Does Wenger get to see out his contract until 2019 or does he walk or get sacked?
No he walks before 2019
No he's sacked before 2019
Yes but he calls it a day in 2019
Yes and he extends his contract past 2019
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Does Wenger get to see out his contract until 2019 or does he walk or get sacked?
No he walks before 2019
No he's sacked before 2019
Yes but he calls it a day in 2019
Yes and he extends his contract past 2019
It's pretty clear he doesn't give two shits about the fans anymore despite some of his comments yesterday.
He'll see out his contract at least and honestly, and this is depressing thinking about, if we somehow manage to scrape top 4 or CL football courtesy of winning the Europa Cup, he'll be offered a new contract by Kroenke which he'll accept.
If Ozil and Ox leave I think Wenger will become a top top top manager. It has been mostly those two players causing all the problems.
We all know he stays. The time to go was after the Cup final. In 2014.
If the transfer window shut before the season started we'd have far fewer problems. Consider the fact we've had 10 poor seasons and in each of those seasons, without exception (and I can provide the proof), the transfer window shut AFTER the season started. 10 seasons in a row? That's way beyond the bounds of coincidence.
I'll judge him at the end of the contract.
Pound for pound one of the worst managers Arsenal has ever had, with everything considered he's turned us into a horrible small time club with no ambition, who don't care about the fans at all, only care about money and seemingly are all talk.
He's destroyed this club for me, yes you can look back at the successes but look at the club now, would anyone have really wished for a club like this, I certainly wouldn't, he's a walking disaster as manager.
He should be sacked (and would have been at any other big club) so I chose that, but the reality is he'll stay on for as long as he wants to, pretty sad that a manager can become bigger than the club.
Kroenke is the real villain here. Any owner that gave a hoot would have sacked Wenger long ago.
"He does what he wants, he's Arsene Wenger he does what he wants"
He would have been sacked at any of the other top 4 or 5 clubs for his gross mismanagement over the past what 5 or 6 seasons and that is me being kind.
What he is doing now is damaging yet he is still here with a shiny new contract and a pay rise.
What levels do we need to sink to for this man to be accountable for the mess he has created?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha haQuote:
Originally Posted by Özim
At this moment in time, he's without a doubt the worst manager in Arsenal's history. It's inconceivable that any other manager from our past could have fucked things up this badly. This is the developing question, isn't it. When Wenger's achievements are set against his growing list of catastrophes, how will he be remembered? At this moment he should be thanking his lucky stars for characters like Adams, Vieira, Bergkamp, Henry, Gilberto... Players that all managed to overcome the Wenger deficit.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
Personally I'm becoming deeply suspicious about Wenger's "successes" and wondering just how much input he had beyond the advantages he brought here in the early years which he couldn't maintain. And you can say I'm pissing on his legacy. Maybe true. But it's a trickle of piss compared to the deluge Wenger is pissing all over himself.
Revisionism. :coffee:Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
One of my biggest flaws as a person is an inability to not have an argument, the need to get into a debate for hours on end.
Because otherwise I run the risk of the other person thinking I don't have a case.
Ultimately stupid because other people will think that anyway just as I often think the same of them
Today I'm not going to take the bait. It's too nice outside.
What he saidQuote:
Originally Posted by Delusions of Grandeur
One word responses. Sometimes the best way to respond, but in this case more instinctive I think, than informed. Because all of us have now surely come to the realisation Wenger is tactically incompetent and couldn't motivate a rock to roll downhill. Does anyone still deny these rather obvious realities?
My thoughts are now that Wenger brought an off the field revolution and an early advantage in the developing European transfer market, but brought almost nothing in terms of on-field management. That was all left to the players. This is what the sustained evidence is starting to support.
What if Wenger getting involved with on-field considerations was the catalyst for the steady decline?
I don't think a one word protection racket is going to shield Wenger's legacy for much longer. In Wengerland every river is the Rubicon but fans are starting to get their feet wet on a regular basis. He's not a man that enjoys being questioned but now it is time to question everything about this guy. He is destroying our club, after all.
I’m only messing around when I say ‘revisionism’. I’ve argued similar to what you’re saying and been accused of revisionism. He’s never been a great tactician and the standard of players and coaching wasn’t as advanced as it is now. It is what it is. We’re getting new information about Wenger’s coaching style all the time. It just sheds more light on the past.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
That explains a lot and something I've always suspected. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
The difference between you and me is that I'm prepared to admit itQuote:
Originally Posted by Delusions of Grandeur
Also in case there's any misunderstanding. I'm not for a second saying I argue for the sake of arguing (a claim you've often made). I'm saying far too often I get into an argument with someone I disagree with when it's easier to leave it.
