No Excuses

This summer will see new managers for Chelsea, City and, for the first time since the formation of the Premier League, Manchester United.

I see David Moyes having a progressive, if largely unsuccessful, first season as United boss; the supporters are essentially giving him a free pass for this season to settle down and impose his own ideas on a Ferguson-centric club. Likewise for Pellegrini, whose style of football may take some to integrate. I also feel that the fanfare surrounding Mourinho’s return will set Chelsea up for a fall.

Wenger is the only manager in the top four who isn’t exploring new territory or trying to revolutionise a new club; on paper, this suggests he has the advantage of stability over the others.

The run of twelve wins out of fifteen at the end of the season shows there is a consistency there, waiting to be mined; unfortunately, it took an abysmal run until February (which included only nine wins out of twenty-two) to really open Wenger’s eyes to the reality of his methods. Even then, it’s hard to determine whether the improvement was down to his own self-awareness, or the result of constant nagging from his assistant – either way, it does still fall in line with the consensus that Wenger needs a crisis to notice a problem.

In the position he’s in this summer, Wenger needs to be proactive – he needs solid, dependable players to break the cycle of complacency which is affecting some players. The imminent arrival of Yaya Sanogo, an injury-prone youngster from the French lower tier (which seems like an amalgamation of all of Wenger’s transfer habits) hardly inspires confidence; on the other hand, the possibility of Julio Cesar is a more promising sign that Wenger is no longer turning up his nose at experience.

With the upheaval at all the other top clubs, Wenger will have no excuses for simply scraping top four this season; he needs to show tangible, quantifiable proof of improvement – and the only way to do that is to take advantage of an easy kill.