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View Poll Results: Does Wenger see out his contract ?

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  • No he walks

    5 17.86%
  • No he's sacked

    7 25.00%
  • Yes and he goes in 2019

    6 21.43%
  • Yes and he stays on after 2019

    10 35.71%
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Thread: Wenger - In or out?

  1. #21
    Member Power n Glory's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie View Post
    The difference between you and me is that I'm prepared to admit it

    Also in case there's any misunderstanding. I'm not for a second saying I argue for the sake of arguing (a claim you've often made). I'm saying far too often I get into an argument with someone I disagree with when it's easier to leave it.
    If I have a strong opinion and there is thought behind what I'm saying, I'll express it and break it down in detail. But it's only on certain platforms, like GW, where the whole purpose is to debate and discuss. It's quite easy to ignore a throwaway comment if it's neither the time or place for a lengthy discussion.

  2. #22
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    I think he'll stay for the remainder of his contract at least. He loves it here, has no life outside Arsenal and has a boss that's given him a free ride.

  3. #23
    Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
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    Quote Originally Posted by Delusions of Grandeur View Post
    If I have a strong opinion and there is thought behind what I'm saying, I'll express it and break it down in detail. But it's only on certain platforms, like GW, where the whole purpose is to debate and discuss. It's quite easy to ignore a throwaway comment if it's neither the time or place for a lengthy discussion.
    I'm only referring to places like this or other social media in fairness.

    The Jamie O'Hara remark wasn't a throwaway comment. The guy made a lengthy argument for it, he was deadly serious it wasn't hyperbole.

    It was necessary in this instance just to walk away from it

    If I challenged or debated everything people say that was either fallacious or I disagreed with. Well suffice to say there aren't enough hours in the day.
    Last edited by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie; 29-08-2017 at 09:58 AM.

  4. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie View Post
    I'm only referring to places like this or other social media in fairness.

    The Jamie O'Hara remark wasn't a throwaway comment. The guy made a lengthy argument for it, he was deadly serious it wasn't hyperbole.

    If I challenged or debated everything people say that was either fallacious or I disagreed with. Well suffice to say there aren't enough hours in the day.
    On the other hand, even Wenger subbed Ramsey off. And this isn't because Ramsey is an inferior player to this O'Hara guy, obviously that notion is pure bullshit but it sounds to me like that's not the argument that was being made. Surely the argument was that anyone would have been better than nobody in the midfield. And on Sunday we had nobody in the midfield. Ramsey and Xhaka were regularly abandoning their posts and exposing the defence. This allowed Liverpool to move the ball up the pitch in seconds and straight into the danger area. The really worrying aspect was not Ramsey's play, although that was worrying enough, but more the length of time it took Wenger to spot and correct the blatantly obvious problem. This feeds into the argument that it really doesn't matter much how good our players are because Wenger's tactics are so deficient. If O'Hara had been pubbing it out in our midfield and did little more than present a barrier to the advancing opposition, well perhaps he might have been more effective than Ramsey was, it's not an argument totally lacking in merit. I'd rather not have O'Hara in our midfield, of course. I'd rather have Ramsey there. Trouble is, Ramsey isn't there nearly enough. His performance was catastrophic on Sunday.
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  5. #25
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    Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
    One word responses. Sometimes the best way to respond, but in this case more instinctive I think, than informed. Because all of us have now surely come to the realisation Wenger is tactically incompetent and couldn't motivate a rock to roll downhill. Does anyone still deny these rather obvious realities?
    I don't think anyone has ever argued that Wenger is either a master tactician or a good motivator.
    But he has other qualities which in the early days more than made up for those failings. He has strengths and weaknesses like any manager does.
    His strengths in the early days were a knowledge of the European and worldwide game which was unparalleled at the time. He brought in players which weren't on any other clubs radars. He had an eye for a bargain too, players with potential
    And he brought in training and fitness methods which were, at the time, revolutionary. It has to be remembered that he came in at a time when there were still "drinking schools" in clubs and players would munch Mars bars and fried food after game. He changed all that.

