Is the Light Fading on Arsene Wenger's Reign at Arsenal?

If Arsene Wenger ever finds time to sit down and pen his memoirs he could do worse than borrow a title from F. Scott Fitzgerald's rich back catalogue. A life at Arsenal spanning over two decades could principally be broken into two acts: pre- and post-the Invincibles. The Beautiful and Damned should just about cover it. 

There was no little damnation demonstrated at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. Even from his enforced lofty position in the gods, Wenger will have been able to make out the rumble of discord in the sagging bowels of the away end. An "Enough is Enough, Time to Go" banner jousted with one bearing the somewhat optimistic slogan "Never Outgunned."

Poetic licence is a wonderful thing.

Chelsea's 3-1 victory that cemented their Premier League title pursuit, and effectively buried Arsenal's under it, was an eighth win in the past 11 league fixtures between the two clubs at Stamford Bridge. Arsenal were outgunned, outfought, outthought and, in the case of Hector Bellerin, outjumped. In fairness, it wouldn't make the snappiest banner. Outstanding would cover Chelsea's afternoon's work. 

While it's true nothing is inevitable until it happens, this was as close to a sure thing as you will get. As football matches go, it was painting by numbers. Chelsea were authoritative, organised, efficient, energised; Arsenal were miserable, muddled, lackadaisical, enervated. It wasn't quite as bad as Tuesday's defeat to Watford, but it wasn't far off.

Perhaps the only thing more inevitable than Arsenal putting in a meek and mild performance at Chelsea is the club's board offering Wenger a contract extension. The sighs had barely dissipated when the Sunday Times (h/t TalkSport) reported a two-year extension being put in front of the Frenchman, whose existing deal expires in the summer. Whereas most club boards time their manager's contract with an egg timer, Wenger effectively writes his own.

On co-commentary duty for Sky Sports, an irate Gary Neville labelled the supporter brandishing the "Time to Go" banner an "idiot." Aside from the fact no fully functioning adult in control of their faculties should ever have either the time or inclination to make something so infantile, it's a depressing indictment of football's hysteria that a 67-year-old man, who has dedicated the best part of his life to making Arsenal one of the smartest run and most successful clubs in English football, can be hounded in his place of work.

The frustration on the part of those Arsenal fans who think Wenger staying is a fait accompli is understandable. However, a little respect from his own is the least he deserves.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the sentiment, though. For the first time in a long time, it's one I just about agree with. There's at least a fair-to-middling chance Arsenal will get worse when Wenger eventually calls it a day, but there is no chance they will get any better if he stays. Life is a little too short to accept your club has reached a permanent plateau.

Champions tend to be the best in at least one of defence, midfield or attack. Gunnersaurus would struggle to make a case for Arsenal. And they definitely don't have the indomitable spirit Leicester City demonstrated last season. 

On Friday, in a preview piece, I wrote of Arsenal, "there's a cigarette paper between them and Chelsea in terms of quality and a cigarette factory between them in terms of fortitude." In hindsight, it's a flawed analogy. It should have read, "there's a cigarette paper between them and Chelsea in terms of quality and a tobacco plantation between them in terms of fortitude."

Forget protestations over Marcos Alonso's 13th-minute opening goal—Bellerin was left concussed and had to be replaced after he was caught by the Chelsea man's trailing arm—and don't waste time lamenting what might have been had Gabriel done as he should have and beaten Thibaut Courtois with a header when the score was 1-0.

To find solace in marginal details like these is to be no less complicit than an Arsenal board that over the past 13 years—since the club's last title—have adopted a "good enough is good enough" mantra. Saturday was nowhere near good enough.

A preoccupation with the mental side of the game Arsenal so often struggle with should not let Wenger off the hook for tactically getting it abjectly wrong. It was so devil-may-care the only surprise was Steve Bould barking out instructions from the sidelines and not Evel Knievel.

Anyone with a rudimental understanding of tactics could see Arsenal's full-backs were playing too wide and too high. With Chelsea happy to sit and counter attack whenever possession was turned over, Eden Hazard and Pedro, while both industrious, were content to hold their position infield in the pocket of space vacated between Arsenal's full-backs and centre-halves, whenever the former bombed on.

All afternoon Hazard and Pedro were afforded so much room they could have pulled out a picnic blanket and sprawled out uninterrupted. Mesut Ozil would invariably have wandered over to enjoy a flute of champagne had they done so. 

