Arsenal

Arsenal on the last 10 years have spent considerably more than we have on transfer fees and wages.

Nobody can say that Wenger hasn’t been supported.

His poor recruitment, poor defensive coaching and deteriorating motivational skills are to blame.

Him and his staff must also be culpable for the high number of long term injuries they seem to suffer.

Buying new players is the minimum risk approach, he has a manager, the best manager in your clubs history. He not only knows the club inside out but the club is built around him (to an extent), he continues to bring home silverware every now and then. He consistently has brought in CL qualification, he failed last year but normally that isn't the case.

You risk that for bringing in someone who may improve things, they may also bring with them more demands for new more expensive players, they will want their own staff and then you have to compensate Wenger and his staff. You are then not only talking about an expensive change but potentially a period of transition where income may fall initially as your new manager finds his feet.

When you take Arsenals success into account, relative to the steaming piles of shit Kroenke has been running in other sports, it is easy to see why he has stuck rather than twisted.

I am not saying I wouldn't have sacked Wenger, but those who think it is a quick fix are probably wrong (unless they get very lucky).

Shadydan said:

That's exactly what the board have done wrong, they've kept Wenger in charge when they should have got rid of him a few years ago.

In every successful business there's absolutely no room for sentiment and if it means you need make a harsh decision on someone who has had heavily assisted in building the infrastructure of the company who now is bringing the same company to it's knees then that person would be given a severance package and told that his job is no longer his. When other clubs apart from ours go through turmoil with their management I always liken it to our situation and often ask myself what would Levy do in this position? Here you have a manager who clearly had pushed the team as far as they can go and is clearly not getting the best out of the players. Levy would have either sacked him or told him without any hesitation.

I see no difference here, people always pointed the finger at Levy and saying he sacks managers too early but apart from the way he handled Jol's sacking IMO he's done everything pretty well in terms of hiring and firing managers and the timing of them, bottom line is that generally he's had the club's best interests at heart and if Arsenal's board or more Stan Kroenke was more ruthless then they wouldn't be in this situation now.

The problem is now the rot has set in, the complacency has come from the board because they're allowing Wenger to carry on making mistakes and this has transcended onto the players who subsequently aren't playing for him, there is no accountability at that club because there is no authority which needs to come from the high ups and work it's way down so IMO the board are fully to blame for their plight not Wenger because he's been allowed to get away with his shit time and time again without any sort of retribution.

This is why I simply don't subscribe to the theory of them getting a new manger will suddenly fix all their problems, they need a complete mentality change at their club and completely transform it because they are currently sleepwalking. They need something that we went through when Poch arrived however with the current board in place who seem happy to rest on their laurels of just being a Bridesmaid club I think it's going to be very difficult to get back to where they were before.

I just thank God we have our infrastructure in place, we have a club finally pulling in the same direction and management and staff all singing from the same hymn sheet, we always had the chairman who was prepared to push the club in the right direction we didn't have the manager until Poch arrived and the result of that is starting to bear fruit, for us the only way is up providing we keep the infrastructure in place, for them the outcome is uncertainty.

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Wenger is very much a special case. They're not going to have the same level of sentiment to future managers unless of course they have an initial degree of success.

Of course they have made a huge error in not being ruthless with Wenger but I don't think that is something that is going to affect them negatively when he leaves. As I said, it's a special case.

Getting a new manager probably won't fix all their problems initially. It'll likely take one or two sackings and a squad rebuild. But eventually they will get there. Let's just hope it's not sooner rather than later.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/mar/02/arsenal-players-arsene-wenger-meeting

Wow.....things are pretty bad:

"The speech was delivered by one of the senior players in the Arsenal dressing room but he did not finish it. He was too choked up as he reflected on how such a talented squad had come to resemble a bunch of drifters. He said his children were asking him why Arsenal were so bad. That was the moment when the tears welled in his eyes".

spursfan77 said:

Bellerin looking to jump ship. Probably their most sellable asset

https://amp.theguardian.com/footbal...ge?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true

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He's pace and nothing else. I don't rate him. But maybe he's just been Wengered like a lot of their other players, who knows.

SlotBadger said:

If I could be bothered, I'd dig up a few of their tweets from when we lost 2-0 and they jumped above us in the league. The volume of fans shitting the bed about how "Spurs will forever be in their shadow" etc was vast. Be interesting to see if they've since been deleted.

