Arsenal once reveled in their continentality. On February 2005, just over a year before the Gunners left Highbury, Arsene Wenger became the first manager in English football history to field a team entirely consisting of foreigners. In their cosmopolitan ways, Arsenal were the epitome of what it meant to be a modern football club.
Over time, however, that positive became something of a negative. Arsenal were perceived to have lost their roots, culminating in an identity crisis around the time of the move to the Emirates Stadium. Consciously or not, Wenger embarked on a programme of Englishification. The foreigners were replaced by homegrown talents.
Players like Jack Wilshere and Theo Walcott were the embodiment of a new Arsenal, with the cultivation of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Kieran Gibbs further down the line also feeding into this. A club that had once positioned itself as an outpost for the continental game was now embracing a new identity.
Yet the promise of players like Wilshere and Walcott in particular never truly flourished into anything meaningful. There were glimpses of what might be possible, but as Arsenal hit their heads against the glass ceiling in the Premier League and the Champions League season after season, so did their homegrown contingent.
Now, New Arsenal, as it could have been dubbed, is just as tired and worn out as any Arsenal has ever been. The club is in serious need of a personality overhaul, finishing outside the top four for the first time in 21 years last season. Wenger has signed a new contract, keeping him at the Emirates for another two years, but there must be no continuity. He must prove things are changing.
Nobody embodies the stagnation of Arsenal as a club better than Wilshere, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gibbs. The former, in particular, has become a case study in the failings of Wenger as a manager, and the general misfortune of those who work under him.
Once considered one of the brightest young midfielders in the game, Wilshere has just returned from a season on loan at Bournemouth, where he largely failed to make any real impression. It’s debatable whether he is even good enough for the Premier League, let alone for one of the teams aiming to win it.
Of course, injuries have had a major impact on Wilshere’s career, but nonetheless, Wenger mustn’t hold on to the hope that he will one day, against all odds, fulfill his once shining potential. Arsenal simply can't afford to carry passengers, especially in their current situation. Wilshere has become a passenger.
The same could be said for Walcott, once English football’s great hope. Now, however, the 28-year-old has no real place at Arsenal, failing to prove himself as either a winger or a forward. West Ham are reported to be interested in the England international, and for the benefit of both club and player, Arsenal should let him leave.
Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gibbs are another two English players who have lost their way of late at Arsenal. It’s a common thread that links essentially every homegrown talent at the Emirates Stadium, with Wenger increasingly unable to turn raw potential into fully fledged, consistent excellence.
That is something not exclusive to English players, but Wilshere, Walcott, Oxlade-Chamberlain and Gibbs provide the strongest case of Wenger’s deficiencies. If he is intent on changing the culture around Arsenal as a club he must give these players the fresh starts they so desperately need, giving the Gunners a fresh start of their own. New Arsenal is dead and the time is right for Wenger to accept that.
