With odd positional shifts, a lumpen midfield and perhaps the least Wenger-like team in two decades, the Arsène Wenger endgame has taken a surprising turn
Among the many oddities of Arsène Wenger’s long goodbye at Arsenal – the anger, the corporate vacuum, the sense of some dying sun-king exploring the outer edges of his own vanity – one of the more interesting details is the weird, gimmicky switch to a back three in the past few matches.
It is an unsettling move at this stage, a kind of ageing-swinger version of tactical innovation. At one point in his classic Rabbit novels, John Updike sends his paunchy, middle-aged anti-hero Harry Angstrom off on a slightly sad wife-swapping escapade during a golfing holiday in the Caribbean. Alone in the bamboo chalet, Harry and nice prim Thelma fumble through their belated moment of 1960s swing with an awkward married tenderness. Eventually, a little desperate, in search of something special and exciting to do, they end up urinating on each other in the bath.
Related: Arsenal’s Arsène Wenger says he is open to making peace with José Mourinho
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