THE WENGER THREAD

[Chippy]

In today's Grauniad.

Visionaries make the world go forward. Their price is beyond rubies. But to have a visionary in sole charge of your project, without a cautionary voice or a steadying hand available in moments of crisis, is to risk a loss of focus, of direction, of stability. That is how it seems just now at the Emirates Stadium.

Arsène Wenger stood in the technical area on Saturday wearing that long black quilted coat which makes him look like an extra from a German minimalist theatre director's version of The Mikado. As his side fell to defeat at the hands of opponents playing with the kind of momentum and optimism that went missing from his own side long ago, his face betrayed a now familiar mixture of exasperation and anguish, even more eloquent than the Premier League table in telling the story of their season.

A friend who was at the match described the unhappy fans' reluctance to blame a beloved figure. Their wrath was divided between the players, some of whom showed few signs of life, and the board, in particular the chief executive, Ivan Gazidis, whom they blame for an apparent refusal to improve Wenger's squad by investing in top-line international players.

This is not a new complaint, and in the past some of the blame has been directed at Wenger for his apparent disinclination to react to adversity by bringing in mature, experienced and expensive players, preferring to show faith in his conveyor belt of young or inexpensively acquired talent.

But hang on a minute. In the summer of 2011 Wenger responded to a late-season collapse, and to the defections of Cesc Fábregas and Samir Nasri, by buying the 27-year-old Per Mertesacker for £8m, the 29-year-old Mikel Arteta for £10m, the 28-year-old André Santos for £6.8m and the 24-year-old Gervinho for £10.5m. What is that, if not a sizeable investment in maturity and experience?

And it was followed this summer when Robin van Persie's imminent departure prompted the spending of £11m on the 27-year-old Lukas Podolski, £13m on Olivier Giroud, 25, and £15m on Santi Cazorla, another 27-year-old.

Each of those acquisitions, with the exception of André Santos, played a part in Saturday's match, but individually and collectively they were unable to affect the result.

The only possible conclusion is that Wenger has lost the instinct that brought a crop of influential players, most of them French, to Arsenal during his early years, contributing to the FA Cup and league doubles in 1997-98 and 2001-02 and to a third championship for the Invincible side of 2003-04.

Since then there have been too many disappointments on the recruiting front, and surely the most damaging of Wenger's failures is his inability to build a long-term replacement for the famous back four inherited from the George Graham regime, whose active life was prolonged by his fitness theories.

When the end came for them, soon after the turn of the millennium, the acquisition of Sol Campbell and the emergence of Ashley Cole helped the team through a couple of successful seasons. The subsequent undermining of that solid foundation – think of the names Cygan, Senderos, Stepanovs and Squillaci – is a more plausible explanation than the arrival of Roman Abramovich's chequebook on the other side of London for why an eight-year run of finishing first or second in the Premier League turned, in 2005-06, into an unbroken sequence of third and fourth places, with worse in the offing.

It is in such an unflattering light that calls for a major splurge during the January transfer window must be viewed.

The sort of bids that would attract Radamel Falcao from Atlético Madrid or Edinson Cavani from Napoli are almost certainly beyond Arsenal, even assuming that such widely coveted players could be persuaded to sign for a club whose chances of qualifying for next season's Champions League look tenuous. But were Wenger to go shopping for personnel at a slightly lower level, say in the £20m-£25m range, who would now put money on him making the right choices?

Quite naturally, the supporters are cutting him a great deal more slack than most managers would be allowed. But the signs of decline have been evident since David Dein, the vice-chairman who brought him to London, was forced by internal politics to resign five years ago.

Dein's £75m sale of his shares to Alisher Usmanov may have created a fundamental and potentially dangerous schism in the club's ownership, but his departure also removed a source of wise counsel and positive decision-making to which, we now realise, Wenger owed a great deal. And, left to his own devices, the visionary has run out of vision.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog ... CMP=twt_gu

[Top Londoner]

"Arsène Wenger stood in the technical area on Saturday wearing that long black quilted coat which makes him look like an extra from a German minimalist theatre director's version of The Mikado."


ROFL

[Chippy]

Is it just me or has something gone horribly wrong with the ads on the site?

