Quote Originally Posted by Ice Berg Kamping View Post
I take the valid points people are making that we are not 'shit' relative to the whole of the league, and yes, other teams may well bottle it.

But like Wenger, I prefer to look at our own team. And I have come to the conclusion that we are underperforming badly given the players and the resources at our disposal. We have the top scorer for the best team in France last season, and a very experience German international up front - yet they are misfiring badly. We have the best RB in the league; a prodigy from Spain as our creative MF; the fastest winger (and one of the best finishers) in the league. We have (in Arteta) one of the most reliable MF's around....and we are looking like a dog's dinner.

Its not the relative strengths of our players on paper, or the below par performances of other teams that concerns me - its the fact that we are clearly not playing to our players' strengths, have no real game plan, adn most importantly, no character, no life, no heart in this team of ours. Lets face it - when did we last go on a proper run when we played with proper fluency, and consistently prevailed against the opposition. We might have a scinitillating game, go on a little run of victories, but ultimately, it all comes back to performances like Norwich, like Manure. This seems somehow to be the default setting of Wenger's current teams - and there is something fundamentally wrong with this. The exception seems to be where you have utter prodigies like RVP or Fabregas - but for me this is a stupid way to set up your teams. The building blocks should be a system that gets the whole team playing to its strengths - with individual creativity/talent as the icing on the cake. We seem to do the opposite. I think that AW's whole style of play, while it might be suited to a team with Barca-like talent, is ill suited for the players that we are willing to attract to the club, and ill-suited for the EPL. That the manager persists regardless is stubborn and myopic.

And yes - be careful what you wish for etc. But there has to come a time where enough's enough. If this were the early years of transition - fair enough. But really, how many times over the past 7/8 years have we been where we are now? And every transfer season, its groundhog day. Clearly, the players can smell where we are going - and when you feature the talent that we lose every year, its hard to escape the conclusion that we are not just stagnating, we are in sharp decline.
Completely agree. Enough is enough now.

Szczesny, Sagna, Mertesecker, Vermaelen, Gibbs, Arteta, Cazorla, Wilshere, Walcott, Podolski, Giroud, Arshavin, Diaby, Kocielney, Rosicky etc etc

A clever, creative, experienced, fast, clinical, international, technical, powerful, goalscoring, quality squad.

Unfortunately, most of the time, they are: Lazy, inconsistent, head-turned, slow, wasteful, mistake-ridden, injured, arrogant, unfocused and poor.

Backed up by a second string who are just not good enough.

With a manager who won't spend, won't adapt, doesn't rate tactics, prioritises posession over everything else, doesn't shout, does nothing on the touchline, is more interested in business and politics.

Muddle that all together, and you have a complete and utter mess.