Farce Reaction: Arsenal 1-2 (2-2) Olympiakos

[Letters]

Wenger took us backwards. That’s a fact. He took us from a position of relative strength, finishing 2nd to Leicester that season which was a sackable offence in itself.

He failed to sufficiently strengthen the squad after that.

That aside, despite our horrendous collapse at the end of last season and our embarrassing showing in the Europa Cup Final, Emery outperformed Wenger’s last season. Yes he messed up this season and yes he was rightly sacked, but I certainly don’t long for Wenger. He refused to strengthen the team / squad amongst a number of other issues!

I don't disagree with any of that and I was cautiously optimistic after Emery's first season, seemed liked a fairly reasonable starting point to build on. There was some improvement from the previous one. But this year it's all gone to shit and you can't sensibly blame the dude who was 2 managers ago and hasn't been manager for 2 years.
Well, apparently you can, but you shouldn't.

But anyway, Arteta can clearly see where the problems are. Whether he can do anything about them...well, we'll have to see.

[Letters]

Let me be stupid please.

I wouldn't know how to stop you

Now shall we both behave now?

[dostoy]

I wouldn't know how to stop you

Now shall we both behave now?

I am behaving, you're just very touchy and easy to wind up.

Name calling is for children.

[Globalgunner]

Good thing about children is that they eventually grow up

[dazthegooner]

No we don't

[Letters]

No we don't

Stop being so childish, poo poo pants

[dazthegooner]

Telling my mum now you'll be sowwy

[GP]

Telling my mum now you'll be sowwy

Don't worry about it, I'll tell her later.

[Coney]

I think the turning point was reneging on the Ashley Cole deal, since then we got rid of our invincible team far too quickly.

Sort of - the Ashley Cole saga was a clear case of the board trying to limit David Dein who was arranging the Cole deal and they stopped him. (I remember Wenger saying how silly it was to lose a player over £5000 - then he said nothing more when he realised he had given away the fact that the board had interfered.)

I think the problems with/for Wenger and the club stemmed from 2 things - firstly the loss of David Dein and secondly the desire to build a new stadium and pay it off quickly at the expense of being able to afford top players for a few years.

Dein was the man who got us a lot of players that Wenger would not have bought. When Wenger would think a player good but too expensive, Dein would do a deal and get him anyway.

The years paying off the stadium meant not buying the players we needed to keep the quality squad we had. Wenger still did well with what we had - for years we were still in the top four - even second once - and that without the extra players that would have tipped the balance enough for a PL title. (I am still annoyed by the £40,000,001 offer we made to Liverpool for Suarez. Should have been £50,000,000 and get him as that might have given us the points to nick the title that year and would have been well worth the money).

I think that what then happened is a stagnation - a drop in expectation - so that when we did eventually pay off the stadium and start to spend again, the momentum was gone. Wenger needed to go, NOT because he was crap but because sometimes you just need a fresh start and you need to change the leader to make it happen.

Of course, the other thing is that with the loadsamoney owners of other clubs, the prices of players have gone insane. When Wenger started the new stadium idea to get more money in for the long term, the size of the future costs could not have been forseen.

So while I agree that Wenger should have gone a year or two earlier than he did, it was not because I think he was a bad manager, rather that his longer term plan was overtaken by big money ruining the game.

Blame the board, Sky, rich bastards. But not Wenger.

[Mac76]

Interesting point made on the aresblog podcast about how unfair it is that the away goals rule favours the away side in the second leg - basically olympiacos got 120 mins to score away goals but we only had 90.

The rule should either cease after 90 mins or they should just scrap it altogether.