An urgent plea to Arsene supporters..

[augie]

great post MK
I hope and believe this winter and summer there will be shift in how we do business

Does that equate to the selling of wally walnut and the resigning of henry on loan ?

[northbank123]

Thing is MK Gould he relishes the fact that everything in the club has to be OKd by him. Listen to interviews from players from his early years like TA5 and they quite openly say he doesn't let anybody else do anything. He was hugely in favour of appointing Gazidis, both because they share the same fetish for balance sheets and because he wouldn't impinge upon Wenger's transfer activity (or lack thereof).

It is an achievement to qualify for CL every year. But it's also an achievement not to get relegated at all for 13 years. It doesn't mean it should be the height of our ambitions. Often United fans' criticism of Ferguson (one of the rare occasions I've listened to any) is his record in Europe. And the guy has won the thing twice! Our record is truly abysmal with one final and one semi-final in his reign. Bearing in mind that roughly 24 teams have absolutely no chance of winning the CL each year, that is a disgrace. The semi-final was an absolute embarrassment as we were battered for 180 mins by a team that were then absolutely outclassed in the final, and reaching the final in 2006 with a team that was hardly vintage and (for once in our reign) reliant on ageing players whose best days at the club were behind them or coming to an end (Toure, Lehmann, Campbell, Henry, Bergkamp, Pires, Gilberto). That shows that you don't have to be a great team to reach the latter stages of the CL, ffs we had Eboue and Flamini at full-backs for most of it and beat some big guns along the way.

I wouldn't criticise his recent record too much because we are nowhere near good enough to win the thing full stop and it doesn't make too much difference to me if we get knocked out by Barca in the last 16 or last 8. But we blew it in our best years. 2002 we should have turned over Valencia and 2004 we blew it big time against Chelsea, we beat them 3 times domestically and would have pissed all over Monaco and Porto.

[highburyJD]

I hope we keep Walcott, not sure if thats possible
and I do hope we do get Titi on loan

We need a striker NOW quite apart from when we lose Gervinho and Chamakh
none of our on loan forwards are pulling up any trees, we need bodies

last night we had no striker on the bench, we're over reliant on Giroud
keep Feo, buy one, loan one

[augie]

I hope we keep Walcott, not sure if thats possible
and I do hope we do get Titi on loan

We need a striker NOW quite apart from when we lose Gervinho and Chamakh
none of our on loan forwards are pulling up any trees, we need bodies

last night we had no striker on the bench, we're over reliant on Giroud
keep Feo, buy one, loan one

Have to say that I find the whole "lets sign henry on loan again" to be way beyond the point of embarassing We are supposed to be a big club yet the height of our ambitions seems to be getting a 35 year old on loan rather than buying a quality striker

[highburyJD]

nobody want Titi INSTEAD of a quality striker
we need two extra forwards
with two going away

[MK Gould]

Thing is MK Gould he relishes the fact that everything in the club has to be OKd by him. Listen to interviews from players from his early years like TA5 and they quite openly say he doesn't let anybody else do anything. He was hugely in favour of appointing Gazidis, both because they share the same fetish for balance sheets and because he wouldn't impinge upon Wenger's transfer activity (or lack thereof).

At the end of the day, he is just an employee of the club.... I can understand him wanting everything to be OK'd by him, but it doesn't mean that the club has to go along with that. Our Board are too interested in the value of their investment rather than truly running the club. They have been happy to leave it down to Wenger! And yet the like of Gazidis are paid a fabulous wage for it!!

Wenger may not have lasted 6 months under Abramovitch, but imagine what he would have achieved given the resources they have available.....providing he wasn't responsible for signing the cheque!

[Clash]

Have to say that I find the whole "lets sign henry on loan again" to be way beyond the point of embarassing We are supposed to be a big club yet the height of our ambitions seems to be getting a 35 year old on loan rather than buying a quality striker

Agree completely. If it really was necessary to loan Henry last year then why wasnt something done in the summer to make sure we were not in this position again?

[northbank123]

Thing is MK Gould he relishes the fact that everything in the club has to be OKd by him. Listen to interviews from players from his early years like TA5 and they quite openly say he doesn't let anybody else do anything. He was hugely in favour of appointing Gazidis, both because they share the same fetish for balance sheets and because he wouldn't impinge upon Wenger's transfer activity (or lack thereof).

At the end of the day, he is just an employee of the club.... I can understand him wanting everything to be OK'd by him, but it doesn't mean that the club has to go along with that. Our Board are too interested in the value of their investment rather than truly running the club. They have been happy to leave it down to Wenger! And yet the like of Gazidis are paid a fabulous wage for it!!

Wenger may not have lasted 6 months under Abramovitch, but imagine what he would have achieved given the resources they have available.....providing he wasn't responsible for signing the cheque!

Depends if he would have treated their money like his own too!

