Quote Originally Posted by Letters View Post
It really hasn't. Are you new here? Agreed that more people have become disillusioned with him as time has gone by but after a couple of years people were whining on here, certainly after 3 and we never had a season anything like as bad as Dortmund did last year. As you say, at worst we were touch and go for top 4, we never flirted with relegation.


Agreed, but a lot of that time was when we were financially hamstrung by the new stadium move, the billionaires were running amok and our top players were being poached too.

It is difficult to compare Wenger and Klopp, different leagues, different situations. But I still maintain that if we'd ever had a season like Dortmund had last year I don't think anyone on here would be defending Wenger ("You would, Letter's" - just thought I'd type that to save you doing so), even if it was only a few years after our last major trophy. Players poached or not, they were in the relegation zone in February. Can you imagine this place if that happened to us?!
People were unhappy with the lack of spending and wondering what was going on behind the scenes. 3 years after our last trophy we were close to winning the league and it was the project youth era. People had faith in his youth development skills back then and his eye for talent. He was never a strong tactician but people weren't questioning that so heavily. There would have been heavy criticism of the players, board and manager if we'd have been close to relegation but over the years, the scapegoating and talk of individual players have decreased, the talk of the Board and owners not supporting the club has quietened down as well. Because of the extended run of bad form and different Arsenal players and teams showing the same hallmarks of mental fragility and weakness, the focus is firmly on Wenger.

If he'd have gone after 3 years having a season like Klopp's, I don't think he'd get the sort of hammering he's getting now. He'd get some but not concentrated. The Board would be in the firing line and so would the players that let him down. Opinions would be divided on how we've fallen and who's most to blame. With such a steep and sharp decline, it's hard to pinpoint where exactly things have gone wrong. But because it's been a long run, because we've changed players and had brand new teams with the same problems, that same lapse in concentration and frailty and because we now know we have money in the bank without question and Wenger didn't spend on any outfield player, he's bearing the brunt. I've said this before, but if we had sudden decline and swift Wenger exit, the flaws as a manager wouldn't have been so obvious. It's taken years to spot the patterns.