Not sure I could return to work if those wankers win itOriginally Posted by Letters
Spurs are, irritatingly, a good side right now. But they have drawn too many so far to be taken too seriously, if they can sort that out then they've got a chance.
Hold me
Absolutely, the better teams have dropped off but the organisation of the smaller teams, rather than any financial or technical improvements have meant they are able to compete weekly on a closer level. I don't think it's a coincidence that both Palace and Leicester ended last season very strongly and they have been two of the most noticeable teams making a mark in the top half of the table. And that level of organisation is a natural evolution when you consider the limitations of how much information exists for that side of the game.
As for ourselves, as a fan I see why the expectation is there to be better than we are but I understand why we're not and as many of those factors exist outside of our club as they do inside it. I won't buy the idea that City's players are disinterested or dropped off because of the situation around their manager. I don't think any modern player lets that affect them because they are used to players/managers coming and going, media speculation constantly swirling around them. When they join a club like City they know what sort of high turnover situation they are walking into. It's the same at nearly any club with pretensions of being big time (and will be here once Wenger leaves - whatever century that is in). Let's not forget City only finished four points above us last season and find themselves in a similar situation right now - underperforming.
In what many are calling a tougher league, with a new keeper we have picked up more points. City have remained static. As have Utd and Liverpool. Chelsea falling off a cliff is just bizarre. The overall quality of the product continues to resemble Sunday park football most weekends. It's a dirge and as such, regardless of the quality we are supposed to have in our team, we are in that swamp too. Let's not forget that our squad at the start of the season was not deemed good enough. And so it is proving to be the case that in an average league, with an average squad, we too look average. Three world class players are not enough as you need a strong squad, which we do not have. Only on paper. Think of how many games we've pubbed wins in the past couple of seasons. That isn't because suddenly all our technical ability has disappeared but the set-up of opponents have made games far more difficult. So many games are marginal now the knock on effect of teams like Atletico, Dortmund, Bayern and to a degree Barca has become integral to work ethic of many teams.
You won't be find me arguing at the end of the season if we screw this up again that Wenger has made mistakes. I was there at the start of the season but I made the decision to hold off and try to enjoy my football (despite its pub-style) until I see where things are once the dust settles. As much as I can see the flaws in our squad and manager I also accept that the league around us is also contributing to them.
Last edited by Kano; 26-01-2016 at 08:00 AM.
I think you are putting too much emphasis on Leicester and Palace - and using their performances to justify your argument that all teams are getting harder to beat. Leicester are a phenomenon - and in many ways a one-off this season. Pardiola always has blue streaks - but Palace are not pulling up any trees this season now. Lower teams have undoubtedly become more organised, as their managers see that the way to unsettle teams that are technically better is to defend with better discipline and to press hard, but that's what football does - it moves in cycles - and its for rich teams with supposedly world class managers like Arsenal to adapt their playing style to cope. For every Leicester or Watford or West Ham this season; there is an Everton; Chelsea or Manure shedding points that they would not have been expected to in past seasons - plus we have taken points from Manure and Citeh that we have failed to do recently, so I'm not sure that our points total so far can be simply laid at the door of a generally improving lower half of the table.
I suppose the more interesting question is why Wenger cannot cope with the 'Sunday football' that you describe. To a degree this is nothing new. The EPL has always favoured footballing sides less than 'blood and thunder' - and its not as though our manager is not used to it FFS! And its even more frustrating when earlier in the season we seemed to have realised that a high pressing, passing game can be flawed and expose us to the kind of counter attacking football that has been our undoing many times this season, yet lately have abandoned this. I accept that to say we should be easily winning this league is to expect that the manager marshals his resources better to face the football that we are seeing - but I don't think this expectation is any less valid for it.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
I’ve only mentioned those two teams as examples once, hardly the crux of my argument! They are just the most noticeable given how they’ve continued their momentum from last season, which has rarely been the case in the past. West Ham are another, Watford, Stoke – there are more to offer. These teams have won more games against the bigger sides than in recent memory and there has to be a reason for that. If it was a couple of teams I think it would be more easily dismissed but there is an pattern emerging. You mention Utd’s struggle, well they are in the expected position given the downfall of their Fergie dynasty, I’m not surprised they are still going through a transition like this and following on from their position under Moyes and struggle for 4th last season, three seasons of it has become the norm, rather than a shock they are shedding points. Everton are just (N)Everton. Close but never quite there. Even under Moyes they went through this up/down cycle of top six/mid-table/bottom half struggles the following season. Martinez is following the exact same pattern at the moment. Chelsea? Well, that’s the odd one out, most probably down to Mourinho’s inside job sabotaging his own work. Who knows.
The richer clubs are supposed to be able to negate this kick ‘n’ rush approach but because the overall quality of player now has declined in every squad, what we see on the pitch reflects that, alongside the higher levels of organisation of their opposition. Football does indeed go in cycles but we can’t dismiss that the finite amount of information for preparing and setting up teams is now spread across every team. All the technology, diets, tactics, training regimes would barely differ I would imagine. The intensity levels may change but when the teams in the top divisions all have access to the same pool, you can’t avoid a levelling out, especially when the quality of player is now marked by their transfer fee, rather than their actual ability. Every other league knows they can rinse the shit out of the Prem, so while overall spending increases in the league, the tangible quality has not. I really don’t think Wenger is alone in struggling to overcome this style for the reasons above and we’re seeing that borne out in the results City and Spurs (I’m using these examples as our closest rivals). Spurs have drawn an awful lot and City, like ourselves, are terribly inconsistent.
