Arsenal's Premier League travails continue: they have yet to win a Premier League game, they appear to be panicking in the transfer market (£25 million for Johnny Evans) and Arsenal Fan TV is increasingly resembling two people squabbling over the last tin of beans ahead of a nuclear fallout:
This is just so, so good https://t.co/3wdZYvc7mE
— Daniel Harris (@DanielHarris) August 21, 2016
On our shiny new football show, cleverly titled the Balls.ie Football Show, we spoke to the brilliant Andrew Mangan of Arseblog about the current state of things at the Emirates. You can listen to the whole interview on the podcast by subscribing to the show on iTunes or via your Android app. You can listen via audio boom below:
We asked Andre where he stands on whether Arsene Wenger should stay or leave:
It really is a complicated issue. It's probably time Arsenal had a new manager, but I also think it's a little more complicated. There's a perception that Arsenal getting a new manager would solve all of the problems, and I don't think that's the case either. Nothing will change this season, anyway.
Who comes in?
The only name I've seen mentioned over the last few months is Eddie Howe, which in some weird way makes a level of sense, because of the level of control and authority Arsene Wenger has had over Arsenal for so many years. The Arsenal CEO and owner have no way of telling Arsene Wenger what to do, so if they bring in someone like Eddie Howe, a young, promising manager who they can boss about a bit, so from that point of view it makes a little bit of sense.
From a footballing point of view? No. Beyond that, I just don't know who else is out there. The names that have been mentioned over the last few years, Guardiola, Jurgen Klopp, have turned up elsewhere.
Beyond that, I'm not sure who that person might be, or more importantly, whether Arsenal have the structures in place to deal with a new manager, because Arsene Wenger does so much with the club.
He is a man who is in charge of every aspect of the club, and In the modern game where you have a coach, and structures to support that coach, Arsenal just don't have that anymore. If Wenger leaves - which he probably will at the end of this season - it will be seismic, it will be a huge shake-up for everyone at the club.
Frustration continues to bubble at the Emirates, with Andrew believing that it stems from a continued failure to invest in the transfer market, which was the whole point of moving from Highbury to the Emirates.
The frustration comes from the fact that we know Arsenal have the resources, but don't seem able to use those resources. The whole point of building the new stadium was to generate more revenue, and the point of generating more revenue was to buy better players.
So now we're in the situation that Arsenal have all this money sitting in the bank, generating all this revenue, but there's this frustration that if Arsenal added one or two players, every season, Arsenal are just one or two players away from winning the league, but again it seems to be see the same thing over and over again, and that's what's bothering people.
Elsewhere on the show, we have a letter from the Estonian FA replying to Brian Kerr (really), we bring you our Steve McClaren's Weird Things From The Internet featuring Henrikh Mkhitaryan's glorious middle name; Pundit Watch returns with a discussion of Friday Night Football and Sky's staggeringly awful In Off The Bar and we have our usual Fantasy Football slot.
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