The REAL Reason Arsenal Declined | The Fall of Arsène Wenger
it's only 15 mins so is only a snapshot and doesn't go into too much detail, but enough to get the gist of it.
Nothing really new here either, however the underlying message is that AW was not solely to blame for the demise on or off the pitch, and reading between the lines the 'real' blame lays with the BoD and then the lack of ambition from KSE after they took over, as they said themselves they did not buy AFC to win titles.
Perhaps AW's biggest 2 individual 'crimes'/mistakes being he stayed on after DD, and that he then kept his mouth shut and tried to do his best within those constraints. This makes him at least complicit in the decline, whereas we see the likes of Mourinho and Conte in open criticism of the club owners and BoD in regards to being supported financially in the transfer market. Even so his philosophy based upon player intuition was not able to maintain it's ability to compete in the post 2014 era of EPL TV mega revenues, at least not with players who were still learning the game much like the team is doing now.
At the end I suspect he was a bit like a deer in headlights with the way things turned against him, where his loyalty and honour were effectively used against him by firstly the BoD / owners, and then by the supporters who, as AW said at the time, knew no better. Such a disappointment that he hasn't told all about those decisions not for the sake of mud racking, but more so for clarity. As such he is still showing the BoD / owners more honour and loyalty than they probably deserve, in which case he continues to suffer those consequences to his reputation and selflessness - the ultimate modern day martyr to the cause. Perhaps even worst of all is it appears the underlying strategies still remain to a large degree, as seen by the time taken for Arteta and Edu to gut the squad and to rebuild, which is still incomplete with 2/3s of the team still yet to be rectified so as to be fit for purpose, meaning AW's self sacrifice has served little purpose other than to allow/enable the BoD to maintain their sustainable self funding model. COVID has effectively shown the fallacy of that strategy as we were no more resistant than any other club.
