Random Arsenal Shit (When it's not worth starting a thread)

[Master Splinter]

What if it's as simple as a guy losing his touch as he gets older? That, and he doesn't adapt or evolve even slightly.

[Cripps]

[Niall_Quinn]

88 per cent of AST voted for Arsenal ending Wenger contract this summer. Last season (first they surveyed fans on topic) 78 per cent voted against a new deal for manager.

2 more years then

So 12 percent are certifiably insane or hate the club?

[Niall_Quinn]

What if it's as simple as a guy losing his touch as he gets older? That, and he doesn't adapt or evolve even slightly.

This degree of decline would suggest serious mental issues. Which is what I have suggested. The guy might be mentally ill. Doesn't mean he has to run starkers up and down the road, but if certain mental faculties have been impaired then it would help maintain his legacy. He should plead insanity.

[HCZ]

If only to try and figure out why he's now so inept at everything he touches. It's not good enough to say the game moved on but he didn't and just accept that. Why didn't he move too? Why did he watch the game moving for a decade and do fuck all to react? What happened to his great powers that he supposedly has to bring through young talent and build title challenging teams despite a lack of resources? These powers have been tested and he's come up lacking every time. So this means something very significant has affected his capabilities over the intervening years, or he never possessed these capabilities in the first place. And if the latter is true then we need to give a bit more respect to those who deserve it and stand back a bit from those who have been basking in the credit. Basking in the credit to the degree fans who question any of this are called disloyal. And basking to the point where he's been give extra years that he'd never have been granted at any other club.

Because some people don’t adapt, in fact the majority of managers don’t adapt and that’s why you have managers that are of their time and managers that stand the test of time and Wenger falls into the former category

If you want to see managers falling to adapt, the guy once considered the greatest manager ever in the game struggling against Palace and risking losing three away games on the spin.

[HCZ]

This degree of decline would suggest serious mental issues. Which is what I have suggested. The guy might be mentally ill. Doesn't mean he has to run starkers up and down the road, but if certain mental faculties have been impaired then it would help maintain his legacy. He should plead insanity.

It’s more if you think you can hold your trainers together with duct tape rather than replace them, don’t be surprised if after a while it comes loose and you are walking home barefoot and stepping on dog shit and broken glass

[Power n Glory]

Whilst I don’t disagree I find the Ox example strange

Maybe I’m not seeing the same things as other people are but he doesn’t seem a remarkably better player at Liverpool, maybe I’m being unfair and he will need time.

Maybe he isn’t that great to begin with. And I’m saying that as someone who loved the Ox when he was with us

I said it's why Ox left not that Ox has arrived at Liverpool and instantly a better player. The damage to Ox has been done and it will take time for him to unlearn the bullshit at Arsenal.

Everyone here said Ox would be a far better player than Walcott. Now look at him. Ox has all the physical and technical tools in his locker to be a top player except the decision making and consistency with execution. We have many players that have that same problem.... Theo, Ramsey, Wilshere, Gibbs. We had high hopes for all of them. Iwobi is going through the same problem right now. Bellerin too. Nelson next if Wenger stays on.

[Niall_Quinn]

Because some people don’t adapt, in fact the majority of managers don’t adapt and that’s why you have managers that are of their time and managers that stand the test of time and Wenger falls into the former category

If you want to see managers falling to adapt, the guy once considered the greatest manager ever in the game struggling against Palace and risking losing three away games on the spin.

So he's a one trick pony whose trick expired a decade and a half ago. I think he's better off with the insanity plea.

[Letters]

Everyone hates the poxy stadium. Arsenal has died in that stadium, and it has been a primary cause of the demise. It has delivered nothing except higher ticket prices and more tourists. So he'd better hope the whole stadium disaster is not his legacy.

As a stadium it's about a million times better than Highbury. It is soulless - partly because of the lack of history but that can only come about with time. Were the internet around a hundred years ago your great grandfather would probably be whining on it about Highbury and asking what was wrong with South London. The fact that we haven't had a title there is a factor, we haven't had a really successful side since we've been there, things like that create memories.
The fact is we had to do it. We've pondered for years whether Wenger could really compete these days, clearly he can't. I held out hope longer than most but whatever, we're on the same page about that now. But the next chap would be massively hindered in his attempts to do so were we still at Highbury. Every other top club has expanded, moved grounds or is looking to. The fact that we have a fanbase large enough to fill it is pretty much down to Wenger and the success and style of football in the early years. Our average home attendance in 1993/4 was around 30,000, and that year we finished 4th and won the CWC. It was only a few years after the last Graham title.

And why wouldn't the fans paying top prices consider a distant 6th place as anything other than disaster? What should it be considered as?

It's nowhere near good enough, given our resources. But you have to concede that those resources and the fanbase which generates them are in no small part down to Wenger.

And what does it matter if we were once properly shite? Not properly shite enough to ever get relegated, can I use that like you are using the 6th place "disaster' thing? Football was different back then. We may not have been winning titles until George Graham appeared, but we still pitched up in the FA Cup enough times, and isn't winning that supposed to be a sign of success?

It matters because it provides some historic context. We've always been a big club but not since the 1930s were we the best side in the country for a sustained period of time.
I'm not sure what you mean by "pitched up". We won the FA Cup in 1971, 1979 and 1993 before Wenger joined.
We've won it that many times in the previous 4 seasons and everyone is wailing and gnashing their teeth. But that's because our expectations have changed. That level of expectation comes in no small part from Wenger's early time with us. Before that we never had that expectation.
We've pretty much never been properly shite enough to get relegated - but we never had any expectations of a title challenge. Maybe a hope we would but those hopes were generally dashed pretty early in the season. And we were much more erratic. We nearly became "Invincibles" in 1991, two years later it was the height of boring boring Arsenal and while we did win both domestic cups that year our league form was such that at one point I genuinely believed we'd be dragged into a relegation scrap. Our last 27 league games our results were W6 D9 L12. We scored 40 goals in 42 league games. That season we clearly concentrated our efforts on the cups but these days that isn't acceptable, we expect to be competing on all fronts. We didn't expect that before Wenger.

I hope Wenger goes sooner rather than later. Every season - it's getting to the stage where it's every match - further damages his legacy and reputation. But I hope when he goes and the smoke clears people will remember the good times. My happiest memories of Arsenal are from his time with us, most people's are. Clough took Forest down in the end and I think he's still regarded as a Forest hero, all Wenger's done is failed to sustain the early success and is now not even able to maintain his record of keeping us in the top 4.

Like any manager he has strengths and weaknesses. Those strengths revolutionised us as a club and it revolutionised the game over here. It brought us a sack of trophies and a level and style of football I never thought I'd see Arsenal ascend to. Those weaknesses failed to make the most of one of the great squads in English club history - he never won the CL, he never retained a title. Other clubs have caught up and now surpassed us. But while top 4 shouldn't be the limit of our ambitions, keeping us in there, and the FA Cups, show Wenger hasn't got everything wrong. I just wish he'd gone at the end of last season, that was his last chance to be applauded out the door.

[Letters]

People don't like revisionism but I think it's now important we look back on his successes armed with the knowledge we have now.

Why is it important?