem Wenger deserves the benefit of the doubt, especially as he is no longer receiving it from many of the club’s supporters.
Let’s stick with possible for Arsenal for the time being. The perfectly possibles are those clubs seven points or more better off in the top four and it remains entirely possible the same four clubs will still be in situ at the end of the season.
