Arsenal FC: What Do Gunners Fans Really Think of Arsene Wenger?

The past six months have seen a great divide among Arsenal fans with many questioning Arsene Wenger and whether he is still the right man for the job.

A small minority of fans, which began cropping up over the past couple of years, has slowly become a bigger and more vocal majority calling for Wenger’s head following the embarrassing 2011 Carling Cup defeat to Birmingham City and the spectacular fall out of the title race last season.

The Arsenal manager has endured a strained past few months at the club, losing two of his best senior players during the summer transfer window and missing out on a number of top targets.

While many fans still consider him to be a master at his profession, picking out talents from around the world and moulding them into what he considers perfect footballers, he does create a lot of negative press through his lack of criticism for himself and his team.

For a number of years we have had to accept interviews from Wenger stating his intention to keep faith with the players he had—players who were nowhere near capable of putting up a consistent title challenge—while at the same time ignoring obvious deficiencies in the squad.

However, the majority of Arsenal fans bought into this idea that a team developed through youth and bargain signings in the transfer market was the way forward while the club paid off the debts for the Emirates Stadium.

But over the course of the 2010/2011 season all the faith and support that was unconditionally given to Wenger really seemed to wane. Supporters were fed up of the same excuses for the team’s failure to beat lesser teams and their astonishing ability to press the self-destruct button during important phases of games.

More telling is the fact that around 20 percent of Arsenal fans have not renewed their season tickets for this year. Yes, it would be fair to suggest that it is entirely to do with the club’s 6.5 percent hike in prices, but I firmly believe that if those fans were paying that money to see a winning side with investment and a manager who could noticeably improve the team, then there would not be this unrest towards the new prices.

It must also be a worry for the club that so many of the team’s upcoming fixtures are nowhere near selling out, many games becoming available to the general public and the demand for big games lessening. The fact is a large percentage of supporters do not want to commit to the club, at least in the short term, when there is so little being done from the manager and board to improve matters both on and off the pitch.

Wenger, however, did move very uncharacteristically at the end of this summer’s transfer window: Mikel Arteta, 29, came in on a four-year contract, as well as German defender Per Mertesacker, who did not seem to be a target until the very last minute.

The total of five new faces brought into the club on deadline day may have done something to bring a few fans back on side, but the whole summer transfer window was a absolute disaster.

Fans did not want to see Wenger so willingly splash out £12 million on the inexperienced and untested Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain from Southampton when targets such as Gary Cahill, an experienced England international, were on the market for a similar fee.

From a fans point of view it seems Wenger is doing very little to re-energise and motivate a team extremely low on confidence, and in the opinion of some, still lacking in quality personnel to mount a serious title challenge.

Make no mistake about it, Wenger still has a huge number of supporters on his side willing to give him the time he needs to turn this club around; the “In Arsene We Trust” banner still hangs proudly in the stadium for every home game.

But it’s the uncertainty surrounding the club, their transfer policies and their ambition moving forward which has caused a lot of unrest with Wenger taking most of the flak. It’s evident that a lot of the fan’s unrest comes from not knowing exactly what the club’s intentions are, whether Wenger is being given the necessary tools and support to be successful again and if the club will ever move out of this seemingly endless period of transition.