If this proves to be Arsène Wenger’s final season as Arsenal manager, the 3-1 defeat against Liverpool may be remembered as his most damaging loss. It would be a peculiarly unfitting finale, as the focus here was almost entirely upon Wenger’s shock decision to omit Alexis Sánchez, the Premier League’s top goalscorer and Arsenal’s most dangerous attacker. Wenger later claimed this was a decision made for purely tactical reasons, which would rank as the most atypical selection decision he has made during his two decades in charge of Arsenal.
Wenger is not, in simple terms, a keen tactician. His basic philosophy has been to accommodate his best technical talents wherever possible, with extremely little regard for the nature of the opposition. His team‑talk before the 1998 FA Cup final, for example, did not contain a single word about Newcastle because Wenger was so confident that Arsenal’s default approach could outplay anyone. By 2010 little had changed, as Cesc Fàbregas confirmed when explaining that even Spain, the ultimate footballing ideologues, assessed the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses, something that never happened at Arsenal.
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