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Anonymous User
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There is little time for Arsene Wenger to lick his wounds after a traumatic weekend. Stoke may have been hellish but now the French tactician and his Arsenal team pay a visit to Hell tonight to play their final match in the Champions League Group stage against the Turks of Galatasaray.

It's lonely at the top.

The Turk Telekom Arena can be one of the most hostile and intimidating football stadiums in the world with its vociferous supporters, thunderous noise and smoke inducing flares. The locals would once greet visiting teams with "Welcome to Hell" banners at the airport such was the intensity. Now they may as wellrewrite their famous slogan as "Welcome to three points" judging by the dire performances of their team during this year's competition.

With just one point from five games and a goal difference of minus 12, Gala are not the side they once were, and with Arsenal already qualified you would think that this game was a 'dead rubber' but you would be wrong. Arsene Wenger needs his side to win for two reasons. Firstly, the Gunners still have an outside chance of finishing first in group D and secondly, he needs his side to show some heart, resilience and for want of a better word, balls.

The glory years are a now a distant memory.

Staurday's showing at Stoke reminded everyone of the weaknesses that have been associated with Arsenal for nearly a decade. A lack of leadership, physical weakness, mental fragility and tactical naivety were all in evidence in a performance so incoherent it beggared belief. It was so bad that Arsenal's greatest ever manager and his players were showered with boos and abuse from their own supporters as they boarded their London-bound train at Stoke railway station.

Disrepectful and disgusting it may have been but this is what it's come down to after 18 years of Wenger's rule. The constant injuries, the annual battle for 4th place in the league, the habitual 2nd place in the Champions League group stage and the consequent dismissal in the last 16, not to mention the continual lack of a defensive midfielder has almost ecome a mantra for fans overwhelmed by a sense of stagnation.

Like the Greek myth of Sisyphus, it seems the Wenger is compelled to roll an immense boulder up a hill over and over again, only to watch it roll back down every time. Some may argue that Wenger has earned the right to decide when he departs his post but a growing vocal minority are saying enough is enough.

The pressure is beginning to grow on the Arsenal supremo.

Open mutiny is in the air around the environs of Holloway Road and Wenger is increasingly perceived as an ageing dictator grasping onto power while his empire crumbles, pillar by pillar, under his feet. While Sam Allardyce and Alan Pardew have faced the same level of vitriol from their own fans in recent months both have managed to reinvent themselves and create a competitive winning formula for their respective teams.

Unfortunately for Wenger, it appears the stubborness that helped him change Arsenal into such a great club is now stopping him from taking the Gunners to the next level. Sometimes events conspire to force through change and if the North londoners lose tonght, then it would be the irony of ironies if Alan Pardew's Newcastle landed the fatal blow that finally topple the Wenger dynasty on Saturday evening.

Watch Arsenal take on Galatasaray tonight from 7pm and then Newcastle on Saturday with a Sky Sports Week Pass... po.st/NTVGALAARS