Case in point. Have someone this morning make the argument that we wouldn't have lost as badly on Sunday if Jamie O'Hara who is currently at Billericay Town was playing in midfield instead of Ramsey.
Now I have a long and Proud history of Ramsey bashing. That's too rich for my blood. But I'm just not getting into it
Totally agree with this, when he arrived he inherited leaders like Adams, Keown etc and this helped him with his successes a lot, this was alos passed onto the later generation through Vieira and co, but when Wenger got rid of these players without slowing phasing them out and getting the younger players to learn from them this stopped.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
He signed some top players back then as well, this was due to his advantage with regards knowing the Frech league which was producing a lot of talent at the time. Since these things have disappeared he's had very little success, you have to question those achievements when a supposedly great manager cannot reproduce anything of note in 13 years. I don't think you'll find too many top managers who win lots early in their career and then literally win nothing of note and don't even compete for the major priczes for years after that.
He's tainted his legacy in my eyes anyway, I'll remember him for the guy who never listened, didn't care about anyone but himself and claimed losing was being successful.
If I have a strong opinion and there is thought behind what I'm saying, I'll express it and break it down in detail. But it's only on certain platforms, like GW, where the whole purpose is to debate and discuss. It's quite easy to ignore a throwaway comment if it's neither the time or place for a lengthy discussion.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
I think he'll stay for the remainder of his contract at least. He loves it here, has no life outside Arsenal and has a boss that's given him a free ride.
I'm only referring to places like this or other social media in fairness.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delusions of Grandeur
The Jamie O'Hara remark wasn't a throwaway comment. The guy made a lengthy argument for it, he was deadly serious it wasn't hyperbole.
It was necessary in this instance just to walk away from it
If I challenged or debated everything people say that was either fallacious or I disagreed with. Well suffice to say there aren't enough hours in the day.
On the other hand, even Wenger subbed Ramsey off. And this isn't because Ramsey is an inferior player to this O'Hara guy, obviously that notion is pure bullshit but it sounds to me like that's not the argument that was being made. Surely the argument was that anyone would have been better than nobody in the midfield. And on Sunday we had nobody in the midfield. Ramsey and Xhaka were regularly abandoning their posts and exposing the defence. This allowed Liverpool to move the ball up the pitch in seconds and straight into the danger area. The really worrying aspect was not Ramsey's play, although that was worrying enough, but more the length of time it took Wenger to spot and correct the blatantly obvious problem. This feeds into the argument that it really doesn't matter much how good our players are because Wenger's tactics are so deficient. If O'Hara had been pubbing it out in our midfield and did little more than present a barrier to the advancing opposition, well perhaps he might have been more effective than Ramsey was, it's not an argument totally lacking in merit. I'd rather not have O'Hara in our midfield, of course. I'd rather have Ramsey there. Trouble is, Ramsey isn't there nearly enough. His performance was catastrophic on Sunday.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
I don't think anyone has ever argued that Wenger is either a master tactician or a good motivator.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
But he has other qualities which in the early days more than made up for those failings. He has strengths and weaknesses like any manager does.
His strengths in the early days were a knowledge of the European and worldwide game which was unparalleled at the time. He brought in players which weren't on any other clubs radars. He had an eye for a bargain too, players with potential
And he brought in training and fitness methods which were, at the time, revolutionary. It has to be remembered that he came in at a time when there were still "drinking schools" in clubs and players would munch Mars bars and fried food after game. He changed all that.
You don't have to be much of a tactician when you have a squad as good as ours was in those days, and you don't need to be much of a motivator when you have captains like Adams and then Vieira. Off the field our transfer dealings were helped by Dein who seemed to be a shrewd operator. But now we don't have Dein and we don't have a captain. These days all clubs have a worldwide and sophisticated scouting network, Wenger can't now cherry pick players before other clubs even know about them. And all clubs now have sophisticated training and fitness regimes, most have now surpassed us.
So it's not that Wenger was once this towering genius and is now a bumbling buffoon. He has strengths and weaknesses like any manager. In the early days those strengths were revolutionary and gave us an edge, we were better technically than other clubs, we had better players, our players were fitter. His weaknesses were more than compensated for by those strengths - although there were hints of them, the failures in Europe with a squad which really should have won the CL. But now other clubs have caught up and overtaken us in those areas so all that is left are the weaknesses. The billionaires coming in, mopping up many of the best players and inflating the market didn't help of course.
