Where has Wenger gone wrong?

[IBK]

It's become obvious that Wenger is - to all real intents and purposes - over. There has been plenty of disappointment, anger and bile about where he has led the club - most stemming, I think from the seemingly endless groundhog days where the same mistakes are played out endlessly - and our drift away from being a competetive team.

Now that the disappointment of Sunday, and the last few weeks is subsiding, however, I am interested in peoples' serious analysis of why things have reached this point under AW. I think that 'he is shit'; 'complacent' or 'cares more about the money than winning trophies' are, on serious reflection, over simplistic and inaccurate summaries of a once great manager. I think even that pointing to lack of funds after building the stadium; not being able to compete with the new powers in English football or deficiencies of individual players do not tell an accurate story.

Instead, being a glutton for Arsenal related punishment and listening to Arsecast Extra on Arseblog today, I think that Andrew and James have nailed it. I think I agree with them that Wenger's problem is that football has simply moved past the era where his methods worked. I don't think the manager is doing anything different or trying any less. I think that the reason is - as most effective explanations are - a simple one. Footballers these days - owing to the way in which they are developed and the sheer attention to detail that they are exposed to both tactically and technically - need constant direction and guidance in how to approach, and play games. The demands of the game; the riches available and the technological advances that have been made mean that every angle, every tiny potential for an edge have been exploited. This means that players' individual abilities are not enough. They need to be put in a position where their abilities are maximised - and this means that coaches and managers must micro manage them - both in terms of the players' own skill sets and the stregths and weaknesses of the opposition. Sure, there are still individuals - usually those experienced players at the very top - who have the vision to do this themselves to an extent - our own Sanchez was an example - but even they do not generally have the ability to manage those around them on the pitch.

Now contrast this reality with Wenger's approach to football management. We don't really know that much for certain about how managers and coaches operate, but what we DO know about wenger is that a) he does not 'micro manage' in this way; b) he does not pay huge attention to the way the opposition sets up and plays; and c) his strenths are not tactical. I am not that convinced that the reason his early teams worked so well was because the players were so much more talented than those he has today. In fact, today's players may be even more gifted technically. I think that it was becuse spotting talent, and then getting players to go out and express themselves on the pitch worked in a different era - where other teams and managers were not so proficient in micro management and tactical awareness and analysis.

We have been debating the strenghts and weaknesses of players on other threads. Mustafi and Xhaka being the most recent. What many of our players have in common is that they operated more effetively in other teams and seem to regress after some time at Arsenal. Other players improve after leaving our team. I think that the reason that our players look naive and clueless, and seemingly unable to correct mistakes made on the pitch is not down to their lack of individual ability - it is because (in common with most other players) they are not getting the assistance and instruction that they need to flourish.

So I am not sure that Wenger necessarily deserves the opprobrium that he is receiving for his (lack of) coaching/managerial skills. I think that his skill set is simply not sufficient to achieve consistent success in today's game. I don't think he has 'gone wrong' in his management. Where he has gone wrong is that the same dogged self belief that saw him as such a successful innovator in his early years has blinded him to the methods necessary to succeed today, and his misplaced 'loyalty' to his club and his contract is now dragging us back.

What are your thoughts?

[Dein-machine]

I agree with most of what you say - none of it is in doubt now as the fraud that Wenger has become is clear to see to the whole footballing world apart from our board of directors.

I disagree with you on the quality of our players. The Invincibles were a team of "footballing" brains, especially as an attacking force where this is most needed. We never replaced the likes of Henry, Bergkamp, Pires & Llundberg in a clever footablling sense. Who do we have now who makes the right decision in the final 3rd of the pitch 70-80% of the time - possibly only Ozil. These guys made the right decisions most of the time. How did we ever think that wide players without a clue what to do when in the final 3rd like Walcott & Chamberlain were ever going to deliver what we had with Pires & Freddy.

In my opinion, Wenger's fall from grace was down to 2 things - Barcelona & Abamovich.
Due to his ego, he wasnt happy with the plaudits that Barca had worldwide for their wonderful football. He tried to emulate this by replacing the power & drive needed in the Premier League ( like what we had with Viera & Petite ) with the likes of Fabregas & Denilson. He bought small defenders who supposedly could pass well but unfortunately were far too weak for the combative premier league. He tried to be Barca but naive to the climate we play in & very naive with the type of player he bought in to do so - we never unfortunately bought anyone with the class of a Messi, Xavi or Iniesta, so it was never going to work.
On top of this, at roughly the same time, Mr Abramovich decided to get of of Russia with his ill gained billions & then subsequently ruin the game of football. The thought of buying your way to glory was something Wenger despised & I totally agree with him but unfortunately, if you want to compete you cannot hide behind the "poor us" story & be content instead to be a top 4 team that returns large profits to your owners.
With all the money they had - they could only have 11 players on the pitch. When you think of the Chelsea legends of these times, you probably come up with Terry, Lampard & Drogba - not really top world class players in my opinion. With the finances we had available we could & should have bought players to compete. The pressure that Abramovich created on other teams meant that they had to find better managers, better players etc - this is where we got left behind because we had a manager still basking in former glories & hell bent of proving that his way was the best way. It certainly is for share holders but not for us fans.

