Summer Transfer Misery 2017/18

[Power n Glory]

Seconded.

Zim has a certain way of presenting his opinions, as do I, as do all of us, but you can scan back and you'll see he doesn't initiate attacks on other posters and his targets are relevant. Wenger. The board. The players and sometimes those absolute fuckhead Wengerites who, yes, are entitled to their own opinions but they don't get a pass for being fucking stupid. Zim takes the piss out of Wenger, Letters takes the piss out of Zim. There is a HUGE difference in that. In fact Zim often tries to diffuse conflict by posting a reasonable and non-inflammatory response even when under the most vigorous abuse. Whereas Letter's style is far more likely to be a rush and flee, one line backstabs when he thinks it will attract attention. Zim concerns himself with Arsenal and its many woes, whereas Letters seems to use the place as a venue for amusement and trolling. Just my opinion. But also correct.

Pretty much. Letters complains about GW but chooses the same battle each and every time.

[Özim]

Hindsight is a wonderful thing and we're all guilty of it to varying degrees. But blind devotion is not a wonderful thing and way, way too many of us were guilty of that for way way too long. Wenger and the club surfed it all the way to where we are now. A 10 year, slo motion train wreck with more and more passengers losing their blissful and snooty smiles and replacing them with masks of pure horror as the reality started dawning.

Some people are now saying the criticism of Wenger is being exaggerated. I'd love to know how? Worst manager in the world? The challenge still stands. Name a single manager who is worse, as things stand today and not based on events of 20 years ago, sticks of broccoli or Thierry Henry. Who, in world football, is fucking up more than Wenger? Name somebody. Who is playing their players out of position? Who is leaving their new signings on the bench for big games? Who is grubbing around for profits in the transfer window? Who is ruining young players to such a comprehensive degree? Who lies as much? The list could go on and on and on. He fucks up EVERYTHING. Again, no exaggeration.

And it was obvious it was coming. But of course, as fans, we'll be the blindest and most trusting of all. That's probably why some are still clinging to Wenger. They can't admit what the rest of us have had to admit, just how blind and gullible we've been.

Absolutely spot on, when all is taken into consideration Wenger is pretty awful, you have to look at the whole picture, no other manager is doing such a diservice to the fans who effectively have allowed him to be what he is today, all the bits you pointed out are spot on, it would be hard to find a manager who does all of the above.

[Özim]

I remember saying Wenger wasn't a great tactician 10 years ago or more and the GW mods rounding on me as if I had said something outrageous. Easy to say it's obvious now but people weren't saying it on this platform. Zim wasn't the lone voice but that doesn't matter. He's the one being singled out today and most days.

Exactly right and incidentally I'm not here to say I told you so and have never said as much, all I've said is Wenger should have gone years ago and I stand by that. It's taken more time for others to come round to the fact Wenger isn't up to it and that's fine, but some still somewhat defend him even if they don't admit to it, there is no defence of him however, he's created this mess.

Thanks for the support guys!

[Özim]

And yet, last time he signed a new contract you were supportive
And now you're lying about your opinions and mine. Low energy. Sad.

Firstly people are allowed to changed their minds, secondly I don't recall NQ being particularly supportive of Wenger for many years, he's been one of his staunchest critics if anything.

[Özim]

I think I have been too patient with Wenger. But that doesn't mean that we can now back-date our views and be all revisionist about what Wenger did for us back in the day.
As I said at more length elsewhere, Wenger's time with us broadly fails into 3 phases

1) Revolutionary who completely changed the culture of the club and raised us to a level I never thought I'd see Arsenal play at
2) Steadying of the ship where finances were hampering us somewhat during the stadium move and the billionaires had their biggest impact
3) Recent years where the money has been available to compete but the game has somewhat overtaken Wenger while he has stayed still and is increasingly looking like he can't compete at the very top level.

Like any manager he has strengths and weaknesses, those strengths in the early days revolutionised the club and formed the basis for the global club we now are - and have to be if we want to compete, and please don't anyone pull Leicester out their arse, it was amazing what they did but it was clearly a one off as last season showed. If you think 5th and the FA Cup was a car crash of a season then you have Wenger to thank for that, before he joined that would have been a very acceptable season. We expect better things now, we have the resources to expect that and that is largely down to Wenger. But his weaknesses were always evident, looking back. It's hard to see that when you're winning trophies left, right and centre and the quality of football in Europe but the failures in the CL, the failure to retain the title. Those are because of the failings which have always been there. And his strengths no longer help him in a game where now every club knows the worldwide game, every club has top training methods, every club has a good manager rather than a GHEL. Wenger can no longer compete in the modern game but that doesn't erase what he did in the past.