I see Wenger's time with us in 3 stages:
1) The early days when his revolutionary techniques transformed us and made us, for a time, the best team in the country.
2) The middle era when other clubs were catching up, the billionaires started poking their nose in and we were going through a complex stadium move - in my view he did reasonably well in that era to keep us relatively competitive.
3) The last few years in which the money has been available to properly challenge and he is looking lost in an increasingly crazy transfer market. and players now seem to have lost faith in him
It's not that Wenger has changed, it's that he HASN'T changed in response to the way football has changed around him. He can't change and as PnG (I think it was him) rather astutely said one time, not many people are better at doing their job in their 60s than in their 30s and 40s. To quote The Simpsons, he used to be with it but then they changed what "it" was.
It has to be remembered that this level of expectation we have comes from his early years with us. Yes, we won titles before Wenger but we never expected to challenge every year. 5th and the FA Cup would have been considered a pretty decent season back in the day, some people on here need to go back and read Fever Pitch to remind themselves what it used to be like. Although "what it used to be like" was football being a sport of course, players being local heroes rather than bought in prima-donna mercenaries who will be off the first time someone waves an even bigger bag of money at them. There have been other changes at the club and in the sport which you can't entirely lay at Wenger's door.
I've never liked the personal abuse directed at him but when he signed that new contract though he must have known that things would get nasty if we didn't challenge this year so on his head be it. But I don't think the changes he made in his early time with us and that places that took us to should be dismissed or diminished. Never thought I'd see Arsenal do some of the things we did under Wenger in those early years, the Double (twice!), an unbeaten league season and all with a style of football which puts that team up there with any of the great sides in history in my opinion. It's a shame how he's gone from revolutionary to anachronism but I guess that's what happens when you stay still for too long while all around you moves on.
I think this all hinges on the hateful Euro League. If that gets off the ground in 2019/20 it will coincide with the end of Wenger's latest contract. I believe Kroenke sees Wenger as a safe pair of hands, financially and in terms of delivering at least a bare minimum on the pitch, until Arsenal achieves a lock-in in this new, hateful league. Then the value of the club will double overnight and Kroenke will have achieved a grotesque return on his investment. Wenger can saunter off with a huge bonus cheque in his pocket and Kroenke can ask Usmanov to think again on his paltry 1.5 billion offer. It seems obvious to me that Wenger's position as Arsenal manager has almost nothing to do with football achievement. How can it? Wenger has shown himself again and again to be incapable and that's not going to change. There must be some other motive in play here. I think it's the oldest one in the book - greed.Quote:
Originally Posted by AFC Leveller
This guy is a mate of mine and I can tell you that's precisely what he was ArguingQuote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
To be sure I even asked him what he meant and he said no I'm saying O'Hara is a better player overall.
Hmmmmm. There's a big, big problem with what you are saying here.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
I agree with it.
This is a strange turn of events and will take some time to digest.
BUT.
Wenger was actually viewed as an across the board genius at the time. It was Ferguson versus Wenger and they were viewed as the two giants of the English game. It was implied that Wenger was a great football manager, great enough to not only be mentioned in the same breath as Ferguson but seen as a legitimate equivalent. This is a problem that has come back to haunt us. Nobody questioned Wenger. It was assumed he was a great.
In fact he was well ahead of Ferguson in some respects, but all of them related to off the field functions. Transfers, Wenger could but for 500k what Ferguson has to spend millions on. Training and conditioning. Wenger at least had the sense to prevent his players getting pissed before a match and insisted they treat their bodies like sportsmen ought to. Hardly revolutionary in terms of sport in general, but a whole new concept for football.
Wenger was first, and that was the secret. You can't repeat it. You can't be the first to do a specific thing, twice. That doesn't in any way detract from Wenger's achievement in these areas, but management of other areas of the club were just as important, the stuff that happens on the pitch. The very reason the fans turn out to watch. This is where Wenger's legacy will end up shot to pieces. He should have moved upstairs after the 2006 Cup Final win. I mean, look at this man - he's had THREE opportunities to bow out on a high. In 2006 with legendary status. Then twice more recently when it had become obvious he should go but would have taken goodwill with him nonetheless. He keeps passing up his moment of triumph so he can continue to fuck up his legacy. It's bizarre. He has a screw loose somewhere.