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Just for you:
http://spurscommunity.co.uk/index.p...g-about-us-17-18.125680/page-619#post-5795580

G01 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/mar/02/arsenal-players-arsene-wenger-meeting

Wow.....things are pretty bad:

"The speech was delivered by one of the senior players in the Arsenal dressing room but he did not finish it. He was too choked up as he reflected on how such a talented squad had come to resemble a bunch of drifters. He said his children were asking him why Arsenal were so bad. That was the moment when the tears welled in his eyes".

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G01 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/mar/02/arsenal-players-arsene-wenger-meeting

Wow.....things are pretty bad:

"The speech was delivered by one of the senior players in the Arsenal dressing room but he did not finish it. He was too choked up as he reflected on how such a talented squad had come to resemble a bunch of drifters. He said his children were asking him why Arsenal were so bad. That was the moment when the tears welled in his eyes".

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Perfect.

Totally forgot that they have to rely on Welbeck against Milan next week

And...I didn't realise that Milan are unbeaten in 13 game

G01 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/mar/02/arsenal-players-arsene-wenger-meeting

Wow.....things are pretty bad:

"The speech was delivered by one of the senior players in the Arsenal dressing room but he did not finish it. He was too choked up as he reflected on how such a talented squad had come to resemble a bunch of drifters. He said his children were asking him why Arsenal were so bad. That was the moment when the tears welled in his eyes".

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In that article the players are bemoaning the fact that they need "more help" from the coaches

Not being funny lads, but are you saying you don't know how to defend?

Pull the other one; some of you are World Cup winners

You just need to knuckle down in training and grow a pair when you step over the white line on a Saturday afternoon

No wonder you're a bunch of no-hopers...

I must be honest and say that while I am loving arsenals predicament, I do empathise with how their fans must feel. We have been worse than they are now for the majority of my spurs supporting life. It sucks real hard when your team are shit!

That being said, listening to their fans telling me that "spurs can never finish above arsenal" got real tiresome over the years. Football is a cyclical thing, it is just our turn at the moment. We should enjoy it but never forget how it feels when times aren't so great!

My dislike for Chelsea is far greater and I would love it if they ceased to exist. I really wouldn't want that to happen to Arsenal. Our rivalry is a huge part of being a spurs fan.

G01 said:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/mar/02/arsenal-players-arsene-wenger-meeting

Wow.....things are pretty bad:

"The speech was delivered by one of the senior players in the Arsenal dressing room but he did not finish it. He was too choked up as he reflected on how such a talented squad had come to resemble a bunch of drifters. He said his children were asking him why Arsenal were so bad. That was the moment when the tears welled in his eyes".

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That can’t be true, surely. None of their players care that much!

WiganSpur said:

Apart from the retention of Wenger I don't see what the board has done wrong? Even so it's not easy to sack someone who's been at the club for 20 years and achieved what he has in his first 10. Yeah they should have done it ages ago but once he's gone I can't see the board being a problem. At the end of the day they aren't the ones who can't perform away from home or in big matches.

They've backed him with big money signings and Wenger still hasn't delivered.

We have to hope that firstly Wenger stays another year. Great in the short term plus ingrains that culture of failure into the club.

Secondly we've got to hope that it takes them a few appointments before they find their Poch who transforms them. All they are lacking is the right manager. If they have the right manager, with the resources Arsenal have they will always be challenging at the top of English football. And they will get that manager eventually.

Whether we like it or not they are and will always be a big club.

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I agree. But what if they got in so much of a state trying to get that right manager that these fans stay away like they did on Thursday. If season tickets aren't renewed then they won't have as much financial might as they currently have. Having said they'll probably, to lend a phrase from West ham, razzle and dazzle em, although how long will that work for?

Hey.... fk 'em

Sure it was mentioned the unnamed player was Mertesacker.

walworthyid said:

I must be honest and say that while I am loving arsenals predicament, I do empathise with how their fans must feel. We have been worse than they are now for the majority of my spurs supporting life. It sucks real hard when your team are shit!

That being said, listening to their fans telling me that "spurs can never finish above arsenal" got real tiresome over the years. Football is a cyclical thing, it is just our turn at the moment. We should enjoy it but never forget how it feels when times aren't so great!

My dislike for Chelsea is far greater and I would love it if they ceased to exist. I really wouldn't want that to happen to Arsenal. Our rivalry is a huge part of being a spurs fan.

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How's your brother taking all this?

walworthyid said:

I must be honest and say that while I am loving arsenals predicament, I do empathise with how their fans must feel. We have been worse than they are now for the majority of my spurs supporting life. It sucks real hard when your team are shit!