The "ancient history" was to demonstrate that Zim is a whiner and has always been a whiner. If you look at that thread pretty much everyone was telling him to STFU. He will always exaggerate, always go to the extreme. Now he's smugly saying "told you so" . If you take the same position on a subject, especially one like this where fortunes tend to fluctuate then you will always be able to declare yourself "right" at some point. People can lie about my opinions if they like but I'm not going to defend what Wenger is doing now and haven't done. But I will argue against stupid comments about him being our "worst manager ever" and "13 years of failure" or start questioning whether he was ever any good in the first place. Those are stupid comments and deserve ridicule.

I'm not revising history, just questioning how a man who was supposedly so great can be so awful in the modern day and it's a fair question. He inability to repeat anything like what he did before whilst also completely changing all the successful things about his winning teams is odd to say the least, in 12-13 years since he's not managed to repeat or come close to doing that once and hasn't even really tried in my eyes, he's been so blinkered by this new mini Barca methodology and building the worlds best youth team he's refused to accept it just doesn't work.

People harp on about what he did, but what about what's he's done in the last decade, which is anything has moulded are club far more, moulded it into something a lot of fans very much dislike. He had 7 years of great success yes, but IMO 2/3 of his career at Arsenal can be viewed as a failure because of where we are now, in an almighty mess.

[Özim]

You guys can't talk about 'nuance' and 'over simplification' in Zim's posts if you're only reacting to one or two click bait lines from a post and ignoring context.

Gilberto was a good player with Vieria in a 4-4-2. That combination worked. With Cesc in a 4-4-2, he was terrible. The system was terrible. Can anyone deny that? It took a while for Wenger to figure out that he can't play those two players together in a 4-4-2. We were getting bullied and overrun. Gilberto wasn't a bulldozing all action DM and Cesc was a lightweight on defence that needed protecting.

In today's squad, it would be like trying to play Ozil and Xhaka in a 4-4-2. Even when changing to a 4-5-1 and the Gilberto/Cesc combo starts working better, he'd start to make odd choices, like playing Cesc on the wing, Eboue on the wing, Senderos as right back, Diaby on the wing....bench Gilberto all together and move Cesc to playing as a number 10 and put players behind Cesc that don't have the skill to recycle the ball effectively....hence, the birth of Tip Tap football.

All hallmarks to the sort of problems we see today. Back then, we used to blame the players and the Board because we thought Wenger was being forced to make odd decisions because of money restrictions. So early criticism of Wenger would often get waved away. It was true to extent because we couldn't spend what our rivals spent. But there were obvious flaws in Wenger's tactical thinking back then and it's clear now that the problem is the way he thinks and sees the game. I can't fault Zim for spotting that early. A lot of his earlier gripes were about team selection and the sort of performances we're getting from certain players and our transfer policy.

This is a great post btw, I'm glad someone remembers how it actually was, for me it was the contrast from successful coach and the total transformation that followed, the way he seemed to make illogical decisions and insisted on the wrong player combinations and putting square pegs into round holes.

It just didn't sit right with me, 2 years before that the football was exhilerating and everything about the club was exciting, such a dramatic change in formula was one of the oddest things I've seen in football, to never return to your winning formula despite years of failure with your new methods is even odder, you'd have thought he might have tried, ironically he's seemingly purposefully resisted trying that formula, refusing to buy leaders or to buy tough, physical players and defenders who can primarily defend.

[Özim]

Because he welches on it, and deliberately exaggerates things. Things are bad enough without someone picking away at the carcus. It's as annoying as the devoted followers of Wenger who make shit up to fit their narrative.

I don't particularly want or need to have an inquest into what fans thought 5-10 years ago, what exactly does it achieve. You know what your opinion was, I know what my opinion was. And yet Zim seems to have a time machine he hasn't told anyone about where he thinks he can go back and correct the mistakes of the past in the sense of people's rose tinted spectacles when it comes to Wenger, first of all its crying for the moon as I remember people ripping him to shreds in a post season q and a back in 2009 over signing Mikael Silvestre. There's always been been those who have critiqued the Wenger approach, obviously it was going to take time for more and more people to be convinced.
Second of all even if every fan was against Wenger years ago would it have made the difference we think it might?

Don't get me wrong I'm not sure where Letters is coming from about a lack of nuance, we aren't in a situation that requires nuance. It's blatant to anyone that if you don't think he should be manager anymore you have some bizarre agenda.

You seem to think I'm constantly stating "I told you so" whereas that's not the case, I've never ever said to anyone I told you 10 years ago he should have gone, the most I've done is said Wenger should have gone years ago, something which other people also point out many years back, perhaps as far back as 2011, that's not a dig at other posters thinking he should have stayed on longer, more that I feel we would be in a better place now had he gone then.