If I had to guess, which is all any of us can do, that stadium finished him off. The focus switched from achievement on the pitch to financial incentives off it. The great players who took care of business on the field of play all faded away, some of the discarded by Wenger with indecent haste. Then we moved into that period where youth development became the goal as finances were diverted elsewhere. And that was the start of the downfall. Wenger has never shown any sustained ability to develop young talent. Project Youth was a disaster. We changed our whole football philosophy, the standard of our game went into slow collapse. The over embellishments of Barca-lite tippy tappy started to haunt every game. We went from being fierce warriors to a soft touch. Tip, tap, tip, tap, 65 passes to walk it into the net whereas, before, it was, bang, bang, bang - their corner to our goal in seconds. Was this the real Wenger philosophy being revealed without the counterbalance of an Adams or Vieira or Henry? Younger, less experienced, inferior players in most cases. Denilson FFS. Meanwhile the board was busy fighting over who owned what and Wenger was just left to it.
I could go on through the whole recent history but we all know it painfully well.
This is a story of innovation and revolution that turned into a tale of greed. Greedy men at the top. A manager too greedy to prove himself right when he never had the weapons to do it. And a whole game eventually consumed by greed. In effect, everyone has had their eye off the ball at Arsenal for many years now. Here is the result. Farce, embarrassment, humiliation, and no hope of remedy because none of these people have the first clue how to fix it.
Oh okay. Well you have weird friends then.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
That argument makes sense. A central midfielder with half the talent should know that you can’t abandon your post like that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
This is what I don’t get about some of the players. Surely Ramsey knows that you can’t play that way as a midfielder. He can’t live in bubble. Regardless of Wenger’s tactics, he must know the very basics.
I was never a fan of Arteta but he arrived as a CM and more attack minded, not a defensive midfielder. From what I recall, it was Arteta that decided to play more reserved role and sit deep because he saw the need and how our players just bombed forward leaving us open. Wenger didn’t tell him to get forward, he embraced it and talked up Arteta’s defensive qualities and accepted that he was more of a DM. Even when Cazorla plays as a CM, he doesn’t bomb forward further than our damn strikers.
We have some selfish, brain dead players on the squad. Ramsey being one of them. But it doesn’t help when you have a manager that will help him indulge in his reckless play. It can’t just be down to the players to coach themselves, motivate themselves and organise themselves tactically. Not in today’s game and not when we have kids like Ramsey that have been taught the wrong way for far too long.
Wenger won't bench Ramsey and he won't bench Ozil. Ramsey clearly wants to play in Ozil's role and does so on a weekly basis. Wenger tolerates this for whatever reason.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delusions of Grandeur
Oh I think the argument NQ made makes perfect sense, it's just not the argument my friend was making. As if somehow one or two players and Wengers faith in them has made all the difference down the years. Rather than a team mentality without leadership or even more damning desire to win.
Ramsey has always been a selfish cunt of a player. He'd do the same when playing with Wilshere leaving Arteta to have to distribute the ball on his own. Wenger is spineless. He won't correct a player.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
The Arseblog podcast just touched on this. Even if Wenger tolerates it, there has to be something wrong with him if he can't see the mistakes and that he's making.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
He's also divorced his wife and his only daughter has graduated from University and is likely off on her own living her own life.Quote:
Originally Posted by AFC Leveller
Arsenal is basically his life & family these days, which is one of the reasons he finds it difficult to let go.
The only way he may not be offered a new contract is if we finish outside the top four both of the next two season, otherwise I see no reason why Kroenke won't just persist with him.
Have you seen his wife?. I imagine spending his retirement with her is even more dauntingQuote:
Originally Posted by The Emirates Gallactico
It explains his dalliances with exotic Fanny, well a black waitress who thought she could make it as a hip hop star ��
Exotic fanny :lol:
tbh for her age she wasn't that bad looking.Quote:
Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie
http://i4.mirror.co.uk/incoming/arti...wife-split.jpg
Probably would have been quite attractive in her younger years. And it's not like that Wenger could do much better at his age if it wasn't for the money.
At any rate, I don't know why they broke up after nearly a couple of decades together (and 5 years officially married) but I don't think the situation has helped him at all - it's made him even more isolated & dogmatic in his ways.
She looks alright to me. Provided she was fine taking it up the shitter, I'd do her.
Square pegs in round holes?.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
Do the right thing, man.