Arsenal Manager Arsene Wenger is definitely feeling the heat right now. As fans continue to protest his very presence at the club, and his club crashes out of UEFA Champions League in catastrophic fashion, the Frenchman ripped referee Tasos Sidiropoulos as he sought a scapegoat for another devastating defeat.
Arsenal were eliminated from the UCL round of 16 for the seventh straight season, this time with an 5-1 defeat to Bayern Munich, the third straight loss to the Bavarian giants by that exact score line.
The backlash among Arsenal supporters against Wenger has now grown stronger than it has ever been before. There was a massive protest march against the Gunners boss today.
Wenger didn’t address the grassroots movement calling for his termination, but instead attack the officiating.
“It leaves me very angry, very frustrated and I think that at the moment, because we are in a difficult period also, but I think it’s absolutely unexplainable and scandalous that you can look what happened really that the guy behind the line [the additional assistant] gives the penalty, on top of that the red card,” Wenger said after Arsenal were eliminated from the tournament with an eye-popping aggregate deficit of 10-2.
“Personally, I would say we put Bayern really under pressure and we were unlucky tonight because it was a 100 per cent penalty in the first half on Walcott, check it on television, and in the second half the referee killed the game. After that, it was very difficult, but the referee I think was very, very powerful for Bayern tonight.”
Wenger declares after 10-2 aggregate loss to Bayern Munich: "I think this club is in great shape"
— Rob Harris (@RobHarris) March 7, 2017
The future of Arsene Wenger at The Emirates is still up in the air. No one really knows what’s going to happen come May, but Wenger himself, by his actions here, seems to convey a current sense of turmoil. No idea whether or not that is an indicator of his being retained or dismissed.
We just know that what he did here is the sign of a man who is clearly under mass scrutiny, and doing whatever he can to try to deflect the blame away from himself by any means necessary.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net and TheBank.News, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times and NBC Chicago.com, contributes to Chicago Tribune.com, Bold, WGN CLTV and KOZN.
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