I agree wholeheartedly that the board are fucking useless but (although he didn't want to lose Dein) fact is Wenger got his preferred choice of a corporate-only replacement in Gazidis to widen his sphere of influence, it's not as though he's had this extra workload shifted on him against his will. At most clubs you have the situation where the board act as a caveat on the manager's footballing ambition, but here we have a board who thinks football comes second best to business and unfortunately a manager whose approach reflects them.

[highburyJD]

Have to say that I find the whole "lets sign henry on loan again" to be way beyond the point of embarassing We are supposed to be a big club yet the height of our ambitions seems to be getting a 35 year old on loan rather than buying a quality striker

Agree completely. If it really was necessary to loan Henry last year then why wasnt something done in the summer to make sure we were not in this position again?

this is the first and last time we'll have AfricanCupofAfricanNationsplayingAfricanfootball on consecutive years

[Clash]

Have to say that I find the whole "lets sign henry on loan again" to be way beyond the point of embarassing We are supposed to be a big club yet the height of our ambitions seems to be getting a 35 year old on loan rather than buying a quality striker

Agree completely. If it really was necessary to loan Henry last year then why wasnt something done in the summer to make sure we were not in this position again?

this is the first and last time we'll have AfricanCupofAfricanNationsplayingAfricanfootball on consecutive years

Indeed. The club would have known about that well over a year ago, yet they still bought Gervinho and still didnt buy adequately in the summer just gone!

[highburyJD]

maybe they also knew they could get Henry to cover...?

[Clash]

maybe they also knew they could get Henry to cover...?

It wouldnt surprise me.

[Clash]

Wenger may not have lasted 6 months under Abramovitch, but imagine what he would have achieved given the resources they have available.....providing he wasn't responsible for signing the cheque!

Couldn’t that be said for most managers though? Im sure with unlimited resources most of the good ones would do better.

I often ask peope what they think makes Wenger special right now. I’m sure a lot of posters on here could reel off a long list of Wenger’s faults, can they or anyone else do a list as long or longer of his qualities I wonder? Putting bias aside, if the totally honest lists people come up with shows Wengers faults are more than his strengths, how special does that make Wenger?

For me Wenger’s strength was that he was able to allow players freedom to express themselves – there are some managers who stifle their players with their tactics or a system that is too rigid. However, for Wenger’s methods to work he needs players of the highest quality. And they also need to have learnt certain characteristics before they played under him because if they haven’t, they are not gonna learn them from Wenger.

With a team of slightly above average players, I think Wenger himself looks like no more than a slightly above average manager. Whatever strengths he has, he certainly doesn’t possess the ability to makes a team better than the sum of its parts.

The frustration is that every season now it seems that we have a team who do not have the right manager to get the best from them. Or alternatively, we have a manager who doesn’t have the right team to get the best from him. So either we need to buy better quality players, or we need to get in a manager who can get more from the slightly above average players that we buy.

Doing neither should no longer be an option as some signs of progress being made is long overdue.

[MK Gould]

Wenger may not have lasted 6 months under Abramovitch, but imagine what he would have achieved given the resources they have available.....providing he wasn't responsible for signing the cheque!

Couldn’t that be said for most managers though? Im sure with unlimited resources most of the good ones would do better.

I often ask peope what they think makes Wenger special right now. I’m sure a lot of posters on here could reel off a long list of Wenger’s faults, can they or anyone else do a list as long or longer of his qualities I wonder? Putting bias aside, if the totally honest lists people come up with shows Wengers faults are more than his strengths, how special does that make Wenger?

For me Wenger’s strength was that he was able to allow players freedom to express themselves – there are some managers who stifle their players with their tactics or a system that is too rigid. However, for Wenger’s methods to work he needs players of the highest quality. And they also need to have learnt certain characteristics before they played under him because if they haven’t, they are not gonna learn them from Wenger.

With a team of slightly above average players, I think Wenger himself looks like no more than a slightly above average manager. Whatever strengths he has, he certainly doesn’t possess the ability to makes a team better than the sum of its parts.

The frustration is that every season now it seems that we have a team who do not have the right manager to get the best from them. Or alternatively, we have a manager who doesn’t have the right team to get the best from him. So either we need to buy better quality players, or we need to get in a manager who can get more from the slightly above average players that we buy.

Doing neither should no longer be an option as some signs of progress being made is long overdue.

I can't speak from a technical perspective, but Wenger must surely be the most successful Manager in Premier League history if you look at his £spent:trophies won ratio! Especially if you include finishing in the top 4 as a trophy....
!

[highburyJD]

I don't believe there's such a thing as a 'good' manager
just horses for courses, saying Wenger wouldn't be a good manager with rubbish players is meaningless
nobody can be good if they're players are not capable of following their instructions
Prem managers take responsibility for their rosters
but Mancini doesn't have the same problems as Martinez
I would rather work for somebody sympathetic like Wenger
than a bully like Fergie,
Can't see the hairdryer working on a little girls team
by the same token Wenger leaving the prison team to take their own decisions could be a disaster