Piers Morgan has manipulated Twitter for years now, and with some success. His provocative and engaging approach to a range of topics make him a magnet of controversy, be it on gun laws, Kevin Pietersen or his ‘beloved’ Arsenal.
Arsene Wenger’s – supposed – shortcomings have been the subject of Morgan’s rants for years. They surface infrequently after Arsenal defeats and lay down a mixture of mis-informed, naive and myopic thoughts that make for pejorative conjecture.
Last week’s 2-1 defeat to Tottenham fuelled Morgan to speak out again, this time on British radio, and he took the same negative line as always. Here’s a rough transcript of what he said, and a rebuttal to the usual nonsense that emanates from his attention-seeking brain…
Piers Morgan (PM): ‘Wenger gets a free pass from all of you in the media which I find increasingly inexplicable’
Does he? You’ll struggle to find someone in football management who splits opinion more than the Frenchman. The hashtag #Wengerout has trended at extraordinary rates on Twitter in the past, and you’ll find articles here, here, and here which perfectly epitomise how he provokes streams of criticism regularly. Those articles all came out recently. Head back to the week after Arsenal lost 3-1 to Aston Villa in their opening home game of last season (August 2013) and the calls for Wenger to be sacked were widespread. It’s difficult to actually think of a manager in sport who splits opinion more.
PM: He now has more money than any team other than City and Chelsea
That’s not true. Manchester United invested nearly double this summer and are set to start a £1bn deal with Adidas next year, lofting them to a new state of economic might. Liverpool, with their Suarez bank-roll, also spent more. Spurs have spent more in years gone by.
PM: He now has the stadium he has used as an excuse for years… he has no more excuses
Wenger’s only had 15 months of anti-austerity measures to actually sign ‘super quality’, and even then he’s only been able to acquire two trophy players with the terms of Financial Fair Play to consider. Chelsea, United and City have had years upon years to micro-super-invest in every position on their pitch, meaning their wealth has reached all corners of their club. You can’t under play the importance of this point- if Wenger had had money for the last decade you could level these criticisms at him fairly, but it’s been a season and a half.
It’s worth remembering that since 2003 Man City and Chelsea’s net spends combined have amounted to nearly £1bn more than Arsenal. The more you think about that figure and Arsenal’s consistency, Wenger’s record is staggering.
PM: Arsenal’s performance against any challenging team for the last five years is absolutely appalling
This is the first line of criticism that holds strength. Wenger’s mistakes in the last decade have been verging on some sort of strange, inexplicable dogma towards Arsenal’s biggest competitors at crucial times in a season.
But you can’t under-appreciate how that staunch faith pays dividends for the team. It encourages the development of young players who become indebted to him for their careers. It was the primary reason that attracted Mesut Ozil to the club. It’s the foundation for his man-management approach which has meant you’ve never heard of player-problems in the Arsenal dressing room.
PM: He has to be judged as any other top 6 manager would in the world
Wenger at Arsenal is most unique managerial situation in the world. His reign is incomparable to any of his contemporaries – can you name another super-European club that have a manager who’s served longer than a decade? If you can, did that manager balance his approach with a decade of austerity measures?
Thought not.
PM: 10 years with one FA Cup, a second-tier trophy… 10 years would be way below the patience of any other manager. Why am I not allowed to suggest that a new manager might be right for Arsenal? I would take Jurgen Klopp… he’s won the Bundesliga twice in the last five years. He has dynamism, he has youth – he’s about 20 years younger than Wenger – he has passion…
Jurgen Klopp is a good manager, but why is he seen as an upgrade on Wenger? Dortmund have been in freefall this season. Morgan would publicly ridicule Klopp if he’d navigated Arsenal through a season that badly, where the clutter at the bottom of the Bundesliga is worse than the Premier League. Klopp’s navigated past Bayern in those five years – but that’s just one competitor. Would he really fare better in the considerably more competitive Premier League?
PM: We fell apart again in the second half (against Tottenham) and Wenger just sat there in that ridiculous caterpillar coat, he never moved. I wanted to see him leaping off that bench, showing some fire in his belly, trying to inspire our team.
In the words of Gary Neville, criticisms relating to ‘passion’, ‘desire’ and effort are a stock, weak, and an easy evaluation when trying to highlight faults in a team.
To question Wenger’s desire and passion is farcical. He’s had a number of high profile manager spats in the past (Ferguson, Mourinho and Pardew), and just because he shows resolve (and arguably class) in one derby hardly illustrates his lack of desire. In the words of Sir Alex Ferguson himself, the levels of ‘dedication’, ‘resilience’ and ‘sacrifice’ that Wenger has put into the job cannot be ’emphasised enough’.
PM: This is the North London derby, this remains the biggest game we have… The Spurs team showed more fight, more aggression, more passion… they wanted to beat us more than we wanted to beat them.
There needs to be a level of acceptance that Arsenal won’t win every game they play – something that Morgan seems devoid of grasping. Spurs fans would give anything to replicate Wenger’s record against Arsenal. 11 different Tottenham managers have taken him on, with Wenger P45, winning 21, and losing just 7. Morgan completely fails to appreciate just how dominant a record that is.
PM: Wenger is not the same manager that he was ten years ago. This has been a decade of failure.
This completely fails to appreciate the significance of the Emirates, and everything it stands for. Liverpool, Tottenham, Chelsea and any other will have to develop their stadiums at some point and the consequences of that without outside investment are huge.
Arsenal could well have nose-dived in this period like Liverpool and United in certain seasons. Arsenal’s trophy in the last decade has been the Emirates. He’s secured their long term stature as a European super-power.
True, now is the time to judge him, but building teams with big money takes time. Wenger has won more than Jose Mourinho in the last year.
The words of Gary Neville are nice way to summarise Wenger’s reign.
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