One positive thing, i thought Martinez did well when he came on
Printable View
One positive thing, i thought Martinez did well when he came on
A.R.T.E.T.AQuote:
Originally Posted by Letters
Arteta is like hiring the football equivalent of Gordon Ramsay's assistant to revive your failing restaurant. At least he will have the swearing down pat
Dude, we were very shit this season before Arteta took over, that’s why Emery was sacked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Chippy
You can argue that Arteta isn’t the right person to turn things around and that is getting harder to argue against, but you can’t blame Arteta for this awful season when he’s been in charge for less than half of it.
Wouldn't really matter who managed the club. The core problems would still be there. The squad has been allowed to go to ruin over many seasons. Sub-standard players who will always fall down when the major challenges arrive. Guaranteed. We've seen it for years, under 3 managers now.
*sigh*Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
but you CAN blame him for all the mistakes I listed elsewhere, about playing the wrong players in the wrong positions
the Auba on the left thing is just the biggest example but there are others
and WHY do people like Ozil and Pepe get cold-shouldered? Ozil would have done a much better job of keeping the ball against Citeh
i'm convinced the reasons is this pathetic 'doesn't work hard in training' bullshit which small-dicked managers like Emery and Arteta obssess about because they know they're incompetent and so have to throw their weight around extra hard to compensate
Ozil has the ability we need but lets not pretend he wasn't rubbish when he was last playing regularly. Which seems like an age ago now.
We will not be able to even start thinking about moving forward as a club with him hemorrhaging us money with no return.
Yes, you can. No dispute there. But my original question was how did we manage to go from a squad which just last season got to the Europa League Final and finished 5th with 70 points - we were only 2 points off 3rd, the top 2 aside we were as good as anyone (or bad as anyone as the top 2 aside no-one looked much good). How did we go from that to the utter shit we are seeing this season? And the answer to that is not "Arteta". He took over a shit show and hasn't turned it into anything much better, admittedly, but he didn't cause this. MO alluded to this above but last season maybe our final position flattered us somewhat. They say the table never lies but if you remember we had that good run of wins at the start of the season and in many of those games we really weren't that good, a lot of those results could have been different. And Auba and Laca bailed us out a lot, Auba has continued to, mostly. Laca not so much.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
I don't think our squad is that good but I don't think it's that bad either. We seem to be significantly less than the sum of our parts.
There are more extreme examples of teams dropping off a cliff the following year, like United in 2014 and Chelsea in 2016, after previously winning the title, it can happen for any number of reasons. Obviously we were never that good to begin with so it stands to reason that we probably hit our ceiling last season and our position now is more reflective of where we are as a team. We were also a distant 6th in Wenger’s last season so there’s more evidence of us being shit than there is any good over a 3 year span.
i think Laca losing the plot has been a big factor but it's only accentuated the folly of not playing the one remaining in-form striker through the middle - it might sound like one small detail but to me it speaks volumes about Emery, then Freddie and now Arteta's ability to see what's going on in front of them and do something about it. It would have been such a quick win for him as manager but he's not done itQuote:
Originally Posted by Letters
as for the wider picture, i've said elsewhere our transfer 'policy' is at least part-run by Raul's agent friends filling their pockets but for all that we are getting some good players - Teirney, Mari looks good and hopefully Saliba - plus Pepe showed on Saturday what he can do given the opportunity
I still think even now Arsenal has the standing, facilities and history to get good players, but every season we underperform it's pushing us further back and that's why Arteta was too big a gamble against getting an Ancelotti or similar
The last para in your post nails it.
This Club was in no position to take a punt on an untested Manager. We needed someone with the proven ability and respect of players to sort this mess out.
At best it is looking like another 2-3 years wasted, by which time we won’t be a draw to any top manager without paying well over the odds. And the longer this goes on, the less able we will be to finance something like that.