[Cripps]

Do we really need another thread on this? It's been discussed hundreds of times.

[IBK]

Do we really need another thread on this? It's been discussed hundreds of times.

As have most of the things discussed on here.

[HCZ]

This doesn’t really warrant much discussion

It’s a very rare thing a manager can last a long time at a club and be consistently successful. Ferguson was an outlier and a lot of his success was invested in knowing what he didn’t know as well as what he did know, and deferring those things to other people

In many respects I think Wenger used to be the same, he knew he wasn’t a tactical genius, he knew defensive coaching wasn’t his strong suit. He knew he wasn’t a great vociferous leader....so to a degree he delegates to those who were. Whenever there was shouting in the dressing room it was done by Pat Rice or Tony Adams. Or the players were themselves able to lead between each other. It is claimed that Patrick Vieira as captain used to tell Sol Campbell to shout at him and give him both barrels when the defence wasn’t getting enough protection.

And whilst I’m not singling out Fabregas, he was really where it started to go wrong. More because Wenger chased that type of technically gifted passer at the expense of everything else, because he wanted to emulate the Barcelona style.

And that’s why for years we had teams that were good on the ball but couldn’t deal with physical opponents

And now there’s just nothing, no philosophy no nothing. We have a duct taped patchwork team without any style or substance or character.

[Özim]

IMO it was a case of right place, right time for Wenger, his record before he arrived was nothing to ride home about.

When he arrived, he had knowledge of the French market, in a period the golden generation of French players were coming through, so he could cherry pick the best players, couple that with inherting arguably the best defence to ever come out of English football in Dixon, Winterburn, Adams, Keown, Bould and Seaman and one of the best players ever Bergkamp as well as players like Parlour and of course right.

He built a team using his knowledge of French football and those top class players who with drive, hunger and an incredible desire to succeed, yes he did change diets and extend their careers but essentially he inherited those qualities, adding to that players of the class of Overmars (someone people knew was top class). He then set about bringing in a 2nd group of players who very much learnt that winning mentality from the likes of Adams and co, he picked up Campbell on a free which also helped and again used his knowledge of the French market to pick up players such as Lauren and Henry (and of course Pires though his quality was well known as Real were also after him).

His limitations as a manager were always there, but the leaders on the field compensated for those glaring weaknesses, essentially making AW seem a better manager than he was.

It was all going perfectly until he overestimated his own management ability by trying to turn us into a mini Barcelona, at the same time abandoning all the principles that made the team successful, desire, leadership, power, pace, what's worse is the clearout was completed so quickly none of the younger players were able to learn from the experienced players, who could teach them so much, including giving them a drive to succeed.

The rest is history, without the leadership and quality on the field to do his job for him, the collapses began, every season we watched as his teams collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane, yet he continued with his fantasy about building a team from some youth project he was obssessed with, at no point returning to the principles that brought success, luckily for him he had a loyal fanbase which believed he could do no wrong and thought he Arsenal was nothng without him.

In that time he became untouchable and started to believe the hype, in a way the fans created the monster that is Arsenal today with blind support for a guy with clearly limited management ability and that's the truth IMO, he's not changed, it's just that his team don't have the qualities to mask his limitations anymore and he doesn't see that, which is exactly what leads me to think the his successes were more about right place right time than anything else.

[IBK]

I agree with most of what you say - none of it is in doubt now as the fraud that Wenger has become is clear to see to the whole footballing world apart from our board of directors.

I disagree with you on the quality of our players. The Invincibles were a team of "footballing" brains, especially as an attacking force where this is most needed. We never replaced the likes of Henry, Bergkamp, Pires & Llundberg in a clever footablling sense. Who do we have now who makes the right decision in the final 3rd of the pitch 70-80% of the time - possibly only Ozil. These guys made the right decisions most of the time. How did we ever think that wide players without a clue what to do when in the final 3rd like Walcott & Chamberlain were ever going to deliver what we had with Pires & Freddy.

In my opinion, Wenger's fall from grace was down to 2 things - Barcelona & Abamovich.
Due to his ego, he wasnt happy with the plaudits that Barca had worldwide for their wonderful football. He tried to emulate this by replacing the power & drive needed in the Premier League ( like what we had with Viera & Petite ) with the likes of Fabregas & Denilson. He bought small defenders who supposedly could pass well but unfortunately were far too weak for the combative premier league. He tried to be Barca but naive to the climate we play in & very naive with the type of player he bought in to do so - we never unfortunately bought anyone with the class of a Messi, Xavi or Iniesta, so it was never going to work.
On top of this, at roughly the same time, Mr Abramovich decided to get of of Russia with his ill gained billions & then subsequently ruin the game of football. The thought of buying your way to glory was something Wenger despised & I totally agree with him but unfortunately, if you want to compete you cannot hide behind the "poor us" story & be content instead to be a top 4 team that returns large profits to your owners.
With all the money they had - they could only have 11 players on the pitch. When you think of the Chelsea legends of these times, you probably come up with Terry, Lampard & Drogba - not really top world class players in my opinion. With the finances we had available we could & should have bought players to compete. The pressure that Abramovich created on other teams meant that they had to find better managers, better players etc - this is where we got left behind because we had a manager still basking in former glories & hell bent of proving that his way was the best way. It certainly is for share holders but not for us fans.

