From Ali Smith :
While I am of the opinion that Wenger should go, why do people keep generalising his last decade as total failure?
Eight years ago the team reached the Champions League final.
With a makeshift defence and team void in confidence in the league. The performances at Real Madrid and Juventus were very mature and demonstrated that Wenger was able to play the pragmatic man. He was unlucky in Paris, thirteen minutes away from winning the trophy.
So he regrouped and Arsenal put in a respectable title challenge two seasons later. Sure, they faltered when push came to shove, but it was a joy to watch the team in full flow. The game where Arsenal’s title dreams evaporated, against United was symbolic not only because they got thrashed there in the cup. Ferguson’s reaction at the final whistle — hopping with his arms stretched said it all. He felt that was a big hurdle and made the effort to console Wenger for the part Arsenal played over the campaign.
Fast forward a year later in the Champions League semi-final and Ferguson’s reaction showed less enthusiasm. He acted professional. By contrast Wenger was dumbfounded. Two cup exits in the space of a short period, and the competitive bite had gone. The big game losing mentality started.
Since then, we have had good performances against big teams go unrewarded because of silly mistakes.
The same mistakes that creep up every 10-20 matches, never addressed. Berbatov’s goal last Tuesday was very similar to say, Rooney’s at the Emirates years ago.
Wenger has had five good years to work on the counterattacking susceptibility but has done nowt. Because he thinks the players should work it out like a crossword. Silly!!
His previous teams were effective because Vieira, Pires, Henry, Campbell, et al were not naive. They were outspoken and could fight for themselves.
Wenger doesn’t need brutes with muscles, he needs clever runners. But there aren’t intelligent players around, so you need to work more in the training ground.
You cannot buy pressing, making defensive clearances and you can’t find timely tackles on your Optawotsit, you work at it in training. You drill, drill and keep drilling until they can do it in their sleep.
Effort for the latter is made when the team go on their annual slump, but even then Dear Leader comes out with tosh like “there is no problems” and “I’ve managed a zillion games, how dare you question me?” and PravdaArsenal.com censoring serious questions.
There’s nothing wrong in principle with Wenger’s “philosophy”, you see fluent football and when they play well it’s a joy to watch. The problem is when confidence is low — do they have enough character and hunger to turn it around? No because they don’t learn lessons.
Arsenal will finish fourth because that’s what they do.
Anything less and Dear Leader will be questioned. And he doesn’t like that, so he’ll continue to do the bare minimum.
I’m not even of the opinion that Wenger’s a terrible manager, rather a good manager with too many fingers in the Arsenal pie.
Myles says:
It’s a big business where his bare minimum fills the stadium, at a time when Sky’s billions have made English football a gigantic global entertainment.
Yes, he does too many jobs, it’s true. One of his jobs was to interview the Chief Executive who would be working under him and who now earns £2m compared to Wenger’s £11m.
The incomparable spin-doctor now spends even more time and energy on Nu Labour-style rebuttals.
Scholes says Ozil is lazy. Then Wenger says Scholes is wrong. Etc etc etc.
He controls the agenda so cleverly.
But I usually ignore all such irrelevant tomfoolery.
I judge a manager by his team and whether his team improves, whether it learns lessons, as you say.