Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
Who can know what Wenger says? All we can do is examine the results of whatever he says when we watch the team on the pitch. We have all speculated why we generally play such a slow and purposeless game. It looks like you are saying that most of the time this is down to the players not being on their A game. This implies we have a very poor collection of players because they therefore only seem to hit their A game once, maybe twice a season. It seems far more likely it is the instructions of the manager that dictate the nature of our performances. This is supported by the final scoreline. We were in a position to annihilate the chavs by scoring several more goals. We didn't. On a one off basis you couldn't read much into that. But we rarely eviscerate the opposition when we get the chance. We'll go 2 or 3 up and then that'll be it, we ease off. This is hardly down to our players suddenly falling off their A game mid-game. Far more likely once again it is the intervention of the manager.
It’s not down to the managers instructions. The clichéd phrases from Wenger we constantly mock, ‘playing with the handbrake/lacking sharpness’ suggests he’s not happy with the pace and caution we often display. Sometimes it’s down to the players. If Ox were playing instead of Iwobi, maybe we wouldn’t have scored a 2nd goal because he takes a heavy touch and then they score at the other end to make it 1-1. Fine margins. Sometimes it’s down to the opposition breaking being organised, disrupting up play with fouls….I don’t think it’s a case of us intentionally going into games looking flat.

Seems to be a mix up between tactics/instructions and mental preparation. I don’t think Wenger prepares the team mentally and he often has no answer when plan A doesn’t work. What we saw against Chelsea was Plan A. It’s no coincidence that this was our best performance since Man Utd. The players said after that game that they had a meeting and G’d themselves up for it. Not sure what the mood in the camp was like for Chelsea but we sometimes pull it out the bag for the big occasions. I wouldn’t be surprised if look flat in our next games against Basel and Burnley. How many times have we seen this before? It’s been going on for years. Tactically, attack wise at least, I don’t think he instructs them to do anything differently for most games. This certainly isn’t an example of that. Some games we’ve seen us soak up pressure and counter attack but that also often depends on our opposition and how good they are on the ball. In most cases it’s the same stuff. We won’t see our wingers staying wide and attacking the full back to create space, we definitely don’t play it long, it’s always us trying to play in our opponents half zipping passes around. I’ve watched games where we start well with the right tempo but one bad and we get hit it a counter. It happens.