The biggest challenge at Arsenal this summer doesn’t rest on the man who will attempt to fill Arsene Wenger’s almighty void, rather the board that will need to choose the right successor despite their abundant lack of experience within the realms of hire and fire – something that cost Manchester United so dearly upon Sir Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013.

Indeed, most Premier League boards are almost too well acquainted with such practices, such has been the dramatic shift towards short-termism in English football since Arsenal appointed Wenger back in 1996. Arsenal’s current board though, have never been faced with that problem – they’ve never been involved in that side of the game and they’ve never experienced the dangers that come with it.

They may well have discussed the prospect of parting with Wenger previously, they may well have scouted potential successors, but they’ve never actually replaced one manager with another – at least, not the board as its currently formed.

Some, such as director Ken Friar, were part of the board that appointed Wenger, and others, such as Stan Kroenke, have hired and sacked first-team managers or their equivalents with other sports franchises around the world. But that experience only provides a dangerous false sense of security, something that could cause the club even more damage, because it lacks relevance in an idiosyncratic Premier League climate.

There is now a greater expectation for instantaneous success than ever before, and the level of competitiveness in the Premier League is greater than ever before as well. Combine those two factors together, and Arsenal fans will lose patience quickly if they think Wenger’s immediate successor is only taking the club further backwards. Suddenly, another Arsenal season will go by the wayside as the new dawn proves to be a false one and a second Wenger successor is needed.

That’s precisely the problem Manchester United faced five years ago. A lack of boardroom experience due to Ferguson’s incredible longevity in the job eventually manifested in them letting the Scot choose his own replacement, but it soon became clear that David Moyes wasn’t wholly fit for the task – at least, not without several seasons and transfer windows to transform the team and improve his own abilities.

With every appointment though, United’s board have got better. Louis van Gaal proved a sturdy and safe if unspectacular and unpopular appointment, while Jose Mourinho has restored the club to something close to its former glories. That’s only evidence of how important experience in hiring and firing managers actually is – each pick to fill Ferguson’s void has been slightly less naïve and slightly more ambitious than the last.

If that represents a key progression in United’s boardroom, Arsenal’s is still stuck at zero, taking their initial steps down a steep learning curve. That should really worry Gunners supporters; it often feels as if this board operates within its own bubble, almost ignorant to outside pressures and how the dynamics of the Premier League have so rapidly changed in recent years. They come across as out of touch and out of date, and that only alludes to a poor choice of replacement for Wenger.

That’s not to say Arsenal and Manchester United’s situations are precisely the same, and thus the Gunners will find themselves facing a similar demise. For starters, United fell from the highest possible point – reigning Premier League champions – with ageing greats, whereas Arsenal are at something close to their lowest low and already started the redevelopment process in January, bringing in Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan.

But the true similarities between United in 2013 and Arsenal now remain at boardroom level, and the lack of experience those two cohorts share. Arsenal may be one of the biggest clubs in English football, but at this moment in time every Big Six boardroom is more experienced, more savvy, more battle-hardened and more recently exposed in picking men from an industry that has an average job length of around one year.

If United’s struggles to replace Ferguson tell us anything, it’s that Arsenal’s board won’t be able to pull it off at the first time of asking.

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