I agree our midfield is weak, not everyone will agree but i still think Ozil can play a role but you need a high-class well-organised enforcer in there to counter him roving around.Quote:
Originally Posted by Globalgunner
We've missed Torreira in these two games - Ceballos isn't substantial enough and Guendouzi is a very raw talent, and i can't stand Xhaka and won't be happy until he and Mustafi are gone
i can see it both ways on whether we keep Auba (although i think it's academic as he will surely leave) but in the very short-term, i.e. this season we should be making the best of him - whether he's played through the middle elsewhere or not, are you seriously saying Nketiah or Laca are a better shout than having Saka on the left and Auba in the middle? - that's the point, if Auba's on the left then Saka is not in what seems like his best position
Martinelli should definitely be getting more game time too but I'm not sure how you fit him, Pepe, Auba and Saka in - as you say if Auba goes then that will be solved for next season, i'd be perfectly happy to see Saka, Martinelli and Pepe line up
Auba through the middle is a myth we all seem so obsessed with. In none of his previous teams has he played as a central striker. In Dortmund as well as with Gabon. Besides there are no chains on him. He is a good striker no doubt but he is not a terrier in say the mould of jamie vardy. He wont fight to get goals. Its either perfectly placed for him to score or no dice. Dortmund got on fine without him. We do not play an effective system and we have a really really bad midfield. The centre mids are supposed to provide a bulwark against opposition attacks and generate potent offence. Do you think even this shit team would not be 3 levels better with peak Vieira and Petit?. We can rant and rave as much as we like but this team is structurally deficient. It is easier to coach defenders because the scenarios they have to deal with are more predictable so journeymen as we see in many teams like Sheff Utd and Burnley and the like can defend quite competently. But how are you going to coach competent midfielders who do not have it in their innate being to be both spatially aware and capable of feeding the front strikers.
Our delusion that Auba will save us is grossly misplaced. He is not van Persie, he is not even Alexis Sanchez. He is not that guy. We need badly to ditch our midfield pairing and get players that can do a proper job there. Look at Leicester's midfield. Head and shoulders above ours. Do you think Vardy would be that good with Xhaka and Ozil in his team?. We have the wing play sorted I think and Martinelli can deliver enough in place of Auba. There is absolutely no need to spend 300k to keep him while keeping Xhaka and Ozil to feed him. This is a club now in obvious financial peril. We need to be wiser both on the pitch and off it.
Sorry i had to repost because i didnt want it to seem like a reply to your post with which i mostly agree
You are right, but Ozil is yesterdays news. If we had been strategic and wanted to keep him then we should have got an experienced manager like Ancelotti who may have found a better use for him albeit it was Ancelloti who dumped him at Madrid....because he has no character, no personality. Ozil is Ozil. i dont think anything can change him. He is a player in whose mind has soared above criticism. He wont stress himself in any game
We are a dumpster fire and we hire a kid down the road to put it out. crazy crazy management at the highest level
to my mind if we are going to play Auba central then we either have 5 at the back with overlapping wingbacks or 5 in midfield. Either way both Saka and Tierney must play together and both Bellerin and Pepe. Auba through the middle but i bet you ha and saka will be exchanging position simply because Auba always drifts to the wing
maybe he might, but if that's something which goes back and forth through a match then that could be a good thing to confuse the opposition.Quote:
Originally Posted by Globalgunner
couldn't agree more with those combinations on the left and right, that should always be our starting point - we need Bellerin and Pepe to build an understanding, that hasn't happened yet but they can develop that
Right, but wasn't Emery the more established manager? And last season showed some promise. A Wengeresque collapse at the end and we capitulated in the Europa League final, but overall not a bad season and a base to build on. This season it's all gone to shit and maybe MO is right that last season was the blip but even in Wenger's last season we were nowhere near this hopeless.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xhaka Can’t
Yes we were, in many respects. As soon as a major challenge arrived we would fold, guaranteed. All the danger signs were well established. The increasingly awful football. The chaos at the back. But at least we still had enough to carry off flat track bully status. Now we can't manage that either, but it's more down to the failure to arrest the steady decline. Kroenke is about the only person who can actually change this. He won't.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
Letters completely forgets the comedy in catastrophe that marked Wengers later years. Wengers team would also routinely go through 45 even 90 mins without a shot on target. Would play the same strategy for 90 mins wether we were losing or winning. Enabling the opposition manager to change tactics while we remained static and predictable. This was a team that could NEVER hold on to a goal lead with only 90 seconds left on the clock but would fold like cardboard in the rain.
