The aura of invincibility in a team and its winning ways has a lot to do with the faith that the troops have in the capabilities of their leader. Sun Tsu in the Art of War articulates this succinctly.
The modern day incarnation of this fact, for those who might be demanding proof, is the English premiership and the case of two hitherto great teams, Manchester United and Arsenal.
First, we will briefly examine the case of the gunners and then move on in large part to that of Manchester United because of the fact that right now, the British media is awash with news of the impending departure of David Moyes; with the sense that it is just a case of when and not if he is booted out.
As for Arsene Wenger, some weeks ago, on the eve of the clash between the Gunners and Blues, the typically annoying, rude and provocative antics of Jose the Portuguese man Mourinho were brought to use and he called the Frenchman Wenger “a specialist in failure” and that did the job.
Chelsea mercilessly massacred Arsenal six nothing the next day and sent the gunners in a stretch of losses that effectively put the prospects of the English Premiership for 2014 beyond; first their grasp and later on the dreams of the gunners.
Ironically, all this to the benefit of Liverpool which until recently was ridiculed as loserpool, by its detractors. But then that is the beauty of the beautiful game.
Even after that the worst is yet to come for the gunners as they are now having to gasp for breath to survive in the top four finish to be assured of Champions’ league football next season, a thing they had taken for granted in the last seventeen seasons.
This is a scary prospect for the gunners because who knows where next they might be heading to, considering that when they went seasons on end without silverware they had rationalised and downsized their ambitions to Champions’ league soccer and position four for a long time, now they might be heading for a candidature for fighting relegation.
It seems Jose and his uncouth mouth has always been an ominous omen for Arsenal and Wenger and somehow and for sometime he managed to destroy the faith of the Arsenal troops in their leader. It has taken the gunners some time to regain their belief in Monsieur Arsene. The only consolation for Arsene is that at least he might still be around at the Emirates.
The case of Moyes is different. After a very pathetic and lackluster season for the once doyen of the English game, Manchester United, the 2-0 defeat at the hands of Everton over the Easter holidays might be the last straw that broke Moyes’ back. The fans, who for a long time had been accustomed to being in control at the top and most crucially the Glazers, who “pay the piper” and control the purse at Old Trafford, have had enough and the curtain is closing on David the Scotsman Moyes.
It may seem that appeals, earlier in the season, by Sir Alex, the fellow Scotsman who anointed Moyes for the Manchester United job, for the fans to be patient with David as they had similarly been patient with Alex in his hey days have failed to placket the impatience and indignation at Old Trafford and that Moyes will go.
Perhaps Sir Alex might have forgotten that times have changed and that in his first season, unlike David’s, the Glazers were not in town and that the power dynamics in the club football landscape were different.
Sean Bones, from the Manchester United Supporters’ Trust put it most snugly when he was quoted by Sky News on April 21 2014 that “it’s a results based Industry”. That is the nature of business in the space called European soccer in general and the English premiership in particular. There football bosses, with the few exceptions of the likes of Arsene Wenger, have the shortest lease of life on the job in the professional world.
On reflection, one would have loved that we were all like the English premiership where results not lies, rhetoric, spin and noise was all that mattered for tenure at the top. Maybe ours is another world altogether because there are too many of us that are illiterate and still living in darkness.
