Yet in spite of this I saw a blog, somewhere last week, that claimed that the stats proved the opposite. I kept looking at the chart (based on league points garnered each season) and I could swear it showed that we were in decline, but the author claimed the opposite. Well I don’t want to get into a dispute over someone else’s figures, I shall provide the only stats an Arsenal fan will ever need:

“Until a year ago, Wenger's sides won 58% and lost 18% of their 831 matches. Of 56 games over the past 12 months, they have won 47% and lost 30%.”

Source The Guardian

Now surely even the rosiest of spectacles wearer cannot read this as evidence of non-decline. If our win rate continues at 47% I wouldn’t count on a place in Europe next year. Certainly we will see no trophies, I have argued consistently that the only reason Wenger’s team has continued to finish 4^th on a regular basis is that other teams have declined even faster, a notable example being Liverpool, and now Chelsea.

After the setback of the Carling Cup Final last year the team fell apart, not because of that defeat, but because it made up Fabregas’s mind that he was no longer prepared to hang around with such a bunch of losers and stumblebottoms. What’s the betting that RvP will have come to the same conclusion at the end of this week.

Wenger had his little firework display of Thierry Henry, and it was magnificent, but it’s now gone dark and his absence makes Arsenal future look even emptier.

I was going to save this for the end of the season, but it is the end of our season, so it’s best to prepare for the new season now. One way of doing that is to start looking for Wenger’s replacement now, three months should be long enough to find a suitable applicant. The club shouldn’t make the mistake of looking for key replacements at the end of August ever again.

Oh I forgot Sunderland 2 Arsenal 0.

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