The bottom line is he saddled us with dumb players like Xhaka and Mustafi, strollers like Ozil. They are still the leadweight holding this team down both on the pitch and in the accounts department.
But I digress. Who in their right mind really thought that Arteta would solve this problem. Ancelotti would have signed on in a 6 month capacity...He did same with Chelsea. we needed experience instead we went full night out in Las Vegas. We bet it all on black....black shiny hair.
I can't agree we were this bad.
We won exactly half our league games that season, so far we have won under a third (30% exactly right now)
We scored goals at a rate of 1.95/game in 2017/18, this year it's been 1.37.
We are even shipping goals at a slightly higher rate this year although that is close.
We have got worse by any metric you pick.
Letters isn't forgetting any of those things. But for all those failings we were never anywhere near this bad under Wenger. Literally never.Quote:
Originally Posted by Globalgunner
We've spent heavily since he left and got worse.
At the time, many fans were saying that if Wenger didn't go, and go quickly, he'd do structural damage that would reduce us to mid-table status. Many other fans laughed at that notion. But it was pretty obvious. Anyone who watched us going from dominating games to barely being able to compete in them, while Wenger sang the praises of mediocre players who were "doing their own thing" and training themselves, could see the writing on the wall that Wenger was oblivious to. And he instilled the culture of second best upwards as well and down, and it was gratefully accepted no doubt.
The virus spread everywhere, infected everything and had the worst effect on the squad who gradually transformed from warriors who fought from the tunnel to the final whistle (and often afterwards), to pigmies who couldn't go five minutes without an injury and were simply brushed aside by more robust opponents. The football fell apart and Wenger encouraged it. "We lacked a little bit sharpness." Code for we were outfought on every level.
That's what Emery inherited and, unfortunately, he wasn't nearly strong enough to whip this spoiled squad into shape. The players ate him up. Now, I suppose, they'll try to do the same with Arteta and the only way he's really going to win this is by putting his foot down and getting rid of half of them. But where will the replacements come from? Wenger sold Stan on sustainability (and probably lost half his arm during the pitch). Wenger's culture of failure is cemented into the club, every player he touched carries the concrete boots of his legacy (or have already run a million miles in the opposite direction). Emery was a big name but not big enough. The biggest flaw with hiring Arteta was the hope the squad would respect a rookie. Plainly they don't. Once the honeymoon was over (2 games was it?) it was a rapid return to the old ways. I reckon Pep or Klopp would struggle here. Players who have lost the will to win? No money from Kroenke?
Wenger lit the fires and watched them burn while he fiddled here and fiddled there. But it'll take a while for the whole thing to burn down. It's burning from the inside out, so it still looks intact from a distance and it might be a few seasons yet before we face our first serious relegation battle. I can't see it going the other way, unless Kroenke can be shifted. Why would he want to go though?
As for spending - it's not spending like you'll see at Liverpool or City, is it? Or Utd. When we spend, the money has to come back from somewhere, or the following season needs to be sacrificed. And even when we do spend, we end up with Pepe. Pepe might be a decent player is a free-flowing, attacking team. But who thought he'd tear it up in a team that plays at 1mph, with back to the opponent's goal and tapping sideways and backwards? Kante was the player we needed, not Pepe. Next time we spend it will be on the back of Auba heading out. And with inflation rampant, what are you going to get for a replacement? We've spent, but we haven't spend well. Which is pretty much the same as under Wenger. There were exceptions, there are exceptions now. But much of the business we have done is inexplicable in a football sense. Not much has changed. Still a shitshow.