[flash gunner]

The next generation of Arsenal players already have an massive ego, the Barcelona starlet that we snatched has his name on his own fucking trainers! Saw this on his Twatter! The whole mindset of the club is f*cked.

Fucking hell Baba there is stacks of things wrong with Arsenal and you bring this up? You can get trainers personalised from about £100 even the average bloke on the street could probably afford that By all means moan but do it about the right things

http://store.nike.com/gb/en_gb/?l=shop, ... able_Gifts

[SteveO 35]

Seeing that latest Wengerism about swapping places with City (or not as the case might be) reminded me of another of his little gems when asked if a wealthy owner was to hand him £100m to spend. He replied "I would give it back to him"

There's Only One Arsene Wenger

[SteveO 35]

Patrick Barclay again conveniently chose not to mention our start to the season yesterday in the Standard, taking his customary intellectual snob approach by using his column to comment on the format of the European competitions. Amazing how he and the rest of the apologists go into hiding when we lose AGAIN, and yet if get a draw away to one of the big clubs will be back on Monday morning saying how all of us ungrateful bastards were wrong

Even the pathetic defence offered up until recently i.e. "look where we were last season" has fallen away. Errr....yeah, we were 4th after 15 games last season. This year we're fucking TENTH - behind Swansea, Stoke and West Brom.

There is nobody else to blame for standards falling that low - not Gazidis, not Kroenke, not the fourth official or the fixture calendar. I can't stand the owner or the CEO and they have lots of things they can be blamed for, but spending £10m+ on shit like Giroud and Gervinho, and just scraping this group of players into the top half in December, are not at their door. Look at two of the joint top scorers in the Prem - Ba and Michu - to see that a manager using resources wisely can prosper. Fuck me, Kevin Nolan's scored more league goals than any of our clowns.

Separate the two arguments about the owner and the manager - both are killing the club for different reasons, and fixing one does not fix the other.

[northbank123]

SteveO apparently we're 8 points worse off than we were last year at this point. We've also really limped through a CL group in second most likely whereas last year we qualified from a tougher group as winners after 5 games. Last year when we shipped in 8 (EIGHT) against United, couldn't keep a clean sheet and generally couldn't buy a win. And this year when we've signed super quality and got our transfer business done early with no 'special circumstances' in that regard, we're fucking miles worse.

Fear not, when we lift ourselves back up into the top 6 with a dodgy win over City in January then Barclay and co will be out telling us how short-sighted and greedy we are.

[N1Goon]

“People in England don’t understand very well tiredness,”

“They think you can only be tired at the end of the season. But it’s a lack of freshness that I was talking about. It was not deep fatigue. Sometimes, you have a repetition of games with the Champions League. It can happen. But we do not want to complain. The little bit that we were not fresh [against Swansea] was only a part of the explanation.”

[SteveO 35]

SteveO apparently we're 8 points worse off than we were last year at this point. We've also really limped through a CL group in second most likely whereas last year we qualified from a tougher group as winners after 5 games. Last year when we shipped in 8 (EIGHT) against United, couldn't keep a clean sheet and generally couldn't buy a win. And this year when we've signed super quality and got our transfer business done early with no 'special circumstances' in that regard, we're fucking miles worse.

Fear not, when we lift ourselves back up into the top 6 with a dodgy win over City in January then Barclay and co will be out telling us how short-sighted and greedy we are.

That's what I mean (your first sentence) - its nothing like last year. People are saying "oh we were 17th last season", err...yes after a handful of games, but at this stage of the season we had gathered enough momentum to be 4th in the table. This season we are going into a home game with West Brom with the sinking feeling that we could be EIGHT points behind them when the final whistle goes. This really is every bit as bad as 1994/95 - we are sinking and fast. We look like a midtable club even when our first team are out on the field. Last season we looked like a team with lots of new signings, starting to become more cohesive, with a world class striker hitting peak form, albeit still shit at the back.

[DB10GOONER]

There is nobody else to blame for standards falling that low - not Gazidis, not Kroenke, not the fourth official or the fixture calendar. I can't stand the owner or the CEO and they have lots of things they can be blamed for, but spending £10m+ on shit like Giroud and Gervinho, and just scraping this group of players into the top half in December, are not at their door. Look at two of the joint top scorers in the Prem - Ba and Michu - to see that a manager using resources wisely can prosper. Fuck me, Kevin Nolan's scored more league goals than any of our clowns.

