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Originally Posted by Steve French
any other outcome would have been a disgrace but as people on twitter have said, this doenst help us. it helps other teams instead. Im not quite sure what can be done though, one solution could be, that two of his 3 match ban are the following matches, and the final match is the next time that player plays against the team he committed the offence against.
Because in the last 2 years we've barely scraped 4th.Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
Regardless of where you think we should be as a club (and I don't disagree we should be challenging), we were where we were last summer and after two years hanging on to the top 4 by a thread it wasn't realistic to expect a title challenge this year. So far we're exceeding most people's pre-season expectations.
Wenger is maddening at times but from the criticism he gets on here you'd think he doesn't know what the hell he's doing. He's clearly still a very good manager.
We've not been leap-frogged because of a massive collapse, Chelsea have won 10 and drawn 3 of their last 13 league games. City won 11 out of 12 and drew the other before a couple of poor results recently. Pretty much any side is going to struggle to match that.
So far we've done well. A collapse is looking worryingly likely but let's see where we are in May.
pls tell me the last time the ref straight up gave us the victory?Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
No ref gives any team a victory, all teams get some good decisions and some bad decisions. We've had good and bad decisions, it's just people focus on the bad ones (some of which aren't that bad at all).Quote:
Originally Posted by JonasTC
We're not top basically because we've not performed against the better teams, a problem that's been hindering us for quite some time now.
baring the liverpool game and the second penalty, i can't remember a game where we said afterwards, phew we got lucky there. I don't think refs give teams victories, but they can influence a result to a loss or draw. we have been on the end of some shocking decisions this season which have cost us not nesscarily wins, but draws.Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
What are some of the 'shocking' decisions that went against us this season? Stoke penalty, stamp on Giroud and...? There might be decisions which Arsenal fans might feel hard done by, but they are not necessarily 'shocking'. Eg: Penalty for Villa against us at home, red card for chezza against bayern, suarez first pel against us in FA cup.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ollie the Optimist
the offside decisions v city
the handball v city that should have been a penalty
the stonewall penalty on theo against chelsea at home
the ramies (or was it mikel) two footed lunge at arteta v chelsea that should have been a straight red
the refereeing display at the villa match in august
those are just the ones that spring to mind. not all of those decisions would have meant we would have won the game, but suddenly if you reduce chelsea to ten men and give us a penalty. 1-0 v ten men for 65ish minutes?? chances are we might have won.
not only are the decisions i have listed, wrong, they are obviously wrong. id expect a conference ref to give them they were that obvious. but you take city's offside decisions in the match against us, they win so thats 3 points, two games later, newcastle have an equaliser ruled out for offside wrongly. that means decisions have heavily influenced 6 points that they won.
the standard of refereeing on the whole has been shocking this season, so many big decisions are just wrong and the FA don't have the balls to do anything about it. I don't think all the decisions that have gone against us have been the sole reason we have lost/drawn but they don't help. we have had more then our fair share of rough decisions this season
The turning point in the season came when Walcott got injured for 6 months and then Ramsey got injured a few of weeks later yet Wenger still failed to invest in the January window.
At that point we lost the title.
Have you watched every City game front to back? Isn't it simply true that most of the ones that go against them won't end up costing them because of the sheer quality they have and their ability to steam roller teams? It's quite a pedantic task to highlight on a regular basis decisions against a team who often batter their opponents and thus many of those instances won't even get shown. MOTD and other such shows can only be so long and the minutiae only so deep.Quote:
Originally Posted by JonasTC
I would have some sympathy for a statement which cited ref decisions as a factor in the reason we are not top now, somewhere in it......but to just plainly say we are 3rd because of ref decisions is some stretch Jonas.
That is pretty much bias in its purest form.
The Wenger in or out debate needn't be brought into the above debate either, particularly as many people wanted him out before the season even started. Not that I am one of them.....and neither am I now, but let's not make out as if the Wenger out parade has suddenly come to town or formed over night.....even if many its members rear their head on the back of a bad result.
