Originally Posted by
IBK
I think you've got me wrong. By focussing on Wenger, I am not excusing the board. At all. I don't happen to think that Wenger leaving will be a panacea for the club's ill's - because I simply don't trust the board or an owner who doesn't give a fuck about anything but increasing his balance sheet to a) make the right appointment as his successor, and b) provide him with the support he needs to bring the club to greatness. The 2 main driving forces behind the club - Danny Fizman and David Dein (whom I am describing as a driving force, not a saint), have gone, and what we are left with are toothless old men; a CEO puppet and a dyed in the wool corporate emperor who shouldn't have come anywhere near our club.
Its a nightmare.
But its a nightmare to which Wenger has contributed more than anyone else. He has clearly bought into the corporate imperative that now governs our club - I suspect as much because it cements his indespensibility to, and power over the club - because no other manager could deliver year on year profits in the manner that he has done.
And on the football side, Wenger has created a one man empire. A situation where he can indulge all of his schemes; fail to heed the most obvious of warning signs; peddle a methodology that is increasingly out of touch with the modern game and breed the current; anaemic; gutless bunch of prima donna's that stink up the pitch every other game. I don't blame Wenger principally for not winning silverware for so long. I blame him most of all for taking the resources that the club has, and spunking them up the wall on mediocre overpaid punts - while allowing his crown jewels to be sold year on year. The having teh audacity to blame the team's decline on the money coming into the game when we have the second highest revenues of any English club, and the fourth highest wage bill.
While this might coincide ideally with the aims of the money men to whom our club is beholden, the idea that AW does not direct, or at the very worst collude with this is utterly fanciful.