Can we win the Premier League again under Wenger ?

[Niall_Quinn]

There was no debate about whether we could win. We kept going until it was mathematically impossible for us to win.
I'm defining winning as being champions, it's only you who regard 2nd place as winning. The comparison with F1 doesn't stack up, in that sport 2nd place is significant in terms of points which go towards the championship, in football it makes no difference, you're either champions or you're not.

The only other way we could win after the title was gone last year was to finish the job in the Cup and we did.

Trying to turn your shitty excuses around and pin them on me? That won't fly. Nobody would race against Bolt if they all had your philosophy.

Winners fight until the end. Every winner knows that. The reason losers can't figure it out is because they are losers. And the distinction you try to make between one competitive sport and another, that's just hilarious. You'd do anything to apologise for the non-performance at Arsenal over the last decade. Money has been a central plank to your strategy. And then when we have a chance to finish above a team with the most money of all you claim there's no point because we couldn't finish above the chavs too. How convenient and what a crock of shit. A push to the line and the money argument would have been blown away.

Very true, money cheats make the challenge tougher, but not impossible - as we saw last season. But we all know we don't have a manager with a winner's mentality. Some of us admit it openly, others stay silent, other gush excuses and try to divert attention.

Your philosophy is what has to be purged from the club if we really want to see a sustained challenge at the top.

Sorry to be harsh but it's sickening to listen to you sometimes. Not just on football but mostly everything. If there's some sort of establishment declaration of conformity or a reason to blend into the herd then your are 100% behind it. And that just ends up riling those who strive for the opposite. Don't forget, without endeavour and ambition and non-conformity you can't actually have laziness, the mundane or the calming peace and security of subservience.

[Letters]

My philosophy is that winning, in the context of the league, is being Champions.
Once that was gone winning was the FA Cup, not the 2nd place trophy.

The money thing isn't an argument. I don't need to argue that money and success are correlated, look in the history books.
The counter argument is always to give a rare counter example. That is the level of logic that argues against smoking being bad for you by giving an example of so and so's granddad who smoked all his life and lived till 93. Yes, that can happen, but it's rare and isn't a counter-argument against the general point. Over the course of a season the sides who have pumped the most money in will tend to rise to the top. Now the financial constraints have come off we should be able to mix it with sides like Chelsea and City, I expect us to this year.

[Kano]

How is it nonsense? The three sides who have won the title since we last did are Utd and the two billionaire cheats. All sides with bigger resources than us for different reasons.

I regard it as cheating because it's not money they've earned through previous success, they haven't worked their way up (although I accept in today's game that is virtually impossible, I don't think we'll see anyone do a Wimbledon, or what Forest did). If we're guilty,of anything it's exploiting our fans but what is the alternative? Mid-table? And if we are doing that, we can only do so because of our fan base which comes from our previous success.

We've earned our place at the top table, City and Chelsea haven't.

I agree with a lot of your post but those two clubs have completely distorted the market and bought their way to titles, it's completely relevant to whether we'll win the league under Wenger again, or any manager actually.

'Earned' our place by ripping off the fans, are you really so comfortable with that sentiment? Of course it was all done via the free market, so perfectly 'legal' and above board of course but does that make it any less galling? That period of 'austerity' certainly wasn't one for the fans who wanted to continue seeing their club, quite the opposite in fact. As a club we can't talk about an honourable route to success, that no longer exists in the game. You either have to swallow, or ignore, the foul neoliberal bastardisation across the board, or not at all.

We are not Arsenal, shining a moral light in the game, fending off the dark forces. We are owned by two of them for Christ sake. Chelsea and City would probably pose the question the other way round, as in how else were they going to join the top table? If it hadn't of happened our league would be like Spain, France, Germany or Italy, dominated by a couple of clubs. There is an argument to be had for both sides because as usual nothing is clear cut but the common denominator is the immoral methods used to maximise profit.

[Letters]

I don't like the way we rip off our fans, part of the reason I don't go any more is the cost although there are other factors. But I don't see how else we could hope to compete with the billionaire-fueled sides, and we're only able to charge those ticket prices because of our huge fanbase which has come about through previous success.
I don't like a lot of things about the way modern football is and I agree that there's no other way in the modern game to join the top table but spare me the bollox about their 'achievements' and 'ambition'. Pumping money in till you succeed isn't an achievement, Chelsea showed it could be done, City have showed you can do it with any club if you pump enough money in for long enough.

[Niall_Quinn]

I don't need to argue that money and success are correlated, look in the history books.

Of course you don't - not when you class blowing a points advantage over one of these money clubs, "understandable". The convenience of it all is so neat it should be tied with a bow. The self fulfilling excuse.