Some of the issues are such that you may still argue they were issues even if we were top. For example, even if we were top of the league right now, I'd still stand by my argument that we need better CF options and that we should have already done much more to address that by now.
I can accept that and agree with it, but effectively are expectations have been lowered by some poor management decisions, my argument which you seem to agree with is that they shouldn't really have been lowered.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
Noone is saying Wenger doesn't know what he's doing, people are questioning his decision making at key points of the season and his lack of a killer instinct at crunch times, again I agree those sides have shown great form, but that was always going to be the case given their managers and their squad, we built up a hefty lead by December and in the end and this inability to perform against the top sides basically led us to losing it.
We've been towards the top of the table numerous times in the last few years, ultimately though the problem that has existed has been this inability to make the most of opportunities to win when the pressure is on and trophies are on the line, it's a mental frailty that at this point doesn't look to have gone and I'd argue that this would ultimately be the most obvious sign of improvement or lack of it.
Im able to see things from both sides's point of view. Ozim makes some good points and so do the likes of Letters and Quinn but ultimately our shortcomings on the pitch are down to the players, bad management, bad tactics and in certain games a mental block.
Apart from the Wenger out aspect - you make some good points here. Its the grinding repetitiveness of what happens season after season that is the issue here. From where I sit - I don't see too many Gooners knee-jerking about Wenger. Many, like you appreciate the sacrifices the club had to make throughout the stadium project, and value the massive amount that Wenger has done for our club (though I do think it's worth remembering what he has received in return over and above the money). The frustration comes from seeing how much more the manager could have achieved from the base he has built over the past few years had he made one or two small adjustments in his approach. And I agree 100% that results such as last weekend's are quite rightly - against the backdrop of what has come before - seen as indications of fundamental flaws in Wenger's teams or tactics, rather than being able to be dismissed as 'one off's.Quote:
Originally Posted by Özil's Panoramic View
Personally, I think calls to sack Wenger - even in the context of all that has gone before - are wide of the mark, and he stays at the end of the season even if we end the season fourth and lose this weekend.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
But I think that some 'truisms' relied on by those who defend Wenger need looking at. The first is the defeatism of bemoaning the billionaire teams - that I've dealt with on the other thread. The second is looking at expectations before the start of the season to assess the position of the team now. Before the season, we:
- Had no idea that Ozil would be signed
- Could not have guessed at Ramsey's improvement
- Would have regarded the prospect of Merts and Kossy staying fit as they have as unrealistic
- Could not have anticipated the importance of Flamini, or that he would join us on a free
- Would have laughed at the idea that Arsenal would be top of the league for a couple of months
- Could not have anticipated how bad Manure would be, or how many soft points Citeh would drop away from home
For me, its as legitimate to look at where we were in December as to look at where we were in August last year. And we could, and should have made a better fist of defending our lead than we have done. Liverpool now have a decent chance of challenging for the title given their form and momentum - their expectations prior to the season would have been lower than our's - particularly given the possibility of losing their star striker. Does that mean that they won't do everything they can to sieze their opportunity? Of course not.
We have choked this season, from a position of strength, as we have choked in so many seasons for the past decade. You say that winning the title should not be the criterion for success this year. Given the length of time Wenger has had to mould his team; our new found financial strength, the teething problems of those teams that have traditionally finished above us, the fact that we had clear water behind us in the Premiership as late as December, and our record in the second half of last season - should we have regarded winning the league as acriteria for success - hell yes!
I'm coming round rapidly to the belief that Wenger has indeed lowered fans' expectations so much that our first reaction is to look at excuses for failure rather than at reasons why we should succeed. And what's more I think that this attitude is becoming ingrained in a number of his players.
http://www.scribbleoneverything.com/...artoon/bam.gifQuote:
Originally Posted by IBK