WHY SAY ANYTHING?

An era ended at The Emirates on Sunday. Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal played their last ever home game. Next season they will be “somebody else’s” Arsenal and the challenge for the club is to get the appointment of a new manager right at the first time of asking.

Manchester United relied too heavily on the opinion of Sir Alex Ferguson when they appointed David Moyes.

Fergie, no doubt, recommended his fellow Glaswegian for all the right reasons but, it seems, his decision was based almost entirely on just assuming that Moyes would he able to handle the job because he was carved from the same bit of granite that had spawned Ferguson.

He was wrong, of course and, as everyone knows, Moyes’ short reign at United was nothing short of disastrous despite a reasonably promising start.

Having decided that employing managers was actually his job, Ed Woodward then stepped in and appointed Louis van Gaal. This led to an improvement in the team but involved spending millions on players who were no better than average and didn’t involve playing attractive football.

Van Gaal’s legacy, when he was replaced by José Mourinho, was a fourth place finish and the FA Cup. Not bad, but not what United supporters, particularly those of the plastic variety, had become used to.

So it had taken United three years to replace Sir Alex Ferguson with the man they should have replaced him with immediately.

Despite the usual dissenting voices, Mourinho HAS improved United and has already collected two trophies, which will be followed by a (probable) second place finish and a possible FA Cup.

Arsenal can’t really afford to waste three years, or more, getting it right. They have already spent the last few years on a downwards spiral so their supporters will feel they have already endured their own “Moyes years” and “van Gaal years” but did so while Arséne Wenger was still in charge!

Whoever becomes the next Arsenal manager has big shoes to fill but, in some ways, is lucky that Wenger has taken the team backwards over the last few seasons as it should make the job easier.

The requirement now, at The Emirates, is to get back into the top four and, hopefully, win a cup.

This is somewhat different to the United manager following Ferguson, who would have been expected to maintain a title challenge whilst progressing a reasonable distance into the Champion’s League, (which Moyes actually achieved by reaching the quarter finals).

Arsenal will surely have learnt from Manchester United’s mistakes and will take as long as is necessary to get the right man in. It is too early to list any candidates with any certainty that they are even being considered at this time, we will leave the nonsensical speculation to The Sun and The Star.

Suffice to say that we expect to see Arsenal amongst the challengers at the top of the table again next season.

Klopp sweating…..

Liverpool have one game left in their Premier League season. Thanks to their recent poor form, (or their single-minded pursuit of a place in the Champion’s League final), they are now in very real danger of losing third place to Tottenham Hotspur and could, if the unthinkable were to happen and they lose their last game at home to Brighton, miss out on a top four place altogether.

If Tottenham win their remaining two games they will finish on 77 points. If Chelsea win their remaining two games they will finish on 75 points. So Liverpool would have to win their last game to finish on the same number of points as Chelsea but with a far superior goal difference.

The battle for third place is now very interesting and, whilst we don’t particularly want two London clubs in the top four, Liverpool will have to be on their game at Anfield on the 13th May to prevent it from happening.

And finally…..

As we look forward to the new transfer window there was something else happening this summer which has completely slipped our mind. Oh yes! The World Cup takes place in Russia so there shouldn’t be too much of a gap between that, the new kit launch, the pre-season friendlies and then the start of the new season.

There also won’t be much of a gap between the England team arriving in Russia and the England team departing Russia.

It should all pass by in the blink of an eye and, no sooner will Jeff Stelling have been wishing us all a jolly old summer break from the football, than he will be sat there again, in the middle of our screens, pretending that there have been no games of any importance for what seems like an absolute eternity and reminding us that the only ones which really matter are the ones televised by Sky.