Liverpool, Dortmund, Atletico and us last season if we'd have had a manager with balls - these are the tell-tale signs of a bullshit cover story.

Anyway, Arsene can make his own excuses. Not sure why you have to make them for him.

[Maestro]

It could even be argued that a major reason for Chelsea's success last season is Mourinho. As much as they have infinite money to buy players, they played some of the most mundane and turgid shit last season. Their coach knows how to tactically set them up "not to loose", period and that is one of their biggest assets. Yes they needed a playmaker and a striker ....went out and got them sharpish.

We needed a DM, CD and a top striker ...guess what we went into last season without any of those signings and money wasn't the issue, struggling until January when we bought Gabriel and brought back Coq from loan.

A lot of us have time for Wenger and what he's done for us, but we are not blinded as to his obvious shortcomings, which have and continue to handicap success right at the top. The excuses are gone for him and he is fully exposed now, so he really has to go for it now.

[Özim]

have you seen our recent signings? Thats surely the definition of strengthening the squad. In the last two years, he has signed, Ozil, Alexis, Gabriel and Cech. Thats three world class players and a good defender. He didn't even need to sign Cech (i wouldn't have said a keeper was number 1 priority this summer), but he became available so he has sent out Scesney on loan to get a world class keeper in.

You say he would have identified weaknesses and changed them if he was a good manager. He has. You don't sign Alexis, Ozil and Cech if you aren't trying to improve the squad. He has signed good back up players recently too in Debuchy, Chambers, Ospina and Gabriel. He didn't get lucky with making players world beaters either, he stuck by Ramsey and now he is one of our best players. He stuck with Giroud and was rewarded with 19 goals last year (and he was out for three months) Koscienly under his guidance has become one of the best defenders in the world, and Bellerin came in last season and was outstanding. Thats not luck, thats his management on the training ground to get those players to perform on the pitch. The only one i would say was due to luck was Coqulain and how he got his chance.

His tactics could be better, but if you look at the second half of the season, they were. The city game was the prime example, he got every decision spot on and we produced one of the best performances i have seen from us in years. The final he got it right again. We won big games in the second half because of his tactical decisions, the way he set the team up etc. Thats not luck. I think from january to the end of the season, we won the most points, yes its no good doing it for half a season, however one difference between that and the first half was the amount of injuries we suffered. I read somewhere that between the start and january, we lost over a 1000 days to players being injured, in the second half we lost just 700 as Shad Forsythe's methods started to work (they were never going to be an instant success). So we suffer less injuries and suddenly our form goes right up as key players all stayed fit. We lost Ozil, Giroud, Koscienly, Walcott, Ox, Ospina and Wilshere to long term injuries last year, all players who by end of the season were either first choice or pushing very close to being starters. This year, we also have a full pre season, only Sanchez isn't back training, but he's probably running marathons in Chile to get his fitness up.

So basically to sum up, your post is just the same old boring crap you just spout about Wenger without actually looking at what he is doing. He needs to now transfer the second half season form into the full season, and given we have less injuries, and a full pre season, there is no reason why we can't. However just to say he doesn't strengthen and relies on lady luck, is just stupid, wrong and boring. I would hope in the summer he does manage to get Benezma, that would be outstanding, but the squad as it is, can compete for the title. They showed it last year when they were all fully fit.

Yes some of the recent signings are great, can't help but think 1 or 2 of them were caused by immense pressure from the fans discontent (Ozil in particular), the way I see it he doesn't identify weaknesses and fix them, he signs players because he likes them not because we need them that's the problem and why we have a huge amount of AM and very few out and out strikers. Giroud without being disrespectful is nothing special, he misses key chances which are the difference between a team who can be champions and one that can't.

Injuries are down to his methods surely, we've had horrendous injuries for years and yet it's taken him the best part of 10 years to cotton on, either he's slow on the uptake or just oblivious to certain issues.

Where's the striker we've needed for about 3 years? Where's the DM we've needed since the beginning of time? Why do we only have one gameplan? Why did we get knocked out of the CL by Monaco last season if we're so good and Wenger is doing such a good job? How did we chuck away 2nd place if Wenger is so great? That's the questions I want to know the answers to, sadly I'm not expecting any answers as he never really seems to manage to give anyone the answers they want to hear these days.

[hobson's choice]

No

[GP]

No

[fakeyank]

Where's the striker we've needed for about 3 years? Where's the DM we've needed since the beginning of time? Why do we only have one gameplan? Why did we get knocked out of the CL by Monaco last season if we're so good and Wenger is doing such a good job? How did we chuck away 2nd place if Wenger is so great? That's the questions I want to know the answers to, sadly I'm not expecting any answers as he never really seems to manage to give anyone the answers they want to hear these days.

But we have made progress..