Had Wenger been as good a player as he is a manager, one suspects he would have loved to play like Ozil. Both can appear as though they belong in another era. A pair of freethinkers better suited to the Jazz Age perhaps; a time when they would probably have been worshipped for what they are as opposed to being reproached for what they're not.

When backed into a corner by those who claim the duo typify Arsenal's Achilles' heel in favouring style over substance, art over design, they could borrow a line from The Beautiful and Damned: "There was nothing, it seemed, that grew stale so soon as pleasure." There are worse things in life to endure than watching Ozil at work. 

At the weekend, though, Ozil was as far away from the action as Wenger. Fleetingly he'd step in from the shadows, but in terms of going missing, finding Osama Bin Laden was probably a more straightforward mission than locating the German on Saturday. Bould may have taken him off had he been aware he was on.

An incredulous Neville could barely believe what he was witnessing, per Sky Sports:

The full-backs have been positionally very poor in terms of understanding the danger in the game with Pedro and Hazard. They are just set up to counter-attack on like you wouldn't believe. How can Arsenal in such a big game get themselves exposed like they are with the two centre-backs? They need to be more solid than that.

To set his side up as he did, it's almost as if Wenger had never seen Chelsea play. Even more worrying is at no point over the afternoon did he appear to attempt to find a solution to quell a home side that looked like scoring every time it counter attacked.

Clearly, when Wenger famously said everyone thinks they have the prettiest wife at home, he was not excluding himself from such an affliction.

Whereas Arsenal's full-backs were kamikaze in their ill-discipline, Chelsea's wing-backs again owned the flanks with a metronomic, almost calming sense of rhythm and timing. Just as they were both involved in the Blues' winner against Tottenham Hotspur in late November—when Victor Moses converted Alonso's cross—again the duo had a role in Saturday's opener.

Moses fed Pedro, in what is another partnership in full working order, before from his compatriot's cross Diego Costa tested the strength of the crossbar with a violent header after towering over Bellerin.

Just as he had no chance against Costa, Bellerin fared no better when Alonso bounded in behind him to take both ball and man to give Chelsea the lead. Foul or not, Arsenal would do well to make more challenges of a similar ilk.

Arsenal's centre-halves had been pulled out of position like a dog unable to suppress a desire to chase a cat despite explicitly being told to stay. It was a similar tale all over the field. Alexis Sanchez was everywhere except where he should have been.

Over 90 minutes, he failed to have a single touch in the opposition's box. He dropped deeper and deeper as the game went on, as though he had no trust in his team-mates' ability to find him further up the field. Repeatedly he flogged himself in frustration and gesticulated wildly whenever passes in his direction were delayed. 

A nobler exercise would have been to go toe-to-toe with Chelsea's three centre-halves to push them further towards their own goal. Instead Cesar Azpilicueta, Gary Cahill and David Luiz took turns in bringing the ball forward as Courtois had a myriad of options to choose from whenever he had possession.

It was all very odd considering Chelsea's only real period of sustained discomfort came at the start of the match when Arsenal pressed high. Pretty much thereafter, when such pressure stopped being applied, it became apparent Wenger's faith in a 4-3-3—in which Ozil and Theo Walcott either side of Sanchez seemingly had a remit to "meander" whenever Arsenal lost the ball—was hopelessly misguided.

Nemanja Matic and the indefatigable N'Golo Kante dominated a midfield three of Alex Iwobi, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlian and Francis Coquelin all afternoon.

Costa cut a similarly frustrated figure to Sanchez. Throughout he got visibly more agitated with himself as his touch was slightly off, but what he did provide was a permanent focal point for Chelsea to hit. It is ominous for the trailing pack that in a relatively lean period for their top goalscorer, the Blues are still capable of taking four points from Liverpool and Arsenal. 

Walcott's part in Alonso's goal, when he spotted the danger and elected to watch it unfold as opposed to actively participate, was the equivalent of noticing an old woman fall in the street but not bothering to help her up in the blind belief someone else probably would.

In many respects, Walcott is a perfect poster boy for this Arsenal side. He is a good player, exemplary professional, no doubt a nice man, but possesses nowhere near enough of either the physical or mental toughness needed to help a side like the Gunners over the line. He's useful to have around to get you to a certain level and maintain it. That's about it. Maybe Wenger has become the managerial equivalent.