    You don't have to be much of a tactician when you have a squad as good as ours was in those days, and you don't need to be much of a motivator when you have captains like Adams and then Vieira. Off the field our transfer dealings were helped by Dein who seemed to be a shrewd operator. But now we don't have Dein and we don't have a captain. These days all clubs have a worldwide and sophisticated scouting network, Wenger can't now cherry pick players before other clubs even know about them. And all clubs now have sophisticated training and fitness regimes, most have now surpassed us.

    So it's not that Wenger was once this towering genius and is now a bumbling buffoon. He has strengths and weaknesses like any manager. In the early days those strengths were revolutionary and gave us an edge, we were better technically than other clubs, we had better players, our players were fitter. His weaknesses were more than compensated for by those strengths - although there were hints of them, the failures in Europe with a squad which really should have won the CL. But now other clubs have caught up and overtaken us in those areas so all that is left are the weaknesses. The billionaires coming in, mopping up many of the best players and inflating the market didn't help of course.

    I see Wenger's time with us in 3 stages:

    1) The early days when his revolutionary techniques transformed us and made us, for a time, the best team in the country.
    2) The middle era when other clubs were catching up, the billionaires started poking their nose in and we were going through a complex stadium move - in my view he did reasonably well in that era to keep us relatively competitive.
    3) The last few years in which the money has been available to properly challenge and he is looking lost in an increasingly crazy transfer market. and players now seem to have lost faith in him

    It's not that Wenger has changed, it's that he HASN'T changed in response to the way football has changed around him. He can't change and as PnG (I think it was him) rather astutely said one time, not many people are better at doing their job in their 60s than in their 30s and 40s. To quote The Simpsons, he used to be with it but then they changed what "it" was.

    It has to be remembered that this level of expectation we have comes from his early years with us. Yes, we won titles before Wenger but we never expected to challenge every year. 5th and the FA Cup would have been considered a pretty decent season back in the day, some people on here need to go back and read Fever Pitch to remind themselves what it used to be like. Although "what it used to be like" was football being a sport of course, players being local heroes rather than bought in prima-donna mercenaries who will be off the first time someone waves an even bigger bag of money at them. There have been other changes at the club and in the sport which you can't entirely lay at Wenger's door.

    I've never liked the personal abuse directed at him but when he signed that new contract though he must have known that things would get nasty if we didn't challenge this year so on his head be it. But I don't think the changes he made in his early time with us and that places that took us to should be dismissed or diminished. Never thought I'd see Arsenal do some of the things we did under Wenger in those early years, the Double (twice!), an unbeaten league season and all with a style of football which puts that team up there with any of the great sides in history in my opinion. It's a shame how he's gone from revolutionary to anachronism but I guess that's what happens when you stay still for too long while all around you moves on.

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by AFC Leveller View Post
    I think he'll stay for the remainder of his contract at least. He loves it here, has no life outside Arsenal and has a boss that's given him a free ride.
    I think this all hinges on the hateful Euro League. If that gets off the ground in 2019/20 it will coincide with the end of Wenger's latest contract. I believe Kroenke sees Wenger as a safe pair of hands, financially and in terms of delivering at least a bare minimum on the pitch, until Arsenal achieves a lock-in in this new, hateful league. Then the value of the club will double overnight and Kroenke will have achieved a grotesque return on his investment. Wenger can saunter off with a huge bonus cheque in his pocket and Kroenke can ask Usmanov to think again on his paltry 1.5 billion offer. It seems obvious to me that Wenger's position as Arsenal manager has almost nothing to do with football achievement. How can it? Wenger has shown himself again and again to be incapable and that's not going to change. There must be some other motive in play here. I think it's the oldest one in the book - greed.
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  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
    On the other hand, even Wenger subbed Ramsey off. And this isn't because Ramsey is an inferior player to this O'Hara guy, obviously that notion is pure bullshit but it sounds to me like that's not the argument that was being made.
    This guy is a mate of mine and I can tell you that's precisely what he was Arguing

    To be sure I even asked him what he meant and he said no I'm saying O'Hara is a better player overall.

