Their remarkable French coach made them unbeatable but now his stubborn streak threatens their future, says rob bagchi
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Britain's most elegant football team is suddenly in trouble and it is the stubbornness of its revered French coach, Arsene Wenger, that is to blame. So bad is the situation that if Arsenal fail to beat Real Madrid in the coming Champions League tie - the first leg of which is played tomorrow night - then it could be their last performance on the European stage for some time.
In eight years Wenger transformed Arsenal from the dour defensive epitome of attritional football into a team capable of the most exhilaratingly fluent performances. That culminated in their "invincible" Premiership season 18 months ago.
But since that peak, things have gone from bad to worse. Of course, Chelsea's emergence under Roman Abramovich and Arsenal's huge liability on the new stadium
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| The board has offered large sums and yet he has refused to recruit experienced footballers to bolster his squad |
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they are due to move into in July have played their part in Arsenal's demise. But they are not the only factors. Wenger's ego and inflexibility in his refusal to replace his talismanic captain, Patrick Vieira, who was sold to Juventus in August, threatens to deny the club the top-four finish that would guarantee them Champions League football next season.
Peter Hill-Wood, the club's chairman, is adamant that his board has offered Wenger large sums to spend on new players and yet he has refused to recruit experienced footballers to bolster his squad. Chastened by his one significant transfer mistake - paying £8m in 2001 for the flaky Francis Jeffers, who only started four league games in three years - he has resorted to the principle that shaped his managerial career in Europe and Asia: if two teams have roughly equal talent, the one that has evolved together will always beat the one that has been quickly and expensively assembled.
And so he has looked again to his home country to buy relatively obscure young 
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