We agree on alot of things SteveO but I don't think it's that simple. There is no guarantee that the likes of Ba or Michu would be any more successful in our team than Forehead or Geroud. Different teams play different styles and systems and I don't think you can easily compare like for like...

I think the fact Geroud has managed to score as much as he has so far stands to his having some ability. Our system is a hinderence to him and doesn't play to his strengths. Not saying he will be a top striker for us, but also I think it is way too early to write him off, particularly if a change of system was brought in that played to his strengths. As for Forehead I think we've all seen enough to conclude he just ain't got it.

There are so many qualifying criteria here too, who knows how Michu or Ba would cope with the increased expectation and demands of playing with one of the big clubs, constantly under the media glare. They might thrive on the pressure they might "Jeffers" under it...

I hope Geroud comes good as I do respect his work ethic and guts.

But then again a club of our size should not be relying on a player of his current level somehow "coming good", we should be in the market for the best there is. Similarly, we should have released/sold/sacked your mate Diaby by now as, no matter how talented he is when fully fit, he is hardly ever fully fit. His contribution in real terms year after year has been next to nil. His wage should be thrown at a player that can play 30+ PL games a season. There's no way to sugar coat that SteveO, the great Abu must go, mate.

This mispending and waste of the available funds is where both Wenger and our Board have let us down so badly.

[DB10GOONER]

“People in England don’t understand very well tiredness,”

“They think you can only be tired at the end of the season. But it’s a lack of freshness that I was talking about. It was not deep fatigue. Sometimes, you have a repetition of games with the Champions League. It can happen. But we do not want to complain. The little bit that we were not fresh [against Swansea] was only a part of the explanation.”

It's a shame only we suffer from this "tiredness" and "lack of freshness". It's practically cheating that UEFA don't make the other teams play as often as we have to and... oh, hang on...

[Its Up 4 Grabs Now]

It's a shame only we suffer from this "tiredness" and "lack of freshness". It's practically cheating that UEFA don't make the other teams play as often as we have to and... oh, hang on...

Well yeah but they haven't wasted all that extra petrol driving around with the handbrake on. It's no wonder the tank's empty. It's official, Arsene has made Arsenal the women drivers of the football world.

Give it a week or 2 and we'll be hearing "Overall I believe zat J'eurveenyo has ze desire to parallel park but lacks a little bit spatial awareness. Maybe because he has zat extra yard in his head zat Teddy Sheringcurnt had."

[rodders999]

Do you know what?? After years of hoping and praying we'd actually go and spend some f'n money I'm now gripped with a terrible fear that we actually might go and do it in January. Now let me clarify myself here - it's not that I don't want us to spend, it's just that I don't want him to spend it.

Wenger is toxic. I don't want him to spend (squander) one red penny of any alleged transfer fund until he resigns in May. Leave the cash for the new man coming in - at least there's got to be some chance he may spend it competently. I'd rather give our transfer budget to Liam Ridgwell to wipe his hole with than give it to Wenger.

I wouldn't give that gormless Turnip two quid to head down the shops to buy some milk and a loaf of bread as I know he'd only come back with some magic beans.

WENGER.OUT.NOW.

[flash gunner]

Do you know what?? After years of hoping and praying we'd actually go and spend some f'n money I'm now gripped with a terrible fear that we actually might go and do it in January. Now let me clarify myself here - it's not that I don't want us to spend, it's just that I don't want him to spend it.

Wenger is toxic. I don't want him to spend (squander) one red penny of any alleged transfer fund until he resigns in May. Leave the cash for the new man coming in - at least there's got to be some chance he may spend it competently. I'd rather give our transfer budget to Liam Ridgwell to wipe his hole with than give it to Wenger.

I wouldn't give that gormless Turnip two quid to head down the shops to buy some milk and a loaf of bread as I know he'd hust come back with some magic beans.

WENGER.OUT.NOW.

I feel exactly the same

[p206ab]

There are some rumours that PSG owners want to sack Ancelotti and top 3 replacements are Pep, Mou and Arsene Wenger.
Now we have to pray that PSG loses every match from now on. That's our only hope.
Frenchman in France and if they offer him 8mil he's gone for sure.