From David :playing with rubbish
I played football for 25 years and managed a little bit as well at amateur level.
One of the things that would really demoralise me on the pitch was when the manager picked a player who was either not good enough or chose someone who seemed to be a favourite, as opposed to a player we preferred to play with.
Step up the likes of Gervinho and Santos. For players like Wilshere, Podolski, Arteta and Cazorla, playing with those two clowns must effect their motivation and raise the odd doubt about Wenger and his judgement.
Arteta played with proper strikers at Everton and Wilshere had Van Persie in front of him. He returns and he has Gervinho!
That is not just a change in personnel, that is a huge drop in class and must be very demoralising.
I get the sense that there are players in this team who will try to be professional but I am not sure they are blindly following Wenger, as they might have done in the past.
Wenger has brought in a few older more experienced players, who have not been brainwashed at Colney and have experienced other coaches and other ways of working.
They won’t just follow and listen to all the spin, they know better and I think we are starting to see that on the pitch.
In the past it was a step up to come to Arsenal and work with the legendary Wenger but I think for some in the past few years it might have surprised them that it is turning out to be a step down. The compensation being higher wages.
I have lost count of the number of players at Arsenal who seem to be worse now than when they arrived. Wenger used to polish rough diamonds into gems, now he seems to have lost that touch.
It feels like the end of an era, where the great spin-doctor is losing his other powers, so all he is left with is spin and everyone is seeing through it.
Myles says :
Thanks, David, for comments more perceptive than any I can make this morning.