That being said, listening to their fans telling me that "spurs can never finish above arsenal" got real tiresome over the years. Football is a cyclical thing, it is just our turn at the moment. We should enjoy it but never forget how it feels when times aren't so great!

My dislike for Chelsea is far greater and I would love it if they ceased to exist. I really wouldn't want that to happen to Arsenal. Our rivalry is a huge part of being a spurs fan.

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How many trophies have they won in the last 5 years? My heart bleeds for them.

SpursDave88 said:

Lack of investment? They spent 100 moo on strikers this season!

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And therein hangs a tale. The problem with the argument that you are making is that the devil is in the detail. Don't get me wrong, I understand your point and would have been making it myself until relatively recently. But then the problem with Wenger became clearer and clearer.

Firstly, the defensive issues that permeate the team have been coming into sharper and sharper focus. Initially, he inherited a solid, British back-line. And his methods, fitness, nutrition, psychology, even improved them. But even then, in his habitually myopic way, he never saw his players being thugs but complained constantly about how physical the English league was, and how his players weren't 'protected by the referees'. Then when he lost that core of a British defensive unit, what did he do? How long had he been a manager in the English league? He must have 'known' the physical requirements. He must have had some idea of what type of defensive unit was required. They were pretty much the second team in England and a huge draw throughout the country, Europe and the World. And, moving into the new stadium, they were set to establish a financial dominance over the likes of us for all of eternity. So, just what exactly did he do about his defensive unit?

He continued to whinge about how physical the English game was. He stated publicly, over and over again, that English players were 'too expensive'. He scabbed R'Sol Campb*ll off us in a dirty, underhand manner, but otherwise, steered well clear of paying the going rate for top level English defenders or defensive midfielders.Instead he bought in a succession of cheap Continental alternatives that never quite managed to evolve into a truly solid defensive unit. It was his choice to do this. But he point blank refused to change his opinion. He thought his team should be protected because English football was too rough and never, ever, reversed that into thinking maybe he should create a team robust enough to deal with the physical side of the English game. I still remember watching his team come out against Stoke at the end of the 00s, and every Stoke player loomed over ever corresponding Arsenal player. It was so obvious how the game was going to pan out, and it did. But it was only a few clubs a season and they were still finishing well up in the league...so it didn't really matter. And Wenger was right after all, wasn't he!?! How could he not be?

And that situation has continued to this crew they have now. And what did he do in the last transfer window, the one where you are quoting his spending? I saw him being interviewed after we overran them at Wembley. He was asked about the link with Johnny Evans (now don't ask me why everyone thinks JE is some kinda universal panacea for clubs with defensive woes). He said, and I quote: "We couldn't afford him." The interviewer pressed the issue and asked why he could afford the players he did buy but not Evans, and he said he bought them first and didn't have enough money left to buy Evans. The interviewer asked him again, why, why would he pay for more attacking midfielders first when everyone could see the team needed strengthening defensively. Eventually, he just admitted the truth - he decided buying a defender just wasn't important enough. All of this is on him. For a long time the Arsenal board have been saying he has money to spend, and he has confirmed that plenty of times. He has had money to spend. I have joked, repeatedly, season after season, that no doubt he would be buying several attacking midfielders to add to the forty seven he already had, but wouldn't shell out on a proper defender or two. Then I realised it wasn't even a joke (well, it is to us ). That is really just what he does. No doubt he still boo hoos inside whenever opponents bully his beautiful side out of the game. But the reality is a team has to be built from the back. It is necessary to cut your jacket to suit your cloth - and the cloth, in this case, is English football.

He's a stubborn arrogant man who can't conceive that he could be wrong, even now that it is clear his methodologies are outdated. As for the trophies argument, when we won the CC they celebrated St Totteringham's days - indicating clearly that league position took priority over the 'minor' trophies. His obstinacy has thrown away a position where they had a team that won the league without defeat, moving into an iconic stadium, with the best youth set-up in the country, and twice the revenues we had. And rather than taking remedial action sooner rather than later, he has blustered his way through season after season, smugly pointing to finishing above us, even if it was only just and dodgy, as though that meant all is well. And now we are above them in the league, and they want to reverse their stance on league position over Cups. They are a club and a fan-base geared up to CL qualification, and for a second successive season they are primed to watch us attain it while they don't. How many more seasons can they cope with this? That is the issue. Their FA Cup triumphs of the last view seasons, while we, starved of success, wouldn't mind them, are ultimately Pyrrhic victories unless they do something drastic now, but their squad is a shambles. And that is the real issue, all of which is on Wenger.