Match Reaction vs West Ham (away).

[Letters]

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Wenger the Wise?

Never underestimate the power of the farce...

[Cripps]

All I know is that what I am watching is shit and progressively getting worse whenever I have the stomach to watch it.

There is no way we are even going to stand still with Wenger in charge. It just gets worse and worse with zero confidence it will ever improve under Wenger.

Well said

As you say, it's declining and getting worse and worse

Hate being right

[Niall_Quinn]

If we carry on like this there's a small chance we won't win the league this season.

No we know who to blame if we get pipped at the post.

[Letters]

No we know who to blame if we get pipped at the post.

Oil money? Right?

[Niall_Quinn]

On a nice brisk Friday morning with me having got my work done yesterday so not having to rush around like a hungover person who didn't get their work done, I don't really care much about him or the club. I'll judge him at the end of the day.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

I think the problem is that the rot is so slow that it will convince people it’s not happening

Since 2009, not been able to go through a league season losing less than 7 games
Since 2015, despite 15 attempts we haven’t been able to register an away victory at a top six side
Between 2011 and 2017, no matter who we were drawn with we couldn’t get into the 1/4 finals of the champions league
Haven’t won more than 14 out of 19 home games since 2010
Cannot challenge for the league without spectacular collapse February/March time since we last won it

[Power n Glory]

Because that marked the end of 2 years of decline from the brilliance of The Invincibles in 2004 to 2006 where we just barely scraped top 4.
THAT was the decline. Since then we've been bumbling around in the top 4 but mostly towards the bottom of the top 4.
I don't know why you think I'm focusing on points tally. I gave points tally, final league position and points off the top for each season.
All of those give some indication of how we've done and none of those metrics show a consistent decline since 2006.


Because no-one would sensibly argue that we are as good as we were at the start of Wenger's time with us. What people have argued for much of the last 10 years is that we are "in decline". That just isn't bourne out by the facts. It was you who asked me "draw a graph based on our league position and not points tally and tell me there has been no decline.". So I did. You could be simplistic about it and draw a line from 1998 when we finished 1st and last season when we finished 5th and say "See? There has been consistent decline". But that doesn't reflect the reality of what has happened. It would be equally dishonest to draw a line between 1998 and 2016 and say "See? We've only slipped from 1st to 2nd"

The reality is this:
From 1998 to 2004 we finished either 1st or 2nd every year. If anything our quality improved over those years.
Then there was 2 years of serious decline.
Since then we've finished either 3rd or 4th every year. The points tally, the league position, the points off the top. There has been no consistent gradual decline in any of those things since then.

If you disagree with that then I'd be interested to hear on what basis.

The quality of football has declined certainly and we are in danger of slipping down another level but it's too early to tell whether last year's 5th place was a blip or the sign of things to come.

This is where it gets ridiculous. You set the parameters of the argument and choose to focus on a date range I never mentioned or even originally referred to. You say there has been a massive decline compared to our earlier years in the above post but omit that from discussion in previous posts and somehow still conclude there has been no decline because you’re sticking to this well-defined date range that excludes where we have seriously dropped off.

Let me show you what I’m referring to when looking at another decline since we can both can agree that we’ve dropped off from the title challenging days. This is about what we’ve seen in recent seasons and I’ll give some context.

2016 – 2nd - 71 points
2017 – 5th – 75 points
2018 - ??

It’s worth noting that you’re not speaking to someone that has predicted we’d drop out of the top 4 each year. In fact, if you remember correctly, in 2013 when we signed the new sponsorship deals and Fergie retired. I argued with you and few others that this was our window of opportunity to win the title. Remember that debate? All of our rivals around us were unstable and going through transitions themselves whilst we looked the most stable and if we had bought correctly etc., we could have won the title. We could have capitalised off the chaos but we lost our footing . Two seasons later, Leicester showed us how to capitalise off chaos and won the tile whilst our rivals were going through another phase of turmoil.

We’ve gone from 2nd to finishing 5th last season. That’s a decline. Don’t dress it up as a blip. I’d go as far to say our 2nd place finish was a blip because we had a season where our rivals were at their absolute worse and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a season like that again. With teams around us getting better, what if the usual 70 odd points isn’t enough to get us Top 4? By standing still we get left behind. It’s as simple as that and that’s without me even getting into the whole tactical side of the things and the repeated errors we see from the club and manager.

[GP]

I think the problem is that the rot is so slow that it will convince people it’s not happening

Since 2009, not been able to go through a league season losing less than 7 games
Since 2015, despite 15 attempts we haven’t been able to register an away victory at a top six side
Between 2011 and 2017, no matter who we were drawn with we couldn’t get into the 1/4 finals of the champions league
Haven’t won more than 14 out of 19 home games since 2010
Cannot challenge for the league without spectacular collapse February/March time since we last won it

Le boiled frog

[Cripps]

This is where it gets ridiculous. You set the parameters of the argument and choose to focus on a date range I never mentioned or even originally referred to. You say there has been a massive decline compared to our earlier years in the above post but omit that from discussion in previous posts and somehow still conclude there has been no decline because you’re sticking to this well-defined date range that excludes where we have seriously dropped off.

Let me show you what I’m referring to when looking at another decline since we can both can agree that we’ve dropped off from the title challenging days. This is about what we’ve seen in recent seasons and I’ll give some context.

2016 – 2nd - 71 points
2017 – 5th – 75 points
2018 - ??

It’s worth noting that you’re not speaking to someone that has predicted we’d drop out of the top 4 each year. In fact, if you remember correctly, in 2013 when we signed the new sponsorship deals and Fergie retired. I argued with you and few others that this was our window of opportunity to win the title. Remember that debate? All of our rivals around us were unstable and going through transitions themselves whilst we looked the most stable and if we had bought correctly etc., we could have won the title. We could have capitalised off the chaos but we lost our footing . Two seasons later, Leicester showed us how to capitalise off chaos and won the tile whilst our rivals were going through another phase of turmoil.

We’ve gone from 2nd to finishing 5th last season. That’s a decline. Don’t dress it up as a blip. I’d go as far to say our 2nd place finish was a blip because we had a season where our rivals were at their absolute worse and it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a season like that again. With teams around us getting better, what if the usual 70 odd points isn’t enough to get us Top 4? By standing still we get left behind. It’s as simple as that and that’s without me even getting into the whole tactical side of the things and the repeated errors we see from the club and manager.

PnG you've really got to stop putting Lettuce in his place like that. Will he be able to come back from this? Doubt it. He'll probably give it a go though in true AKB spirit.

Lettuce

[Niall_Quinn]

I think the problem is that the rot is so slow that it will convince people it’s not happening

Since 2009, not been able to go through a league season losing less than 7 games
Since 2015, despite 15 attempts we haven’t been able to register an away victory at a top six side
Between 2011 and 2017, no matter who we were drawn with we couldn’t get into the 1/4 finals of the champions league
Haven’t won more than 14 out of 19 home games since 2010
Cannot challenge for the league without spectacular collapse February/March time since we last won it

You're looking at the wrong metrics. We are consistently outperforming our major rivals.

Of course he didn't specify who our major rivals are. I think we are supposed to assume that bit.