Arsenal's mid-season problems are well documented, but Arsene Wenger's longevity proves he knows how to react

If Arsenal always frustratingly fall away just when they seem on the brink of a breakthrough, the flip side is they never actually fall apart just when outright collapse seems imminent

In one of the quieter moments before he spoke to media on Thursday morning, Arsene Wenger was asked how he’s feeling.
“I am not very well,” he responded… but it was followed by a smile, and a question of his own. “Are you surprised?”
The answer would be no, since this spell of deflating successive defeats should be no surprise. We seem to see Arsenal in this type of eye-rolling reality-check form, and Wenger in this kind of tetchy mood, at least twice a season. The visit of Marco Silva with Hull City is coincidental in that sense, since he was responsible for one of these moments last season, when his Olympiakos side won 3-2 at the Emirates. That defeat also raised the type of searching questions about Wenger’s reign that we’ve seen in the last week, but they still haven’t felt as frenzied as at other times, like last season’s title collapse.
That may well change if they make it three games without a win at home to Hull, after losses to Watford and Chelsea, but might also be why the manager was still in good enough mood to issue something of a rallying call as he reflected on that last week. The only problem was that rallying call was akin to Jeremy Corbyn’s “real fight starts now” comment after the Brexit bill.
“It’s as well an interesting week because it’s a good test at an important moment of the season,” Wenger said. “And it’s as well a good opportunity to show what we are made of and to deal with what matters to us - what is at stake and in front of us in the next game.”
The fair response to that would be that the opportunity to show what they are made of was actually last week going into the Chelsea game, and this is like getting ready for a battle on the fringes after the main war has already been lost. The reality, of course, is that we know perfectly well what Arsenal are made of. It’s why they seem to have the same season over and over again, and why their supposed title challenge has once more evaporated by February after yet another convincing defeat.
Perhaps the more interesting question is not about what Arsenal are made of or the mentality that Wenger likes to so often speak of, then, but rather how they specifically deal with weeks like this. It’s all the more interesting since any single defeat is said to “torment” him and cause intense introspection. There is, however, a recognisably regular outward response. It is, after all, one of the genuine positives of the manager’s longevity and sense of stability. If Arsenal always frustratingly fall away just when they seem on the brink of a breakthrough, the flip side is they never actually fall apart just when outright collapse seems imminent. They do rally in that regard, and are capable of the type of result that can suddenly make the worries of the previous week much less pressing.
“I focus on what is important, you know,” Wenger explained. “And what is important is to prepare for the next game and analyse what happened and prepare for the next one. I am long enough in the job that you go from hero to zero in one minute. As I just told you, I am the same person last Tuesday and I can analyse things the same way.”