Arsenal Are Paying the Price for Staying Loyal to Arsene Wenger

It is not officially winter yet, there are still fireworks in the night sky and the clocks went back only two weeks ago, but this weekend the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger all but admitted his team can no longer win the title.

After losing 2-1 to Swansea on Sunday, Arsenal find themselves in sixth position and as many as 12 points behind the leaders Chelsea.

There are still 27 games to play, and as many as 81 points still available, but Wenger doesn’t expect to close that gap between now and May.

"If you look at the number of points [Chelsea] have, if they keep that up nobody will catch them, that’s for sure," Wenger has said, as reported in The Guardian. "There doesn’t look to be anybody capable to challenge them at the moment."

Can anyone be truly surprised that Arsenal have given up so quickly?

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For the last decade Arsenal have not mounted a genuine and enduring title challenge, so why was this season ever going to be any different?

Since winning the title in 2004, Arsenal have finished as distant runners-up to Chelsea in the following season before settling in to a pattern of finishing third or fourth.

This culture of just getting by and limited ambition now permeates the club.

The dressing-room pictures of the Arsenal team "celebrating" finishing fourth at the end of the 2012-13 season neatly symbolises this culture.

As the Arsenal goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny has recalled in The Express about that day: "We celebrated a bit like we had won the championship, which was a bit weird considering the ambition at the start of the season." 

Arsenal will fiercely protect their status as a Champions League club, but anything grander remains beyond them. And what should most concern Arsenal fans is they seem to be increasingly comfortable with that.

The old arguments about the club’s lack of ambition in the transfer market, and having to pay for their new home at the Emirates can be aired yet again, but it is Wenger who has allowed this culture to flourish.

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While Arsenal should be applauded for staying loyal to Wenger after all the success he brought them in his first eight years, it has also kept them firmly stuck in this cycle of underachievement ever since. 

Every season they hope in vain the old Wenger, the ruthless winner who captivated the Premier League between 1996 and 2004, will return, but he never does and every season they have to settle for just another top-four finish.

That early version of Wenger has long gone, and he is not coming back.

If anything, it seems to be getting worse, for last season Arsenal spent 128 days on top of the Premier League, whereas now Wenger has conceded the title in November.

Despite being at the summit for so long last season, there was never a real sense they would actually stay there.

The club’s culture of just wanting to get by and never truly believing in themselves would see them overtaken by Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea and fall as low as fourth yet again.

In 2011 Carlo Ancelotti was sacked by Chelsea a year after winning the Premier League for finishing runners-up; in 2013 his compatriot Roberto Mancini was also sacked by Manchester City a year after winning the club’s first title in 44 years for the heinous crime of finishing in second place.

It might be distasteful, it might be ugly and lack class to see two such fine managers humbled like this, but it promotes a winning culture within these clubs and serves as a reminder to players and fans that failure will not be tolerated.

You know what you’re going to get each season with Wenger. Third or Fourth.

If Arsenal want something more, they know what they need to do.