Actually, what many fans were saying was that if Wenger stayed we would end up in mid-table under him - never happened, people were saying it for years and we were never a mid-table side under him, not even in his last season which was by far his worst. And many fans also said that he was so incompetent than anyone would come in and we would do better - nope again, after one season where there was a tiny bit of improvement we have crashed and burned.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
This apparently terrible squad Wenger left us with finished 5th last year, a couple of points off 3rd. We were as good (or bad, let's face it, the top 2 aside this is not a good league) as anyone. And we got to the Europa League final. That's what the squad Wenger left us with was capable of. It was a decent platform to build on.
Things went to shit this year, under Emery. Now, it's still largely Wenger's squad of course so fine, he doesn't get off scott free. But even in his last season he got them to finish 6th. How did he do that if he was so awful? And how did Emery get them to finish 5th if the squad is so awful?
You and others were for years were saying that Wenger was so bad that anyone would do better.
You were wrong, you have been proven wrong no matter how much you try and reframe the evidence and retrospectively try and amend your claims.
You know that when a car goes off a cliff you don't die until you hit the bottom? I just explained how Wenger baked failure into every aspect of the club. A club that had been competing right at the top of the game. It takes time to go from hero to zero, doesn't happen overnight. Our players aren't individually terrible. Some of them are, but some are competent enough. But when you have a catastrophic culture, prehistoric methods and a complete inability to recognise developing problems (which were Wenger's chief achievements and attributes in his final years) it's going to make it harder for anyone or everyone to turn things around. So far nobody has been able to repair the damage. Emery came closest until he ran into Wenger's love affair with collapse and capitulation he'd shared with every player. Those players are nowhere near good enough to do it on their own. The last manager was nowhere near strong enough to do it on his own. Arteta is ambitious, eager, probably thinks he can do a job. But I doubt anyone can. Wenger comprehensively Wrecked it from top to bottom. No stone was left untuned. We'll be paying the price for a long time. Look how long Liverpool were in the dark, and Utd before them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
Right. Except...that's not what you were saying when Wenger was here.
Back then it was "he's so incompetent that anyone could do better". Lots of people were saying it was him dragging us down and when he'd left we'd do better.
Now when that has been quite clearly shown to be wrong you're changing your stance.
Which I guess is fine, we have more data now. But be a good chap and admit it.
I remember many saying, I was one of them, the longer he stayed the more likely it would be that we’d pass the tipping point.
And some years before that I was saying if we kept selling off our best players we’d do the same.
Arsenal kept Wenger too long and we sold off far too much talent - and on the cheap.
The result is the shambles of a structure we see now.
Letters will never accept that Wenger was to blame.....and even if he was to blame. He was really wasn't to blame
Except I'm not changing anything. I said Wenger would destroy the club. And he did. We can see the results with our own eyes. I'm not sure why this is even a debate any more.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
I'm not trying to take away his earlier achievements. Some of the high points in my life revolve around his early achievements. I won't swap those and I won't have a word said against Wenger in those days. But he was a one-trick pony and as soon as everyone else copied him (and you get extra credit when everyone else copies you) he had nothing else. It's just a fact. And for a decade, he lived on past reputation while delivering - nothing else. And every fucker bought right into it, especially our board. And so we became the most mediocre club on the planet. A club rich in culture, tradition, and even money - that has zero ambition. Wenger served that up on a plate to the nothings that own this club now. Wenger demanded nothing, everyone delivered nothing. And that became the culture of the club. He thought his vision was enough to overturn the cynicism and cold, calculating methods of his rivals was the right way to proceed. That was foolish. He was routed. I admire his principle, but I hate that spirit he always claimed we possessed. Because we didn't. It was that lack of spirit that killed the whole club. We became victims instead of winners. Everyone cheated us, we were so unlucky, we gloriously failed - but the one thing you could be sure of - we failed. Wenger's legacy. Because he stayed too long.
