Arsenal will stay in Tottenham's shadow, and fall further and further behind, until Arsene Wenger is replacedSaturday's derby defeat showed letting him return next season will only leave his successor with more ground to make up
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football ... l-12007893By John Cross - Chief Football Writer
The Gunners' season is not over yet, because they are still in the Europa League and are preparing for the Carabao Cup final at the end of the month — but you sense time is finally up at the Emirates for Wenger.
Expensive January signings Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan have been brought in, but if the club is really to move forward then they also have to change the manager.
Arsenal could buy a new centre-half and holding midfielder in the summer and yet the problem will be the same.
They will not see a new dawn until they bring in a new man at the top.
If the Gunners' top brass allow Wenger to carry on until the final year of his contract then they will be treading water, falling further behind and giving his eventual successor even more ground to make up.
It is hard to remember many easier 1-0 wins – if it had not been for the brilliance of Arsenal keeper Petr Cech then it would have been the sort of humiliation to put Wenger’s position under scrutiny again.
Instead, Wenger could point to Alexandre Lacazette’s late misses and gloss over the fact that Arsenal got torn apart and outclassed in a one-sided second half.
Cech played well, as did Jack Wilshere. Mohamed Elneny is a willing midfielder. But Laurent Koscielny’s decline has been startling, Granit Xhaka has not kicked on and Mkhitaryan here was invisible.
It was said that Mkhitaryan would be better suited to Wenger’s style of football than the less cavalier style of Jose Mourinho at Manchester United.
But it turns out that players who do not track back or work hard look just as bad in an Arsenal shirt as they do in a United one.
If you put too many luxury players up against a team which works hard, presses and is drilled and coached like Tottenham are under Mauricio Pochettino, then there will be only one outcome.
It was a tight, competitive first half but Spurs found another gear in the second half and, once that happened, Arsenal had no answer.