Better season

[Letters]

The rhetoric on here isn't 'Wenger doesn't care about winning'. That's just wilful ignorance on your part.

It's more or less a direct quote from some of Zim's posts actually.

I’ve pointed out, with Wenger’s own words, how he doesn’t think like the fans or players. He puts CL qualification over a domestic trophy and that’s the difference from your view along with some fans and players. He doesn’t see the domestic cups as a bigger achievement.

He has a foot in both camps. Obviously he wants to win trophies. Why would any football manager not want to? But he has a background in economics and as the modern game is increasingly a business he sees the value of finishing top 4 because it qualifies you for the CL with all the revenue and prestige that brings.

I think it's pretty obvious what he was saying. He was talking at a time when we hadn't won a trophy for quite a while and was making the point that it's simplistic to see a season when we win a trophy as a 'success' and a season when we don't as a 'failure'.

Clearly finishing 3rd over 38 games is harder than winning a Cup. People have pointed out occasions when lower sides have won the Cup and although those are exceptions they show that in a Cup you can get shock results. Over a league you can't fluke a position in the top 4, you end up there on merit.

It helps explain the barren run and why he never put pressure on himself to go for a domestic trophy in the past.

Now who is making stuff up about what Wenger thinks? Of course he puts pressure on himself, I've heard David Dein say how he has dinner with Wenger after each home game unless we lose in which case they cancel because he's no company when Arsenal have lost. Clearly Wenger doesn't like losing and puts pressure on himself. I'm sure the barren years frustrated him

It’s where you get yourself into a tangle because you put up this staunch defence of Wenger everytime.

No, and I've said this to you before, after our awful start I was pretty firmly in the Wenger Out camp but as we went on the good run, hauled ourselves securely into the top 4, went on the Cup run including the win at Old Trafford my stance softened somewhat. I regard 3rd place and the FA Cup as a pretty decent season, it's 2 trophies in 2 years (I'll leave out the 'major', it's our 3rd priority at the start of the season, but in my estimation it's a far, far bigger prize than the League Cup.

If I could drag up old comments when the whole 4th place is a trophy debacle started, I wouldn’t be surprised if you defended Wenger and played down the cups importance.

Good luck finding that. I've never seen trophies as the be all and end all - I can enjoy a season well enough without them - but clearly a club at our level should be winning them here and there and the number of years without a trophy wasn't good enough. Now the new financial deals are in place we have been signing players which have pushed us on, it's already yielded 2 trophies, we have to push on and properly challenge for the title next year. We should have this year really but after the poor start we gave ourselves no chance. That wasn't good enough but we redeemed ourselves with the good run and the Cup win. IMO that's enough to give Wenger another season, others clearly disagree and that's fine. As someone noted on the latest referendum thread it's all moot anyway, he's staying whatever you or I think.

[Niall_Quinn]

Jet fuel can't melt steel beams.

It can if you use it to fuel a cutting torch.

[Maestro]

Fuck me it gets tiring sometimes

[Power n Glory]

Letter's will always put up a firm defence of whatever decision Wenger makes. Last season when we were top of the table and going into the January transfer window, you should have seen his defence of our inactivity. Supposedly, we had no chance of winning the league, despite being top and the following season we'd have a better shot. My argument, lead from the front and take the opportunity while in contention because we're leading and we can take advantage of our rivals changing managers.

We drop to 4th after leading the league and so we arrive at Letter's 'next season'. This is supposed to be the one where we can challenge plus the FA cup win should fill us with more confidence. What happens? We procrastinated on signing a striker and CB and paid with those decisions early in the season. According to Letter's, this was supposed to be the season where we'd be serious contenders. I'd already written us off because I knew Jose would make sure Chelsea won it. I wasn't wrong and said this last season to Letter's and co.

So lo and behold we arrive at the same conclusion and arguments from Letters. It doesn't help matters when the manager is talking again about not signing a big player and I fear we're in for more déjà vu with the manager and Letter's tired justification for poor decisions by the manager.

[Letters]

Letter's will always put up a firm defence of whatever decision Wenger makes.

Back to the WUMming...

[Niall_Quinn]

They had a much easier run in than us and they didn't have a Cup Final to consider.
They can parade their 2nd place trophy if they like.
You ignored the part about Chelsea slacking off of course.