Was that a deliberately self-contradictory statement? :wacko:Quote:
Originally Posted by Globalgunner
He's predicting what Letters is going to say next.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mac76
Cognitive dissonance :bow:Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
Dude, for someone who is well aware of these psychological effects, you sure are prone to them.
You said loudly and repeatedly that Wenger was so inept that anyone would do better. Every time I told you that you were being ridiculous you doubled down.
And now you're completely changing that to "well of course no-one can do better because of the damage Wenger did, it doesn't matter who our manager is".
:shrug:
As I've said, Wenger doesn't get off scott free for the mess we are seeing right now, but the fact is the squad he left us with finished 5th last season on 70 points and got to the Europa League final. It was a solid enough base to work on and I don't believe for one minute that we'd be this bad this season under Wenger (which doesn't mean I want him back). So Wenger isn't solely to blame either.
I wouldn't say Wenger was a one trick pony but his ideas, once revolutionary, were soon copied and other clubs started doing things better.
The billionaires bowling in was a factor too. Looking back he always had certain tactical weaknesses, but when your squad is better and fitter than the rest you can cope with that. When they're not those failings become all too evident. That said, he did well keeping us in the top 4 when we didn't have much money to spend and I'm pleased he won the FA Cups, he deserved something to mark the latter part of his time with us and I wish he'd gone after the last one rather than staying that extra season. Some people were acting like Wenger was THE problem and as soon as he left all would be well, I never bought that although I did think a different manager would improve things and am baffled by just how bloody awful we are this season, we were never this bad under Wenger and we were much better than this last season.
Wenger no doubt oversaw the start of the decline but since he left it’s all down to the duds we hired off the pitch, the continued poor recruitment and lack of any real strategy being the biggest factors.
Not sure you know what that term means tbf.
What you're trying to do here is defuse the original premise by referring back to something I said in relation to the issue, but not related to the premise. Once the false equivalency is drawn you can then say, look, you were wrong about that latter, so you must be wrong about the former too (even though that doesn't work logically either).
I can go and watch the worst team on the planet (or I used to be able to) and loudly sing, "We're by FAR the greatest team...!" That has not made the team better in any way.
I said literally anyone could do a better job than Wenger. Believe it or not, I had not hired a supercomputer and run all possible permutations and projections prior to making that statement. I think we all secretly knew there might be somebody out there who could do a worse job, like a spud loving arsonist or Gary Neville, for example. So it's a little desperate to be using this benchmark as a last ditch defence for Wenger.
You then say Wenger was 5th, Arteta is 10th and so, Wenger is better than Arteta. Simple.
I wonder, if a hopelessly inexperienced Arteta could have done any worse than Wenger in those last few years? The residue talent of the declining squad could have propped Arteta up, as it propped Wenger, maybe. Maybe Arteta wouldn't have been so complacent with the defence. Impossible to say. Just as we can only predict what it would be like if Wenger had been appointed now, to rejuvenate a club in decline. For me, Wenger did far more harm than he ever did good in his last years. Deep damage that will have a long knock-on effect. If you'd put a complete rookie in his place at the time, could that rookie have done even more damage? I say that's open for legitimate debate.
That's why I said, at the time, we should have stuck with Emery. I think it will take several years for any one manager to genuinely repair and reverse Wenger's legacy. I didn't think Emery was all that, didn't think so when he was hired. But I knew he had a hell of a job on his hands, thanks to Wenger's negligence. In the end Emery couldn't change anything much so it's back to the starting line with Arteta. He'll have to be given at least 3 years, maybe more, to clear out the squad and build a new one, untouched by Wenger, that has the required character to compete at this level. He probably won't get those 3 years. I can already see fans suggesting he should be gone so a magician can be brought in to magic away Wenger's mess.
