Don't Fire Arsene Wenger or Jurgen Klopp

On Saturday, Arsenal labored to a 1-0 win over West Bromwich Albion in the English Premier League. It's the kind of game—against a team that finished just out of the relegation zone last season—that was a sure 3 points for the Arsenal teams of the middle aughts, but "sure thing" and "Arsenal" don't go together like they used to. Since it last won the league in 2004, the team has undergone dramatic change: a new stadium, an entirely different playing staff, and a serious drop in both confidence and the ability to challenge for titles. The one constant is coach Arsene Wenger, who has managed the club since 1996.

The following day, across the North Sea and a little up river, another once-dominant team struggled. Dortmund lost to Eintracht Frankfurt, 2-0. After both matches, the respective fans showed their displeasure. Dortmund's traveling supporters whistled at the team for the first time under Jurgen Klopp. Despite the win, a set of traveling Arsenal supporters unveiled a banner that read "Arsene, thanks for the memories, but it's time to say goodbye."

It's a funny situation: Klopp, once thought unfireable by Dortmund, is looking like he might be available sometime soon. Dortmund is bottom of the Bundesliga, with just 11 points. There might not be any headlines about Dortmund in today's German press that don't include the word "crisis." Although there's no talk of crisis in London, Wenger has come under increasing pressure after years of stagnation at Arsenal. The person most often linked with Wenger's job? Jurgen Klopp.

The irony is there for all to see. The similarities of the two situations, however, are lost on many observers. In both cases, the managers are taking blame for things that are, to a large part, out of their hands.

To begin with, neither Klopp nor Wenger has had any luck with injuries as of late. At Arsenal, this isn't anything new. The club could double as a research hospital for sports injuries at this point. Jack Wilshere, Abou Diaby, Mesut Ozil, Mikel Arteta, Theo Walcott, Mathieu Debuchy, Wojciech Szczesny, David Ospina, and Theo Walcott are all currently out. Danny Welbeck and Olivier Giroud have only recently returned. Over at Dortmund, things aren't much better: Sokratis Papastathopoulos, Mats Hummels, Marco Reus, Jakub Blaszczykowski, and Lukasz Piszczek are the star names on an injury list that runs deep into the pool of reserve players. Ilkay Gündogan is just back from a long layoff. So neither manager has played with a full deck over the course of the season (and in Arsenal's case, much longer).

Equally challenging from a managerial standpoint is the loss of players to transfers. Since their respective heydays, both teams have struggled to replace key players. In Dortmund's case, I'm talking about Mario Götze and Robert Lewandowski. It doesn't take a professional scout to look at Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Ciro Immobile and understand why the team doesn't play with the same swashbuckling, terrifying flair it once did. They're both good players, but they're not the unique talents they replaced.

At Arsenal, it's a little more complicated because the team's last peaks—the 2004 title-winning squad and the team that played in the 2006 Champions League final—are further removed, but until Ozil and Sanchez showed up, the team bled talent for the better part of a decade: Henry, Van Persie, Fabregas, Nasri, Song, and Cole all left without being properly replaced.

So, to recap: Reus has glass ankles, Mkhitaryan isn't the Armenian Götze, and Dortmund doesn't have near enough depth to even compete in the Bundesliga. Fire Klopp? After building a new stadium, Arsenal has finally opened its checkbook to bring in world class talent. Better get rid of Wenger, right?

Such is the unfairness of the managerial position that we blame managers in tough times and praise them when things go well, but they're rarely the sole decision makers at a club, especially when it comes to player acquisition. Rather, their task is to turn the players at hand into a cohesive unit, to get them to fight for each other and play to their strengths. You could argue that both Wenger and Klopp have failed to do that this season, but their ability to make that happen has also been undermined. Both managers have proven capable of doing all of those things in the past, and in the process they've accomplished something rare among soccer managers: they've won titles.

In other words, both teams should exercise patience. The world isn't full of proven coaches, so hold on to the ones you got.

But anyone who watches soccer knows patience isn't a word typically used to describe fans and owners. Come May, Wenger might find himself peering into the stands and reading a banner that says, "Arsene, thanks for the memories, but we want Klopp."