No reason to try at the moment - we have what we need to push on. After a period of doubt it's now plain the club is serious about pumping in the investment so here we go.Originally Posted by Özim
No reason to try at the moment - we have what we need to push on. After a period of doubt it's now plain the club is serious about pumping in the investment so here we go.
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The signing of Ozil started to do that IMO. Although there have been disappointments in this season (as any season will have, there are always ups and downs) an FA Cup win would set us up nicely for next season. The bid for Suarez and the signing of Ozil showed a new intent. We need more up front but if we get that in the summer (which is questionable whoever our manager is tbh) then we'll be well placed to push on next year.
Do you think 4th place and the FA Cup would be a bad season?
Bad in terms of making it harder to moan 24/7 - yes.
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Exactly. If there were managers available then sure, but none of the top guys are because they've all recently moved clubs, whilst Klopp won't break a contract. Even lesser managers like Martinez aren't available as he's just moved clubs too so it really is too much of a risk to get rid this summer. 2 more years would lead to a much better managerial pool where we can go for one of the big boys.
I did follow Arsenal before Wenger came.. While I will admit that I wasnt able to follow them as vigorously as I do now, I still did. I did not think we played awesome football then but from what I can remember 20 years back (when I was 9), I felt that there was a positive intent to move the ball towards the opposition box and I never felt that an Arsenal player on the pitch didnt give 100%.You really should have seen Arsenal before Wenger came along, it was bloody awful at times.
Most of the moaning has been about us not winning trophies. We don't have any God given right to win them and it's definitely harder to do so now with the billionaires buying them up left, right and centre, but you'd expect a club at our level to do. Finally it looks like we'll get our grubby mitts on a major trophy so people are busily moving goalposts and finding other reasons to have a moan. As for the way we play, it's very good at times, not so good at others. But it's interesting how Wenger is being slaughtered for it while Mourinho's being hailed as a genius for his very expensive squad parking the bus and playing awful boring football.
Why shouldnt people moan though? We have been humiliated multiple times this season (cant recall that happening with frequency like this before), our football is dire and we are still in with the 4th place trophy. While we have a very realistic chance of winning a trophy, we havent won it yet. While it'll be great to finally win a trophy after almost a decade, I think that will just be a basis to stick with Wenger... and that I think is the worst way forward for Arsenal FC. Even if we win the FA cup, I see nothing this season that has shown that we as a football team are moving forward.
How many more seasons of folding over are you ready to see? The last decent Arsenal played in 07/08. After that, we just have a bunch of rollovers in the mold of the manager- Toothless and average.
Arsene Wenger, the only football manager that got paid 8 million quid to do nothing but sit on his arse..
20 years ago, 1993/4. Pretty much the peak of boring boring Arsenal. As for the players always giving 100%, we were very much a Cup team around then and there were plenty of league games where their minds were clearly elsewhere - in the preceding season we won both domestic cups but were awful in the league, we were only 7 points off the relegation zone that year. 93/94 was better but look at the results:
http://www.statto.com/football/teams...3-1994/results
It was the year of the 4 0-0s in a row (a record Graham equaled while at Spurs!) which was followed by a loss and there's another run of 5 draws in a row.
There are certainly some reasons for moaning but don't look back with rose-tinted glasses at the early 90s side, if you think the football is dire now then you have clearly forgotten just how bad it was in that era. 92/93 was my first year at Uni so, mercifully, I missed a lot of it but I remember parts of the season I was home and the games were just awful. My dad nearly gave up the season tickets that year it was so bad, it was only the end of the season where we won the trophies (again, in horribly boring fashion, they were awful Cup finals) which changed his mind.
Our football isn't the scintillating stuff of the Invincibles, no, but if you're going to compare every Arsenal side to that level then look forward to a lifetime of disappointment. That really was an exceptional side and is unlikely to be equalled.
Surely that would be the sign that we're moving forward?! For years we've been rightly criticized for crumbling under pressure. People cherry pick league results to show that's been true this year but pretty much all games have pressure on them and we've won plenty of games when under pressure this year, no less so than the cup semi-final when, poor as we were, we held our nerve in the shootout. We are a better side this year than last. We need more up front and more depth generally but we are going in the right direction IMO. It's clear the difference Ramsey makes, I don't think we'd have won the title had he stayed fit but we'd have been a lot closer.Even if we win the FA cup, I see nothing this season that has shown that we as a football team are moving forward.
The bid for Suarez and the signing of Ozil last summer showed a new ambition. We might be about to finally end our trophy drought. If we do then I'm not convinced that's a good time to be sacking the manager although I do think we need to start preparing for the change as it's going to happen fairly soon anyway.
What you failed to say is that we sacrificed league results for the cups that year, we rested quite a few players in the league, nobody gave a toss about 4th place (rightly so) then so if you weren't going to be in the title hunt you would sacrifice league results.
Last edited by Özim; 28-04-2014 at 08:23 AM.
Yes. But these days that isn't an option. The top 4 has become too important.
We agree that the top 4 is an artificial construct but it is what it is and a mid-table finish for the sake of a Cup wouldn't be tolerated these days.
That's true, I was just putting those poor results in context, the reason we did so badly in the league that season was our success in two cups. The football was great it's true, but the determination, desire and will to win and our ability to upset the odds gave the games a certain edge of your seat quality, I don't think I've felt that for years because with the current teams you accept you have no chance of upsetting the odds. This predictability takes a lot of enjoyment away IMO.
There's such a fine line in football. The Cup runs in 92/93 were brilliant but we only remember them that way because we won, that season could well have gone a different way.
We have to win the Cup this year. A trophy is long overdue. I can see a case for Wenger leaving either way but I think there's a pretty good case for him being allowed to stay and build on it if we win it.
I think he probably will no matter what you and I think anyway!
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