I certainly have not ignored the part about the chavs slacking off. I previously said it's unforgivable that Wenger yet again failed to get a result against them so we could apply steady pressure during the run-in. He bottled it and they had an easy day at our place. Even so, the fact the chavs went and dropped more points made it even less acceptable for us to do the same. Chances of winning the title were slim to non-existent, but the chance to push them as hard as we could have pushed them to the line was right there in our hands. More importantly, the chance to push ourselves as hard as possible to get the maximum return possible is always there regardless of where we are in the table. Instead we "reasonably" dropped half our available points. Again, winner's mentality versus Wenger's mentality.

I don't believe I heard a single gypo talking about the "2nd place trophy". They had 5 games in front of them, they won five games. That's the goal over the 38 games - win. I never once heard a top sportsman claim it was okay to lose, or understandable to lose. I've heard plenty of losers making excuses for losing though.

If we want that sharpness and endurance and ambition required to win a title then all the excuses you are making need to be purged from the squad and chucked in the bin marked absolutely unacceptable. But our manager accepts these excuses - that's the problem.

[Power n Glory]

It's more or less a direct quote from some of Zim's posts actually.



He has a foot in both camps. Obviously he wants to win trophies. Why would any football manager not want to? But he has a background in economics and as the modern game is increasingly a business he sees the value of finishing top 4 because it qualifies you for the CL with all the revenue and prestige that brings.

I think it's pretty obvious what he was saying. He was talking at a time when we hadn't won a trophy for quite a while and was making the point that it's simplistic to see a season when we win a trophy as a 'success' and a season when we don't as a 'failure'.

Clearly finishing 3rd over 38 games is harder than winning a Cup. People have pointed out occasions when lower sides have won the Cup and although those are exceptions they show that in a Cup you can get shock results. Over a league you can't fluke a position in the top 4, you end up there on merit.



Now who is making stuff up about what Wenger thinks? Of course he puts pressure on himself, I've heard David Dein say how he has dinner with Wenger after each home game unless we lose in which case they cancel because he's no company when Arsenal have lost. Clearly Wenger doesn't like losing and puts pressure on himself. I'm sure the barren years frustrated him



No, and I've said this to you before, after our awful start I was pretty firmly in the Wenger Out camp but as we went on the good run, hauled ourselves securely into the top 4, went on the Cup run including the win at Old Trafford my stance softened somewhat. I regard 3rd place and the FA Cup as a pretty decent season, it's 2 trophies in 2 years (I'll leave out the 'major', it's our 3rd priority at the start of the season, but in my estimation it's a far, far bigger prize than the League Cup.



Good luck finding that. I've never seen trophies as the be all and end all - I can enjoy a season well enough without them - but clearly a club at our level should be winning them here and there and the number of years without a trophy wasn't good enough. Now the new financial deals are in place we have been signing players which have pushed us on, it's already yielded 2 trophies, we have to push on and properly challenge for the title next year. We should have this year really but after the poor start we gave ourselves no chance. That wasn't good enough but we redeemed ourselves with the good run and the Cup win. IMO that's enough to give Wenger another season, others clearly disagree and that's fine. As someone noted on the latest referendum thread it's all moot anyway, he's staying whatever you or I think.

I stopped reading after that response to the barren run. How can you not see how his words regarding the FA being at the bottom of our priority lists and not correlate that to the way he'd field 2nd string players in the competition? And then not correlate that fact with the long streak we had without a trophy?

Maybe if I switch my wording this will connect somehow. Let's say the Board don't see it the domestic cups as a priority, do you think Wenger feel under pressure to win the domestic cups?

[Power n Glory]

Back to the WUMming...

That's how I see it and it's not wumming. That response is the WUM post because you can't answer or defend it.

[Letters]

I stopped reading after that response to the barren run.

Then I guess we're done.
I've done you the courtesy of reading your posts and respond to them, all you've done is tell me what my opinion is and call me a liar when I say different.

[Power n Glory]

Then I guess we're done.
I've done you the courtesy of reading your posts and respond to them, all you've done is tell me what my opinion is and call me a liar when I say different.

Again, you can't defend the part about how Wenger's words and actions correlate because you can't.