Summer Transfer Speculation and Shit

[Özim]

Name a manager around today who's won anything of note without having great players.

Ferguson, some of his teams haven't been all that good and yet he's won stuff. Crooknapp with Portsmouth (FA Cup), McLeish and he's rubbish (you did say win stuff a cup is a cup at the end of the day).

Obviously the better players you have the easier it is, but it's the way the whole team has no fight, no desire, no soul, he can't even get them to chase or close down the opposition.

In the old days when we had an average squad we won stuff as well, simply because of tactics, coaching, motivation and players who actually worked themselves into the ground.

Just look at Milan yesterday, they're hardly a team of world stars and yet they beat Barca using organisation, tactics and hard work.

[Grebbo]

Really now? Ok.

Of course - you think otherwise??!!

De Gay £18m
Rio £30m
Jones £16m
Rooney £25m
RVP £24m
Nani & Anderson £20m?
Carrick £18m
Kagawa £18m?

C'mon it's not even debatable.

[Özim]

Klopp comes to mind.

Yeah there's another one, there's probably loads more as well.

[Kano]

Wenger with great players is a great manager: Proven. Do dispute. Fact.

Wenger with decent players is a decent manager: Possibly debatable. I'm sure a different manager could get more out of them but could a different manager get this squad to win things? No way IMO.

So the weak link is the players. To me this is obvious. We are never going to compete with Bayern, Manure, City, Chavs whoever when our most expensive player in our history cost £15m. It's impossible.

Stan needs to look at his investment and see that it will go down in value if he doesn't inject some cash. It's like buying a run down house in Mayfair and not spending any money doing it up. Sure, you've got a great piece of real estate but it would be so much better, and worth more, if you tarted it up a bit.

This team needs £100m spent on it to challenge with the big boys. Without that Arsenal FC is going nowhere, no matter who the manager is.

it's this sort of polarisation of the argument that frustrates the hell out of me.

most of us could live with how things are panning out if we at least displayed an attitude toward trying our very best. it is becoming more and more apparent over time that we are not, by settling for the bare minimum every time and lauding it as some sort of success. i really and truly could not care if we get fourth or not this season. it will be nothing to celebrate and will only lead to the same old journey next season.

so could another manager get more out of this lot? definitely. will he have a chance to win anything? yes. there are cups available to do that. it isn't all about the league. but most importantly, we might just get some pride back in watching our team being a bit more flexible in its approach which will hopefully mean not being out of contention for everything come february every season.

we could give wenger 500m to spend right now and i am convinced he would find a way to mismanage the squad to leave us with nothing again. either through selection, tactics or (mis)control of the players personalties off the pitch in preparation.

he has chosen this route and has to take the blame for the dwindling quality of the team. just look back to our replacement for song this season and that says it all.

yes he proved he could win things with mentally strong players quite some time ago now but those 'edges' have been eaten away by the rest of the football field and his ability to be a really cutting edge, successful manager has gone. don't get me wrong, he's still a good manager as you don't qualify into the knock out stages of the cl or get to fifth being shit but quite frankly, we can do better. i never thought i'd be so adament that he needs to go but i've seen enough now to realise his time has come.

[Grebbo]

Ferguson, some of his teams haven't been all that good and yet he's won stuff. Crooknapp with Portsmouth (FA Cup), McLeish and he's rubbish (you did say win stuff a cup is a cup at the end of the day).

Obviously the better players you have the easier it is, but it's the way the whole team has no fight, no desire, no soul, he can't even get them to chase or close down the opposition.

In the old days when we had an average squad we won stuff as well, simply because of tactics, coaching, motivation and players who actually worked themselves into the ground.

Just look at Milan yesterday, they're hardly a team of world stars and yet they beat Barca using organisation, tactics and hard work.

We Beat Barca two seasons ago didn't we? Not the best example to use for your argument unless you think Wenger has declined so massively in two seasons (or perhaps it is the quality of our players that has declined).

There's no point debating this really as it's never ending. All I think is nothing significant will change in removing Wenger unless the new manager is able to sign world class players.

[Grebbo]

Klopp comes to mind.

Would I swap Wenger for Klopp? Yes.

Redknapp and McLeish not so much.

[Özim]

We Beat Barca two seasons ago didn't we? Not the best example to use for your argument unless you think Wenger has declined so massively in two seasons (or perhaps it is the quality of our players that has declined).

There's no point debating this really as it's never ending. All I think is nothing significant will change in removing Wenger unless the new manager is able to sign world class players.

Barca caned us that night but missed a host of chances (unlike them), didn't we go 20 minutes without touching the ball at the beginning of the 1st half? We were pretty lucky that night, on any other day it would have been a thrashing. We also lost the tie in the end.

I think it will change, a manager might actually sign better players, build a team with more fight and desire and actually care about domestic cups. That's a big change in itself, all this guy cares about is 4th place.

[Özim]

Would I swap Wenger for Klopp? Yes.

Redknapp and McLeish not so much.

Maybe not but the point is they won stuff without top players.

[Özil's Panoramic View]

Maybe not but the point is they won stuff without top players.

Yup. Even if it was the Mickey Mouse Cup, or the FA Cup (just when did this cup stop meaning anything to us? Well and truly sacrificed for Lord Goon's prized 4th place trophy), they won something.

[The Emirates Gallactico]

Wenger with great players is a great manager: Proven. Do dispute. Fact.

Wenger with decent players is a decent manager: Possibly debatable. I'm sure a different manager could get more out of them but could a different manager get this squad to win things? No way IMO.

So the weak link is the players. To me this is obvious. We are never going to compete with Bayern, Manure, City, Chavs whoever when our most expensive player in our history cost £15m. It's impossible.

Stan needs to look at his investment and see that it will go down in value if he doesn't inject some cash. It's like buying a run down house in Mayfair and not spending any money doing it up. Sure, you've got a great piece of real estate but it would be so much better, and worth more, if you tarted it up a bit.

This team needs £100m spent on it to challenge with the big boys. Without that Arsenal FC is going nowhere, no matter who the manager is.

I'm also starting to wonder how much of the organisational superiority of the Invincible era side was down to those players taking personal responsibility for themselves rather than Wenger drilling it into them. It's not hard to have a well balanced and organised team when you have strong leaders like Vieira, Sol, Freddie, Henry etc etc all making sure everyone pulled their weight and knew what their role was. In fact this has been made more transparent in quite a few interviews from the invicible squad since then who've made it clear about the bollocking they'd get from their fellow team members whenever they weren't performing.

It's public knowledge that Wenger isn't the type that yells or gives inspirational talks towards his players to motivate them, that's not his style. That was very well when things were fine but now when we're seeing year on year failure to sort out basic footballing concepts like marking from corners and defending as a team and closing down space then that's simply not good enough.

As great as the invincibles were one of it's biggest failures was that we simply didn't win enough titles during their dominance that we really should have had. Back to back PL titles (the Arsenal like collapse of 02/03 still haunts me), Wayne Bridge's goal, FA cup exit in 03/04, ignoring the Carling Cup etc etc we really didn't maximise our trophy haul during those years - had Wenger been more proactive at certain key moments I think we would have won more. Ferguson would have extracted more trophies from that squad, of that I'm certain. It pains me to see Ferguson win more titles with what I consider lesser sides than our great invicible team.

Wenger's world class at discovering young talented players cheaply and developing them into stars, of that there's few better and he's the best manager at extracting the best value for money when it comes for transfers as evidenced by our remarkable achievement of continually posting transfer surpluses year on year our and yet managing to finish in the top four, but I really am doubting his credentials at drilling teams and make them organised and hard to beat.