Robson: Wenger is a dictator

Former Arsenal midfielder Stewart Robson last night launched a scathing attack on manager Arsene Wenger, saying the Frenchman had become “a dictator”.

Robson, who played for the club in the 1980s and is a regular contributor the club’s online TV package, claimed Wenger’s role in Arsenal’s decline should not be overlooked.

He said Wenger has become “a dictator in many ways” and believes Wenger was shown to be tactically inferior to Bradford counterpart Phil Parkinson on Tuesday night.

“I’m more embarrassed with the way Arsene Wenger conducts himself these days,” said Robson. “He doesn’t do any tactical stuff on the side of the field, they tell me he doesn’t do too much work on the defensive side in training, yet he’ll have a rant at everybody else.”

Robson said: “There’s backroom staff that will challenge his decisions — Steve Bould, Neil Banfield, Terry Burton — but they can’t challenge him because he’s a dictator in many ways.

“Why isn’t Steve Bould doing more coaching? Because — time and time again — I don’t think Arsene Wenger sees the danger. When the team are making mistakes he doesn’t rectify them, and the reason he doesn’t rectify them is he doesn’t know what the mistakes are.

“In my view it was time up three or four years ago. The fans have stuck by him, they always say ‘in Arsene we trust’, that can’t be the case any more.”

Meanwhile Wenger has said he will always regret not being able to realise the potential of his Arsenal squad over the past two years because of the sale of key men.

After guiding Arsenal to great success in his early years at the club, Wenger’s plans to build a team capable of sustaining a challenge for honours were shattered by the departures of Samir Nasri, Cesc Fabregas, Robin van Persie and Alex Song.

In a wide-ranging interview with the January edition of Four Four Two magazine, conducted before this week’s loss at Bradford — which saw Arsenal’s quest for a first trophy since 2005 suffered another blow — Wenger admits there will always be a sense of what might have been if the club had been able to retain their talent.

“My regret is that we already had a great team two or three years ago which could compete on four fronts,” Wenger said. “We just missed out in the Champions League [last 16] against Barcelona, when we could have scored in the last minute, and then we just missed out on the Premier League.

“But you could feel the potential was there, and I thought, ‘okay, let’s do this together’.

“Then the team split up, sometimes after five or six years’ work, it is frustrating, you have to start all over again.”