To look at Hazard's mesmerising goal and wonder why Coquelin didn't just bring him down is a joyless exercise, yet for the purpose of stripping Arsenal back to reveal their failings, it's entirely necessary.

Had Sanchez been doing the same as Hazard at the other end, he'd have been lucky to get past the halfway line before being hauled down. If he got as far as Chelsea's box, there's every chance Conte would have taken one for the team and done the job himself. Either Coquelin was too honest or just couldn't compete physically with Hazard (all 5'8" of him).

Neither is an ideal scenario for a holding midfielder. To be fair, it's only been a problem position for Arsenal for about a decade. The regularity with which Patrick Vieira and Emmanuel Petit are mentioned as what the Gunners are missing gives the impression they have only recently retired. 

If Conte has made Chelsea the leanest side in the Premier League since the corresponding fixture four months ago that Arsenal won 3-0 at the Emirates Stadium, Wenger's men look fatty with a soft underbelly in comparison.

By the end of that match in September, a proactive Conte had come up with a bold solution to reinvigorate a Chelsea side that had lost consecutive league games and was coming off a season far worse than any Arsenal have experienced in 20 years under Wenger.

Conte has bypassed the Premier League's obsession with 4-2-3-1 to go with a 3-4-3. As Pep Guardiola will attest, the English are not always accepting of footballing cultures outside of their comfort zones. Had it not worked, he would have been hammered. 

When Wenger watches back Saturday's game, will he see what so many of us saw and make decisive and necessary changes as Conte did? Or will he conclude even the prettiest of wives is allowed an off day?

Chelsea went 3-0 up when substitute Cesc Fabregas looked embarrassed to embarrass Petr Cech when he lobbed back the goalkeeper's faux pas with interest, before Olivier Giroud's goal at the death reduced the deficit.

Conte seemed genuinely upset post-match when he spoke of Chelsea's failure to keep a clean sheet. It's hard to imagine the Italian telling his players that qualifying for the Champions League would be in its own way the equivalent of winning a trophy, as Wenger did to his in 2012 (h/t the Telegraph). 

Arsenal are a nice team, with a nice stadium and a nice manager. They are a well-run club with a reasonable board. It's probably worth reiterating at this juncture that the levels Wenger has maintained over 20 years in north London are nothing less than remarkable—by anyone's standards.

In that time, Arsenal have never finished outside of the top four, a feat no other club has managed. They have also won 15 trophies, including three Premier League titles and six FA Cups.

As John Stanton's exhaustive and meticulously researched tome on Wenger for BBC Sport points out, he has only twice spent over £60 million in a single season during his time at Arsenal. Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City and Manchester United have done it 34 times in total between them. 

Even withstanding a 13-year hiatus since the last title or the nine-year wait for silverware that only came to an end with the 2013-14 FA Cup win, is it any wonder Arsenal's powerbrokers are not ushering him out of the door with a carriage clock just yet? If you run a football club as a business, Wenger is as safe a pair of hands as you will get.

If Wenger decides to call time on his reign in May, it will leave Arsenal precious little time to find a suitable replacement. It hasn't exactly gone swimmingly at Manchester United since Sir Alex Ferguson bequeathed his dugout to David Moyes in 2013. History suggests replacing a manager of genuine longevity is one of the hardest things to get right in football.

Herein lies the crux of the matter. Those Arsenal supporters who crave glory not consistency will counter any argument about Wenger's achievements with the fact they have been 10 or more points adrift of the champions in 10 of the last 12 seasons. They currently trail Chelsea by 12 points.

In 18 Champions League campaigns, Wenger has taken Arsenal past the quarter-final stage just twice and reached only one final, losing to Barcelona in 2005-6. The second of the Frenchman's decades in the capital has been responsible for just 27 percent of the trophies he has won since his appointment in 1996.

Arsenal have existed in a vortex of muted ambition for more than a decade now. To get rid of Wenger would in many respects mean the club's board would have to accept their own failings as much as they would the manager's. Don't be surprised if they opt for the easier option. 

Still, if at the end of the season Wenger does indeed prolong his stay at Arsenal, the title of another F. Scott Fitzgerald work would be a fitting final chapter to the most remarkable of stories or even make a smart banner; Flappers and Philosophers.