West Ham away (PL) Match Reaction Thread

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Originally Posted by Letters

OK, then people should stop raising it as an issue then. I only started looking at the details because it was raised.

Yes, the bigger picture is we're not challenging. But surely the only way the debate can go from there is why aren't we? So then you can start looking at things like whether we drop too many points from winning positions or don't come back often enough from losing ones.

And yes yes, it all comes down to Wenger's a senile old goat and :blah:
But if you just want to reduce the debate to that then there IS nothing left to debate. So shall I just close this part of the forum till Wenger leaves?

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To be fair yes there are plenty of grey areas, but frankly you are not going to get much support if you are trying to defend this season.

To suggest we can take more positives from the game against West Ham than Dortmund fans can take from the Liverpool game is delusional. We had to win every game and even then we'd have come up short but maybe just maybe we could argue that we kept the title race going as long as it was in our power so to do, so in that context the difference between a draw and a defeat is virtually non existent. I'm sure it was a good game, any game with lots of goals in it is a good game...Crystal Palace drawing 3-3 with Liverpool was also a great game but it was also an unmitigated disaster for Liverpool in that it snuffed out any lingering title hope.

It is ridiculous to accuse fans of being negative for holding any other view that after being 2-0 up there are no positive, and it does sound almost that you are being a contrarian partly out of a sense of stubbornness and partly because you want this place to be what it say on the tin.

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Originally Posted by selassie

Good players, of course they are CL level players but what about other areas of the squad or are you going to just ignore them like Wenger does?

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I'm not ignoring them, I was responding to your comment how we're not in the market for CL level players.

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Originally Posted by selassie

Good players, of course they are CL level players but what about other areas of the squad or are you going to just ignore them like Wenger does?

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Again the squad is better than the team 13 points in front of us, it could of course be improved but it's more that it hasn't been utilised to get the best out of it.

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Originally Posted by Letters

OK, then people should stop raising it as an issue then. I only started looking at the details because it was raised.

Yes, the bigger picture is we're not challenging. But surely the only way the debate can go from there is why aren't we? So then you can start looking at things like whether we drop too many points from winning positions or don't come back often enough from losing ones.

And yes yes, it all comes down to Wenger's a senile old goat and :blah:
But if you just want to reduce the debate to that then there IS nothing left to debate. So shall I just close this part of the forum till Wenger leaves?

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It would help if you'd pay attention to a whole post instead of selecting parts you want to debate...hence you focusing on meaningless games we've lost the lead on. You raised your own point and then want to debate it with others but ignore everything else.

Also Letters I don't think Wenger is a shit manager because I don't think a shit manager would have got us consistently in the top four. But not being a shit manager is not the same as being a manager capable of delivering, and there is no grey area in that respect.
And the other users here are pointing out that in the last ten years they think there are enough examples to prove that self evidently Wenger was incapable of taking us on, regardless of the funds or not.

Would a lot of managers have kept us in the top four, no and that level of consistency is commendable and for that despite Wengers shortcomings it probably was fair to keep him on whilst things were tight, but the fact is no one is surprised he couldn't cut it when the money was available.

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Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie

To be fair yes there are plenty of grey areas, but frankly you are not going to get much support if you are trying to defend this season.

To suggest we can take more positives from the game against West Ham than Dortmund fans can take from the Liverpool game is delusional. We had to win every game and even then we'd have come up short but maybe just maybe we could argue that we kept the title race going as long as it was in our power so to do, so in that context the difference between a draw and a defeat is virtually non existent. I'm sure it was a good game, any game with lots of goals in it is a good game...Crystal Palace drawing 3-3 with Liverpool was also a great game but it was also an unmitigated disaster for Liverpool in that it snuffed out any lingering title hope.

It is ridiculous to accuse fans of being negative for holding any other view that after being 2-0 up there are no positive, and it does sound almost that you are being a contrarian partly out of a sense of stubbornness and partly because you want this place to be what it say on the tin.

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I think Letters fails even to see the positives correctly. :lol: The result isn’t a positive and not in a game where it’s a must win. If we’re going to take anything positive away from that game, it would have to be the first 40 odd minutes of the game and Iwobi especially.

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Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie

To be fair yes there are plenty of grey areas, but frankly you are not going to get much support if you are trying to defend this season.

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I've noticed that :d

Although, to be fair, I'm not defending this season. I've said I'd judge Wenger at the end of the season and we're close enough now to see he's not pushed us on and so should go.
There's a lot of emotion in football and it clouds judgement. If you're 2-0 down and you battle back and get a last minute equalizer you go home buzzing, if you're 2-0 up and concede a last minute equalizer then you go home fuming.
Same result, very different feeling.
Similarly, people are only saying there is nothing positive about the result because of the general negative feeling and how the season has gone.
Even if we'd won every game we wouldn't have been champions IMO, a point away vs West Ham is decent enough with how they've been this season, and having collapsed to 3-2 we did at least get a point.
In happier times I don't think it would have been seen so overwhelmingly negatively.

Positives:
West Ham are a good side, a point there is a pretty decent result.
We were 3-2 down and managed to rescue a point.

Negatives:
We were 2-0 up and thus should have won.
In the context of the season, keeping our (faint) hopes of the title and (realistic) hopes of catching Spurs, we needed a win.

I'd say the negatives outweigh the positives, but that doesn't mean there aren't some shades of grey or the negatives don't exist.

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

It would help if you'd pay attention to a whole post instead of selecting parts you want to debate...hence you focusing on meaningless games we've lost the lead on. You raised your own point and then want to debate it with others but ignore everything else.

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Although interestingly you have quoted my whole post and then ignored pretty much all of it :lol:

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Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie

Also Letters I don't think Wenger is a shit manager because I don't think a shit manager would have got us consistently in the top four. But not being a shit manager is not the same as being a manager capable of delivering, and there is no grey area in that respect.
And the other users here are pointing out that in the last ten years they think there are enough examples to prove that self evidently Wenger was incapable of taking us on, regardless of the funds or not.

Would a lot of managers have kept us in the top four, no and that level of consistency is commendable and for that despite Wengers shortcomings it probably was fair to keep him on whilst things were tight, but the fact is no one is surprised he couldn't cut it when the money was available.

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That's pretty much my position too. My issue with some posters is the level of vitriol they spout indicates they think he is a shit manager and has done nothing positive over the last 10 years which is patently balls.

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Originally Posted by Letters

I'm not ignoring them, I was responding to your comment how we're not in the market for CL level players.

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Broadly speaking we're not, we weren't in the market for anybody last summer! :lol:

The point I was trying to make is that finishing in CL places is irrelevant with Wenger in charge and I'll stand by that point.