At some point in the next year and a half, Arsene Wenger is expected to step down from his role as Arsenal manager, but who might end up leaving with him?
With results on the pitch going the way they have been in recent months, Wenger could be on the way out sooner rather than later.
There are a number of players and staff with a personal connection to the manager who may end going the same way. Here’s our list of the four people we think are most likely to follow him out of the door:
2Steve Bould
This one seems a near certainty. As a general rule, clubs that replace one manager with another usually give the new boss the chance to appoint their own assistant. As a result, you don’t often see the former manager’s assistant stick around for long.
The only real exception is when someone needs to takeover as a caretaker manager. If Arsenal sack Wenger without anyone in line to take over, they might need Bould to step in until they can make the new appointment. If that’s the case, then we should all be very worried, because the board have had years to pick a successor.
More than that, there’s a suggestion that Bould isn’t having the impact at Arsenal that he or the club want. Lee Dixon claimed recently that the former defender doesn’t get to do as much in training as he wants.
If that’s not true, the way the team defend on the pitch suggests he isn’t getting his message across anyway. Perhaps Bould could step back into a purely defensive coaching role to see if that helps. Otherwise, I’d expect him to leave with Wenger.