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It all started in hope and then joy and then on Sunday: pain like never before. Arsenal have in the last decade and a half gone through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows and all of it has been under the helm of the Frenchman Arsene Wenger. Wenger Joined Arsenal in 19996 as a replacement for Bruce Rioch. The Frenchman has just ended a short stint at Japanese club Nagova Grampus eight where he was voted the leagues best manager. The Appointment brought an air of reform to the London club with new tactics, training programmes and player recruitment policies. These soon paid off as Arsenal won a league-cup double in the 1997-1998 before finishing as beaten UEFA Cup finalists the season after. The turn of the millennium brought with it much success a League-cup double in 2001-2002 and a FA cup 2003, but it was the season following, the 2003 FA Cup triumph, that saw Arsenal at its peak. The 2003-2004 season saw Arsenals strongest team for centuries tear all that lay before them as they finished the League unbeaten, they were aptly named "The Invincibles" and it seemed as though they would dominate English football for years to come. That quite quick turned bad as a planned move away from Highbury hit the club financially and key players left for more lucrative contracts elsewhere resulting in Arsenal start to decline at an alarming rate. They tried to stop the decline by investing more and more in youth and for a while it seemed to be working with a FA Cup triumph in 2005 silencing the critics enough for Wenger to explain that the future of the club was in its youth players. So for the next 5 years Arsenal continued to buy young players and give them a starting role, while having to sell at least 1 player a season in order to balance the books that the Stadium move had so greatly unstabilised. One by one the invincible were picked off either by better teams with higher wages or by old age. Such was the case in 2007 when Wenger, feeling he had an adequate replacement in a young Robin Van Persie, released Thierry Henry the clubs most Prolific Striker and the centre piece of the Invincible’s Success. As others left Wenger always calmed fans fears by claiming to have an adequate young replacement but with such youth comes the problem of inexperience and for the years that would follow that would prove to be Arsenals biggest hurdle. Last season league cup final lose to Birmingham, team who would get relegated, was a shock and surprise for many but that was nothing like the Surprises in store at the start of the 2011-2012 Season. This season it just seemed like the realisation of the inevitable as Arsenal finally resigned themselves to losing their shining star and captain Cesc Fabregas and 4 others including Samir Nasri. For Arsenal fans it seems as though Arsenal are at sea with no rudder as they float towards mediocrity. The signs are on the wall with a weak draw opening draw away at Newcastle, a 2-0 lose to Liverpool at home and a 8-2 defeat at Old Trafford against Man Utd but where did it go wrong?

Wenger has made some good YOUNG buys, perhaps the best in England, in players such as Walcott, Nasri, Wilshere, arguably Ramsey and Oxford-Chamberlaine, the problem is not in selling players but in failing to replace them with decent replacements, Arsenal’s back up to these young players are often obscure middle age talent bought on the cheap and never really expected to leave the shadows of the boys “who are a bit special”.

Problem is not in giving youth a chance but in an overreliance on youth and obvious lack of experience needed in winning trophies, for example the inexperience has shown in the large amount of times they have finished runners up

Perhaps money played a part. There was always a need for a new stadium and when the emirates was built I remember Wenger saying shortly after the team moving that at current financial situation they would need to sell at least 1 player of 12+ million a season to keep the club out of serious debt.

No matter what happens to messier Wenger there is no doubting his talent and as most Arsenal fans would attest the sun will rise again over the emirates.

Do you think Wenger should go? Who would replace him? What does the future hold for Arsenal?

Tell us below.