  8. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by Letters View Post
    I don't think anyone has ever argued that Wenger is either a master tactician or a good motivator.
    But he has other qualities which in the early days more than made up for those failings. He has strengths and weaknesses like any manager does.
    His strengths in the early days were a knowledge of the European and worldwide game which was unparalleled at the time. He brought in players which weren't on any other clubs radars. He had an eye for a bargain too, players with potential
    And he brought in training and fitness methods which were, at the time, revolutionary. It has to be remembered that he came in at a time when there were still "drinking schools" in clubs and players would munch Mars bars and fried food after game. He changed all that.

    You don't have to be much of a tactician when you have a squad as good as ours was in those days, and you don't need to be much of a motivator when you have captains like Adams and then Vieira. Off the field our transfer dealings were helped by Dein who seemed to be a shrewd operator. But now we don't have Dein and we don't have a captain. These days all clubs have a worldwide and sophisticated scouting network, Wenger can't now cherry pick players before other clubs even know about them. And all clubs now have sophisticated training and fitness regimes, most have now surpassed us.

    So it's not that Wenger was once this towering genius and is now a bumbling buffoon. He has strengths and weaknesses like any manager. In the early days those strengths were revolutionary and gave us an edge, we were better technically than other clubs, we had better players, our players were fitter. His weaknesses were more than compensated for by those strengths - although there were hints of them, the failures in Europe with a squad which really should have won the CL. But now other clubs have caught up and overtaken us in those areas so all that is left are the weaknesses. The billionaires coming in, mopping up many of the best players and inflating the market didn't help of course.

    I see Wenger's time with us in 3 stages:

    1) The early days when his revolutionary techniques transformed us and made us, for a time, the best team in the country.
    2) The middle era when other clubs were catching up, the billionaires started poking their nose in and we were going through a complex stadium move - in my view he did reasonably well in that era to keep us relatively competitive.
    3) The last few years in which the money has been available to properly challenge and he is looking lost in an increasingly crazy transfer market. and players now seem to have lost faith in him

    It's not that Wenger has changed, it's that he HASN'T changed in response to the way football has changed around him. He can't change and as PnG (I think it was him) rather astutely said one time, not many people are better at doing their job in their 60s than in their 30s and 40s. To quote The Simpsons, he used to be with it but then they changed what "it" was.

    It has to be remembered that this level of expectation we have comes from his early years with us. Yes, we won titles before Wenger but we never expected to challenge every year. 5th and the FA Cup would have been considered a pretty decent season back in the day, some people on here need to go back and read Fever Pitch to remind themselves what it used to be like. Although "what it used to be like" was football being a sport of course, players being local heroes rather than bought in prima-donna mercenaries who will be off the first time someone waves an even bigger bag of money at them. There have been other changes at the club and in the sport which you can't entirely lay at Wenger's door.

    I've never liked the personal abuse directed at him but when he signed that new contract though he must have known that things would get nasty if we didn't challenge this year so on his head be it. But I don't think the changes he made in his early time with us and that places that took us to should be dismissed or diminished. Never thought I'd see Arsenal do some of the things we did under Wenger in those early years, the Double (twice!), an unbeaten league season and all with a style of football which puts that team up there with any of the great sides in history in my opinion. It's a shame how he's gone from revolutionary to anachronism but I guess that's what happens when you stay still for too long while all around you moves on.
    Hmmmmm. There's a big, big problem with what you are saying here.

    I agree with it.

    This is a strange turn of events and will take some time to digest.

    BUT.

    Wenger was actually viewed as an across the board genius at the time. It was Ferguson versus Wenger and they were viewed as the two giants of the English game. It was implied that Wenger was a great football manager, great enough to not only be mentioned in the same breath as Ferguson but seen as a legitimate equivalent. This is a problem that has come back to haunt us. Nobody questioned Wenger. It was assumed he was a great.

    In fact he was well ahead of Ferguson in some respects, but all of them related to off the field functions. Transfers, Wenger could but for 500k what Ferguson has to spend millions on. Training and conditioning. Wenger at least had the sense to prevent his players getting pissed before a match and insisted they treat their bodies like sportsmen ought to. Hardly revolutionary in terms of sport in general, but a whole new concept for football.

