A couple of observations

[Master Splinter]

The Lord can't hear you, he's busy helping Wenger to 4th place at the moment!

The funny thing about this is that you've successfully destroyed your own argument by equating one nebulous, non-existent, non-quantifiable entity ('luck') to another ('God').

You should incorporate some talk about magic, sorcery, voodoo and Uri Gellerism into further discussions to win more internet battles.

[Özim]

You'd trust that person if they've made the effort and changes to think about the best way to achieve what they want to achieve, unlike before when they were doing the same things again and again.

Regardless of stretching an analogy to bursting point, what you're forgetting about RVP is that they were rarely wear and tear injuries; they were usually lengthy impact injuries. Unlike Diaby who can't have any hamstrings left and you can't really avoid using your hamstrings in football.

If football is so easily determined by 'luck' and 'unluck' then what's the point of ever casting judgement on anyone or anything if that is all it comes down to?

I've known people like this and no I wouldn't, someone has to prove they've changed.

Football isn't all about luck, quality of players and team tactics/ethic etc come into it, from what I can see we lack quality, the tactics are poor and the team has a poor work ethic and mentality...this doesn't correspond to the traits top teams have.

I can accept a top team with top players doing well because they have top players and perhaps a manager who coaches them well, uses tactics effectively and gets them drilled in the art of whatever position it is they play in, none of this seems to apply to us or Wenger, certainly not in the last few years.

[Kano]

The Spurs problems were though, those don't happen in a normal season.

The teams you mention have top quality players, players of that quality will always give you a much better chance of winning, all teams do get luck however the better players you have the less you rely on it. In the days we had top players we still had lucky moments, but rarely did we need them as we'd generally win games on merit before luck played a part.

luck doesn't come down to purely in-house issues but what happens in a game, through bad decisions from oppositions to referee decisions. the spurs situation was lucky but then where do you stop, how do you determine what exactly comes down to luck or not? we were not the only beneficiaries of tottenham's slump, so the teams that beat them also got a helping hand. then can you determine if that 'luck' meant winning a game, gaining confidence and perhaps winning the next one etc? how much credit do we give to those teams too? in fact, in every tackle players are afforded luck that it did not injure them. it just goes on and on if you want to analyse things in that way.

[Özim]

The funny thing about this is that you've successfully destroyed your own argument by equating one nebulous, non-existent, non-quantifiable entity ('luck') to another ('God').

You should incorporate some talk about magic, sorcery, voodoo and Uri Gellerism into further discussions to win more internet battles.

I was going to but I've lost my voodoo doll, all my spoons are in the dishwasher and I broke my magic wand when Swansea scored the 2nd against us last week. My magic ball works but it needs a clean and I'm out of window cleaner so I can't see what's going on.

[Özim]

luck doesn't come down to purely in-house issues but what happens in a game, through bad decisions from oppositions to referee decisions. the spurs situation was lucky but then where do you stop, how do you determine what exactly comes down to luck or not? we were not the only beneficiaries of tottenham's slump, so the teams that beat them also got a helping hand. then can you determine if that 'luck' meant winning a game, gaining confidence and perhaps winning the next one etc? how much credit do we give to those teams too? in fact, in every tackle players are afforded luck that it did not injure them. it just goes on and on if you want to analyse things in that way.

Luck in games evens itself out over a season as I've always said, we got lucky today and might get unlucky next week...some people go off on one when we get bad decisions but that happens and in a different week the opposite happens......but stuff off the field (i.e what happened to Spurs) isn't really a normal football situation so that is a lucky scenario for the clubs battling with them for 3rd/4th.

Yes the teams that beat them also got a helping hand, but we were probably the best of the rest, certainly in terms of squad depth after Spurs so naturally we ended up above them.

As for injuries, there's luck involved obviously, but some players are always injured, I wouldn't put this down to bad luck, that's just normality, it would be abnormal for Diaby and Rosicky to stay fit all season and they never have.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

I've known people like this and no I wouldn't, someone has to prove they've changed.

Football isn't all about luck, quality of players and team tactics/ethic etc come into it, from what I can see we lack quality, the tactics are poor and the team has a poor work ethic and mentality...this doesn't correspond to the traits top teams have.

I can accept a top team with top players doing well because they have top players and perhaps a manager who coaches them well, uses tactics effectively and gets them drilled in the art of whatever position it is they play in, none of this seems to apply to us or Wenger, certainly not in the last few years.

Nine months would be enough to indicate a change has been made, I would imagine. Anyway you're talking about someone being unreliable because of their fault as a character (in your analogy, tardiness) but in RVP's case we're talking about being unfortunate in that previous unreliability (injuries).

Everyone can argue forever and a day about how other teams have benefitted from luck. We were lucky in 97/98 when Man Utd collapsed, they were lucky in 02/03 when we collapsed. And so on and so forth.

Winning seven games in a row when we did last season cannot be put down to luck, not when you consider the teams we beat in that run. You just can't fluke seven wins in a row, a manager must be doing something right even if it's only to a level of 3rd/4th rather than 1st/2nd.

[Kano]

can you show how luck 'evens itself out' accurately, or is it just and easy phrase to throw out there? because, no offence, i think that is nonsense.

doesn't

but we were probably the best of the rest, certainly in terms of squad depth after Spurs so naturally we ended up above them.

contradict your assertion that we were lucky to get top four last season?

[Globalgunner]

Luck.......is this what Wengerism is now distilled to?. We were not the 3rd best team last season. The 3rd best team (Chelsea) had a perfect storm that they brought about themselves with manager mismanagement by the owner. The 4th best team...(Tiny Totts) keelhauled themselves (as usual) and we. 5/6th best, stumbled in on the last day. Where we got lucky was having an opposition keeper on the final day who played as if Wenger had handed him a sackful of 50 pound notes the night before. Does any one remember the absolutely diabolical run we were on right after overtaking the spuds I think 5 defeats in 8, we did everything possible to throw it away.

[Özim]

can you show how luck 'evens itself out' accurately, or is it just and easy phrase to throw out there? because, no offence, i think that is nonsense.

doesn't
That's impossible to do, but you have to accept some decisions go for you and some against you, today we had two in our favour which led to goals, I'm sure we've had 2 already this season that have gone against us. It swings in roundabouts, you win some and you lose some.


contradict your assertion that we were lucky to get top four last season?

Last season I meant we were lucky to get above Spurs (Chelsea were awful until Di Matteo took over), so I should have said lucky to get 3rd.

[Özim]

Nine months would be enough to indicate a change has been made, I would imagine. Anyway you're talking about someone being unreliable because of their fault as a character (in your analogy, tardiness) but in RVP's case we're talking about being unfortunate in that previous unreliability (injuries).

Everyone can argue forever and a day about how other teams have benefitted from luck. We were lucky in 97/98 when Man Utd collapsed, they were lucky in 02/03 when we collapsed. And so on and so forth.

Winning seven games in a row when we did last season cannot be put down to luck, not when you consider the teams we beat in that run. You just can't fluke seven wins in a row, a manager must be doing something right even if it's only to a level of 3rd/4th rather than 1st/2nd.

Before last season I don't remember him being fit for 9 months?

I genuinely though we were awful last season, as someone mentioned even after going above Spurs we kept dropping points and somehow none of the other teams managed to take advantage.