Re the quality of our players - I get what you say in terms of footballing brains but there are a few points to make here. Pires himself has said that Wenger's current squad are more technically gifted than the one he played in. I agree that they do not seem to have the footballing brains of the Invincibles. And this is the subtle point that I think is getting lost. The likes of Bergkamp, Pires and Ljungberg were all part of a different era when players in general tended to learn responsibility for managing a game on the pitch. Wenger in a sense started the technical, analytical approach to elements of the game, and most of the top managers these days have extended this into detailed tactics and gameplans that leave less room for individual player decisions. I think that generally speaking, all players have lost the ability to manage themselves on the pitch, Not just ours.

Put another way - would the current Citeh team be performing in the same way after a year under Wenger? I think not. They would benefit from what they have been taught by Guardiola - but as I say, we have had many players who have arrived with the benefit of former instruction, then tailed off under Wenger. On the other hand - I think Guardiola or Pochettino would make half our team into genuine top class performers.

IMO you could take any of the top 6 teams, leave them without detailed managerial input and see much the same as we are seeing under Wenger. Sure- there will be exceptions with some of the top players who do have footballing brains and vision. But as we saw with Sanchez this doesn't mean that they can affect the overall decision making of the team.

I do agree that our demise is not a question of money, though. It is our manager being left behind as football moves on.

[IBK]

IMO it was a case of right place, right time for Wenger, his record before he arrived was nothing to ride home about.

When he arrived, he had knowledge of the French market, in a period the golden generation of French players were coming through, so he could cherry pick the best players, couple that with inherting arguably the best defence to ever come out of English football in Dixon, Winterburn, Adams, Keown, Bould and Seaman and one of the best players ever Bergkamp as well as players like Parlour and of course right.

He built a team using his knowledge of French football and those top class players who with drive, hunger and an incredible desire to succeed, yes he did change diets and extend their careers but essentially he inherited those qualities, adding to that players of the class of Overmars (someone people knew was top class). He then set about bringing in a 2nd group of players who very much learnt that winning mentality from the likes of Adams and co, he picked up Campbell on a free which also helped and again used his knowledge of the French market to pick up players such as Lauren and Henry (and of course Pires though his quality was well known as Real were also after him).

His limitations as a manager were always there, but the

leaders on the field

compensated for those glaring weaknesses, essentially making AW seem a better manager than he was.

It was all going perfectly until he overestimated his own management ability by trying to turn us into a mini Barcelona, at the same time abandoning all the principles that made the team successful, desire, leadership, power, pace, what's worse is the clearout was completed so quickly none of the younger players were able to learn from the experienced players, who could teach them so much, including giving them a drive to succeed.

The rest is history, without the leadership and quality on the field to do his job for him, the collapses began, every season we watched as his teams collapsed like a house of cards in a hurricane, yet he continued with his fantasy about building a team from some youth project he was obssessed with, at no point returning to the principles that brought success, luckily for him he had a loyal fanbase which believed he could do no wrong and thought he Arsenal was nothng without him.

In that time he became untouchable and started to believe the hype, in a way the fans created the monster that is Arsenal today with blind support for a guy with clearly limited management ability and that's the truth IMO, he's not changed, it's just that his team don't have the qualities to mask his limitations anymore and he doesn't see that, which is exactly what leads me to think the his successes were more about right place right time than anything else.

Agreed re leaders on the field compensating for AW's 'laissez faire' approach. But are there really any old school leaders at the top of our game these days? Who amongst the top 6 teams is the type of vocal on field general that used to exist? I've come to believe that we could have pretty much any player you like playing for AW and it wouldn't make much difference to the cohesion of our team.

[Marc Overmars]

Agreed re leaders on the field compensating for AW's 'laissez faire' approach. But are there really any old school leaders at the top of our game these days? Who amongst the top 6 teams is the type of vocal on field general that used to exist? I've come to believe that we could have pretty much any player you like playing for AW and it wouldn't make much difference to the cohesion of our team.

No you don’t really get those types anymore. The game has moved on and the player it breeds now is different. They’re overpaid, pampered and frankly completely removed from reality. They need specific coaching, if you just let them play off their own back you’ll never get anywhere because they haven’t been brought up to work for what they’ve got.

[HCZ]

The problem I have and the fear I have is, you see lots of ex players who are now journalists and pundits telling you what’s going on. The laxity, the casual and relaxed atmosphere....yes this is part of Wengers style. But the club that has allowed this will still be there when he’s gone.

We have to hope that we have a self motivated manager will just won’t allow this kind of atmosphere anymore or that the structure being put in place by Gazidis will deal with it

I fear the club is infected with complacency from top to bottom