    Wenger was first, and that was the secret. You can't repeat it. You can't be the first to do a specific thing, twice. That doesn't in any way detract from Wenger's achievement in these areas, but management of other areas of the club were just as important, the stuff that happens on the pitch. The very reason the fans turn out to watch. This is where Wenger's legacy will end up shot to pieces. He should have moved upstairs after the 2006 Cup Final win. I mean, look at this man - he's had THREE opportunities to bow out on a high. In 2006 with legendary status. Then twice more recently when it had become obvious he should go but would have taken goodwill with him nonetheless. He keeps passing up his moment of triumph so he can continue to fuck up his legacy. It's bizarre. He has a screw loose somewhere.

    If I had to guess, which is all any of us can do, that stadium finished him off. The focus switched from achievement on the pitch to financial incentives off it. The great players who took care of business on the field of play all faded away, some of the discarded by Wenger with indecent haste. Then we moved into that period where youth development became the goal as finances were diverted elsewhere. And that was the start of the downfall. Wenger has never shown any sustained ability to develop young talent. Project Youth was a disaster. We changed our whole football philosophy, the standard of our game went into slow collapse. The over embellishments of Barca-lite tippy tappy started to haunt every game. We went from being fierce warriors to a soft touch. Tip, tap, tip, tap, 65 passes to walk it into the net whereas, before, it was, bang, bang, bang - their corner to our goal in seconds. Was this the real Wenger philosophy being revealed without the counterbalance of an Adams or Vieira or Henry? Younger, less experienced, inferior players in most cases. Denilson FFS. Meanwhile the board was busy fighting over who owned what and Wenger was just left to it.

    I could go on through the whole recent history but we all know it painfully well.

    This is a story of innovation and revolution that turned into a tale of greed. Greedy men at the top. A manager too greedy to prove himself right when he never had the weapons to do it. And a whole game eventually consumed by greed. In effect, everyone has had their eye off the ball at Arsenal for many years now. Here is the result. Farce, embarrassment, humiliation, and no hope of remedy because none of these people have the first clue how to fix it.
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  9. #29
    ***** Niall_Quinn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie View Post
    This guy is a mate of mine and I can tell you that's precisely what he was Arguing

    To be sure I even asked him what he meant and he said no I'm saying O'Hara is a better player overall.
    Oh okay. Well you have weird friends then.
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  10. #30
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    Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
    On the other hand, even Wenger subbed Ramsey off. And this isn't because Ramsey is an inferior player to this O'Hara guy, obviously that notion is pure bullshit but it sounds to me like that's not the argument that was being made. Surely the argument was that anyone would have been better than nobody in the midfield. And on Sunday we had nobody in the midfield. Ramsey and Xhaka were regularly abandoning their posts and exposing the defence. This allowed Liverpool to move the ball up the pitch in seconds and straight into the danger area. The really worrying aspect was not Ramsey's play, although that was worrying enough, but more the length of time it took Wenger to spot and correct the blatantly obvious problem. This feeds into the argument that it really doesn't matter much how good our players are because Wenger's tactics are so deficient. If O'Hara had been pubbing it out in our midfield and did little more than present a barrier to the advancing opposition, well perhaps he might have been more effective than Ramsey was, it's not an argument totally lacking in merit. I'd rather not have O'Hara in our midfield, of course. I'd rather have Ramsey there. Trouble is, Ramsey isn't there nearly enough. His performance was catastrophic on Sunday.
    That argument makes sense. A central midfielder with half the talent should know that you can’t abandon your post like that.

    This is what I don’t get about some of the players. Surely Ramsey knows that you can’t play that way as a midfielder. He can’t live in bubble. Regardless of Wenger’s tactics, he must know the very basics.

    I was never a fan of Arteta but he arrived as a CM and more attack minded, not a defensive midfielder. From what I recall, it was Arteta that decided to play more reserved role and sit deep because he saw the need and how our players just bombed forward leaving us open. Wenger didn’t tell him to get forward, he embraced it and talked up Arteta’s defensive qualities and accepted that he was more of a DM. Even when Cazorla plays as a CM, he doesn’t bomb forward further than our damn strikers.

    We have some selfish, brain dead players on the squad. Ramsey being one of them. But it doesn’t help when you have a manager that will help him indulge in his reckless play. It can’t just be down to the players to coach themselves, motivate themselves and organise themselves tactically. Not in today’s game and not when we have kids like Ramsey that have been taught the wrong way for far too long.

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