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Arsenal rout of Man United merely continues Wenger cycle of mediocrity

When will Arsene Wenger be retiring?

The longtime Arsenal manager was asked that on the eve of his Gunners' finest performance of the season, a 3-0 dismantling of archrivals Manchester United. The question was prompted by United manager Louis van Gaal's vow to quit when his contract runs out in the summer of 2017.

And consider, Wenger is almost two years older than van Gaal, just celebrated his 19th anniversary at Arsenal, and has a contract running out after next season as well.

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But the retirement question is really just a gentler and more humane way rephrasing of a question that's gone unanswered for a very long time now: How long should Wenger be allowed to stay in charge?

The support from his club's leadership has been absolute. But whenever his side has made another slow start to a Premier League season or faded from the title race late on, or when the Gunners prematurely crashed out of the Champions League knockout rounds yet again, the grunts of discontent from an increasingly vocal faction of Arsenal fans swell in volume and number.

So far this Premier League season, Arsenal had lost two of its first six games, and dropped both of their Champions League contests at Dinamo Zagreb and at home against Olympiakos. Wenger, as often, was on thin ice with many of the club's supporters, who felt he had cheaped out on the transfer market yet again after failing to land an elite striker or a holding midfielder. For the umpteenth time, people were calling for his removal.

But then, as always seems to happen when the pressure on Wenger builds, his side delivered a dazzling performance, removing the weight from their manager's shoulder and smashing it into tiny shards. And so on Sunday, two fluid, well-worked team moves – of the vintage sort, harking back to Arsenal's best days under Wenger, when The Invincibles reigned – were converted into goals by Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil. And then Sanchez got another, a goal of pure individual skill.

Within 19 glittering minutes, the game was decided and the league leaders, whom Arsenal hadn't managed to beat in their previous eight league matchups, had been emasculated. A series of strong saves by goalkeeper Peter Cech kept United in check, and it was never really a contest.

Wenger smiled along the sidelines. Arsenal snuck from seventh place in the table to second. And now it was business as usual and back to your regularly scheduled programming. Hours after Wenger's time seemed nigh, all was well at the Emirates.

It's uncanny. And yet it happens every season.

Last Tuesday, Wenger watched Arsenal lose to Olympiakos in the Champions League. (AFP Photo)
Last Tuesday, Wenger watched Arsenal lose to Olympiakos in the Champions League. (AFP Photo)

Last season, Arsenal had been overmatched by Monaco at home in the round of 16 of the Champions League, losing 3-1. Arsenal won 2-0 away and impressed. And while the Gunners were still eliminated, Wenger's hide was saved.

The year before that, Wenger survived a particularly poor second half of the season, which included a 5-1 loss to Liverpool and a 6-0 spanking at the hands of Chelsea, by winning the FA Cup – the club's first trophy in nine seasons.

And the season before that one, the dissent following a 3-1 round-of-16 home loss to Bayern Munich faded when Arsenal beat the German powerhouse 2-0 away. The Gunners were sent home again, but they showed enough glimmers against the eventual champions.

Every year, it's the same thing. Just when the last of Wenger's loyalists are ready to take down their "In Arsene we trust" banners, some glittering performance changes everything and suggests that he has finally – finally! – set things right.

It's how he managed to see it through an almost decade-long trophy drought at a club that's expected to be in the mix for the prizes every single season. He was a beneficiary of the much-employed excuse of diminished transfer and wage budgets as the club financed a new stadium – even if any notions of a spendthrift Arsenal were always a tad exaggerated. But when even that trope grew tired, Wenger managed to engender just enough faith to cling on.

It's what's allowed him to become the longest-serving manager in the Premier League by far. His 19 years make a mockery of his Liverpool counterpart Brendan Rodgers, who was the runner-up in tenure with three years and four months before being sacked by Liverpool on Sunday. No other manager in England's four professional tiers has even half as long a spell as Wenger does. Paul Tisdale of League 2's Exeter City has put in nine years and three months. There isn't anyone in the other major European leagues who has held down a job for nearly as long, either.

With Ferguson retired in 2013, there's nobody left like Wenger. And there may not be again. There's no more building or rebuilding in continental club soccer. No projects. There are only the last few games and the one coming up at the weekend. Only they count.

This seems foolhardy. Ferguson once said that it was the time he had already spent in the job that also equipped him to do it well. That's because he and his staff – which saw very little turnover during his 26½-year run in charge – had seen and done just about everything, so there were no problems that they didn't already have a solution. But good luck making that argument to a board or some quick-trigger chairman these days.

Patience is the rarest of virtues in modern soccer. We live in the age of now, a time of immediate gratification. But Wenger has unearthed some type of elixir for the eternal soccer life. The gaunt and skeletal Frenchman's knack for brinksmanship is such that he'll surely retain the job until he doesn't want it anymore.

As for the question of his retirement, Wenger said he didn't know when he would retire, before giving a fiery rebuke to the criticism of goalkeeper David Ospina, whose fumble against Olympiakos had cost Arsenal a point – if not three.

His retirement, Wenger said, might be "instinctive and impulsive." Unlike every other aspect of Arsenal's business, he hasn't planned ahead.

There is life remaining in his career yet.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a soccer columnist for Yahoo Sports. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.