Such a lazy tactic, you do this sort of thing so often. If you haven't read Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed then I'd recommend it, he talks about Cognitive Dissonance at length.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
The original premise was the claim that anyone would be better than Wenger. Couple of quotes:
"We know we aren't hiring Allardyce or anyone from that bunch - although they would do a much better job than Wenger, btw"
"Mark Hughes would be an improvement on Wenger, so if we ended up with a manager like Tuchel that would leaping fifty levels up from the rancid shit bastard we have in charge of wrecking the place right now."
No, I didn't say that. I simply said that we are now doing demonstrably worse than under Wenger. Ergo, the original premise was incorrect.Quote:
You then say Wenger was 5th, Arteta is 10th and so, Wenger is better than Arteta. Simple.
I'm not blaming Arteta for that as he's only just walked in the door, relatively speaking. Neither am I absolving Wenger of blame as this is still largely his squad.
But the squad he left us with did OK last year, it was an improvement on Wenger's last season. Something to build on. It's all gone on to shit this season.
Some people on here were acting like it was Wenger dragging us down - not playing the right team, playing people out of position and so on, poor tactics, not motivating the players, etc. I didn't entirely disagree, he was doing some of those things. So it followed that a new manager would improve things. Another quote:
"my solution to the problem is to sack him now, today. And get absolutely anyone in for the remainder of the season. It would energise the whole club and add a whole new dimension to the European challenge. I believe it would energise the squad too."
But that hasn't happened. We can't know how Arteta would have done had he been in charge for Wenger's last few seasons. Neither can we know how we'd be doing now if Wenger was in charge. My gut feel is not this badly, but it's impossible to know. The only evidence for thinking it would have been this bad is the last few seasons under Wenger. The points in each season were:
75, 71, 75, 63
Big drop in that last season and Wenger's worst season by a distance. So you could extrapolate. But it's hard to argue that it was start of a terminal decline when Emery got 70 in his first season, comparable with the previous 3 seasons before Wenger's last. It's only this year that the wheels have really fallen off in a way which they never did under Wenger.
Before Wenger left people were claiming that he was so inept that anyone would do better.
Now that has shown to be false the claim is that no-one could have done better because of the damage Wenger did.
You can't have it both ways :shrug:
Auba needs to be benched, bring Martinelli in.
The guy clearly looks as if he is off at the end of the season and if he hasn't signed a new deal by now, then he should not be playing.
It's time we toughened up as a club instead of just talking about it.
Other than that, subs were shit, team was spineless, Arteta looks clueless.
Football is back - yay.
LOL :haha:Quote:
The original premise was the claim that anyone would be better than Wenger.
That's what YOU inserted to distract from the actual discussion. I wasn't originally talking about anyone being better than Wenger, I was talking about the fundamental damage he did that has left the club in the shit it finds itself in today. YOU interjected with what you now claim to be the premise. Such a lazy tactic, you do this sort of thing so often.
You might want to tell that to the quotes from your posts...Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
Btw, I'll stand right behind that Allardyce quote. If we'd have sacked Wenger 5 years earlier and hired Allardyce, I have no doubt the squad would be a lot closer to a coherent, competitive team than it currently is. Same with Hughes, or Coyle or any of the joke suggestions. None of them are good enough for the top level, but at least they aren't blind to the fundamentals as Wenger ended up being.
Why do you still keep bringing this up?Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
I get your point, but it's over and done with and we are where we are.
Literally, no-one else cares about this except for you.
It's quite bizarre, like an incessant infatuation kind of thing:shrug:
Which quotes, the ones from years ago that you have used to avoid the point I was actually making?Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
"I said Wenger would destroy the club. And he did. We can see the results with our own eyes."
And he did. And I blame Emery for not being able to do anything about it, and unless Arteta can somehow find a way then I'll blame him for failing too. But the CAUSE of the massive decline is Wenger, the man who changed our game entirely, made our defence on ongoing joke, let the quality of the squad slip into the gutter and refused to change as the humiliating blows from serious clubs rained down one after the other. Emery and Arteta haven't come close to making such a show of themselves.