I just think Wenger has had too much leeway for a manager at a top club, too many free passes despite many odd decisions and never addressing issues with the team, we did have some great times, but those can't gloss over the present and what is happening, you might buy yourself a few years of grace, but not a decade or anywhere near it, at some stage you have to deliver on your promises.

I can still remember him during the failed youth project not signing enough players saying that the players will have 1 more years experience and that they are now ready to kick on and win stuff, that was probably about 7 years ago and yet when he failed to do it, it's not talked about at all (by the press), he just walks away from that without any questions asked, it's swept under the carpet.

He's decided to follow a certain route and failed, that's fine but at least learn from that and acknowledge your failures, don't pretend they never happened and hail them as a success.

[Letters]

I'm not revising history, just questioning how a man who was supposedly so great can be so awful in the modern day and it's a fair question.

It is a fair question and I've already given my take on that. Quite simply, he has got older, he hasn't been able or willing to adapt as the game has changed around him.
But that doesn't mean that he wasn't, in the early days, a revolutionary who transformed the club.

It's like watching the original 1933 King Kong film now and saying "The effects are crap!". Well, sure, they look pretty crappy NOW, because things have moved on and we are used to better. But at the time they were thought amazing. If a director kept making films using those techniques then they would look increasingly bad compared with films made using modern techniques. And that's where Wenger has failed, his once revolutionary ideas about fitness, diet and training are no longer revolutionary. His once revolutionary knowledge of the worldwide game which meant he could cherry pick talent before other clubs even knew about players is no longer revolutionary. The other clubs have caught up and arguably surpassed us in these areas.

I think it's too simplistic to say that it's been 7 years of success and 13 of failure. In the middle phase of the 3 I outlined above I think he did pretty well when money was fairly tight and the billionaires were running amok to keep us relatively competitive. He failed to land another title, maybe without the Eduardo leg break he would have, we will never know. But I don't regard those years as an abject failure. I think he deserved a chance when the money became available to use it to try and compete again. The signings of Ozil, Cech and Sanchez did seem to indicate a change of direction, the FA Cup was a welcome relief after so many trophyless years. But he has failed to push us on and it's increasingly clear he can't.

Wenger is a man making stop motion films in a world of CGI. But back in the day his stop-motion films were brilliant, he was brilliant. He had flaws, sure, every manager does. And I don't believe you or anyone else was particularly prescient about those, his failure as a tactician is not new news. But comments about him being the worst manager Arsenal have had are pretty silly.

[selassie]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=28nXNHyPUgA

[Niall_Quinn]

It is a fair question and I've already given my take on that. Quite simply, he has got older, he hasn't been able or willing to adapt as the game has changed around him.
But that doesn't mean that he wasn't, in the early days, a revolutionary who transformed the club.

It's like watching the original 1933 King Kong film now and saying "The effects are crap!". Well, sure, they look pretty crappy NOW, because things have moved on and we are used to better. But at the time they were thought amazing. If a director kept making films using those techniques then they would look increasingly bad compared with films made using modern techniques. And that's where Wenger has failed, his once revolutionary ideas about fitness, diet and training are no longer revolutionary. His once revolutionary knowledge of the worldwide game which meant he could cherry pick talent before other clubs even knew about players is no longer revolutionary. The other clubs have caught up and arguably surpassed us in these areas.

I think it's too simplistic to say that it's been 7 years of success and 13 of failure. In the middle phase of the 3 I outlined above I think he did pretty well when money was fairly tight and the billionaires were running amok to keep us relatively competitive. He failed to land another title, maybe without the Eduardo leg break he would have, we will never know. But I don't regard those years as an abject failure. I think he deserved a chance when the money became available to use it to try and compete again. The signings of Ozil, Cech and Sanchez did seem to indicate a change of direction, the FA Cup was a welcome relief after so many trophyless years. But he has failed to push us on and it's increasingly clear he can't.

Wenger is a man making stop motion films in a world of CGI. But back in the day his stop-motion films were brilliant, he was brilliant. He had flaws, sure, every manager does. And I don't believe you or anyone else was particularly prescient about those, his failure as a tactician is not new news. But comments about him being the worst manager Arsenal have had are pretty silly.

Good God. The endless excuses. Why is it you even feel you need to make these excuses for the man? What sort of argument is it to say, yes it is awful now, but remember when it wasn't! What's that supposed to do? What does it give us? Should we keep on taking it up the arse because a decade ago he used to buy us flowers?

Do we have to make these excuses for Bergkamp? Henry?

So fucking what if Wenger ruled the roost in a bygone era? What relevance does that have to what's happening now? It's just the same tired old excuse, he used to be able to do it so he should be forgiven for not being able to do it now. Bollocks.

He's a sellout. That's the real difference and the real change. All the things he did. Well congratulations and they'll never be forgotten. But the sellout is fresher on the memory and just as significant.