Our manager keeps on doing stupid things that don't work. We don't know why he keeps on doing stupid things because he never feels the need to explain his actions.
1. Playing players out of position - one of his favourites. Eventually though, maybe it takes a season or two, he usually concedes and does what everyone else knew all along.
2. Sticking with players who are badly off form and a liability.
3. Using the same tactics regardless of the opponent's strengths and weaknesses.
4. Refusing to buy in the quality we need in the transfer windows. This is probably his all time favourite fuck up. He's always looking for the cheap deal and has bizarre ideas about quality. He genuinely seems to think a player like Vidal couldn't improve on what we already have here, and frankly that's just crazy.
5. Being negative when we should be pressing, being gung-ho when we should be consolidating.
6. Mass squad rotation instead of limited, considered changes.
7. Playing players when they are unfit and then the next week refusing to play players who have the slightest fitness doubt. Totally inconsistent here.
8. Failing to get the players motivated for what he perceives as the smaller games. Really speaking a player on multiple tens of thousands of quid a week should have little problem with motivation, but we know they do. It's the manager's job to take care of that and the number of slow starts we've seen this season (and in the past) is disgraceful.
9. Buying absolute shit and trying to pretend it is not absolute shit when anyone with eyes can figure out they are looking at absolute shit.
10. Crazy subs that unbalance the team or surrender the momentum. Absolutely infuriating.
11. Being horribly predictable in the big games, bar the very rare exception such as the Utd game this season. When he sees a game like that and he sees what the players can do when set up correctly and with the correct tactics, motivation and discipline, what makes him then revert to his tired old bullshit the following week?
12. Sitting on his arse in-game and persisting with what's simply not working. We can get outplayed right up until the 68th or 72nd minute when finally he makes that predictable substitution. Usually he changes nothing in terms of the tactics though. It's like he checks out as soon as the whistle blows for kick off. How many times have you seen him make a change at HT?
13. Complaining about every other team out there in a desperate hunt for excuses so he can avoid speaking about the very obvious weaknesses in his own team and his own management. The complaints are usually loudest when we have just fucked up in a crucial game - again.
14. Failing to instil discipline in his player, or more likely encouraging them to have none at all. The way certain players abandon their post and put huge pressure on the team is a scandal. If Wenger cared about this he'd do something about it wouldn't he?
15. Failing to comprehend the value of momentum. Every win is a mental plus, in the big games, small games, nothing games. We should never go out there thinking the result is not important but how many times have we been on a decent run of form only for a minor game to come up and Wenger throw out a skeleton team who embarrass themselves?
16. Failing to fight to the finish. Our collapse at the tail end of last season once the chavs had won the title showed a deep lack of winning mentality in this manager. To give up before the season ended, that's awful and casts huge doubts on his desire to be the best.
17. Pretending qualification for the CL is a trophy in itself. It isn't. The only way it could be of value is if we then went on to do something of note in the CL. We don't. The 4th place cup is all about the money, not the desire to win anything.
18. Ego and control freakery - refusing to give meaningful roles to his coaching staff. Having too much ego to delegate. Ferguson had great success splitting the load. Clough. Paisley. Wenger just wants yes men in tow.
19. Tippy tappy. What a fucking curse. Sideways, backwards, sideways, backwards, forwards, lose the ball. Repeat ad infinitum. He's destroyed our game and given us the exact opposite of the exhilarating football we used to play. WHY?
20. Chronic stubbornness - even when he knows he's wrong and he know's that everyone knows it too, he persists. This isn't conviction, it's stupidity. It would be conviction if he ever delivered on the back of his decisions but he doesn't and it has got to the point where fans can predict well in advance how, when, where and why he'll fuck it up.
21. Keep filling in your own... I'm sure I have missed many.
His good points.
1. Genuinely decent bloke.
2. Loyalty.
3. Principles, even though they kill us.
4. Wider intelligence off the pitch.
5. His legacy - though that's under threat now.
But is he even a football manager at all?
Anyway, that's why we haven't taken advantage this season. The manager.
Last edited by Niall_Quinn; 26-01-2016 at 12:45 PM.
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My point is that I'm not sure that overall you can look to blame our failure to capitalise this season on the rise of so-called 'lesser' teams. Pretty much swings and roundabouts, for me.
The crux of my argument is your statement thatThe overall quality of players in Arsenal's squad has not declined. It has improved. Yet I don't think our points position is substantively different now to what it's been over the past few seasons (haven't checked but someone will know). By contrast, Spurs have made a step change, and Citeh are uncharacteristically dropping easy points.The richer clubs are supposed to be able to negate this kick ‘n’ rush approach but because the overall quality of player now has declined in every squad
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
As I mentioned in a previous response, I am not solely putting the blame in any one area. I think it's naive to do that, whichever stand point you take. My point is there are a number of reasons why we - and those around us - are playing as we are and many are inconsistent. It's too easy to do that and that is why the analysis of the game is filled by so many retarded pundits.
Our squad has only marginally improved but it is still not good enough, as pointed out by many at the start of the season and that is also part of what we're seeing. Our points tally is better than last year at least and that is probably down to having a better GK and Ozil on his game. We've lost Sanchez for longer and a quarter of our first choice eleven for a couple of months. Ox and Theo are awful. Bellerin and Monreal are great. Merts is not as stable. Flamini and Ramsey are a disaster zone together. The back up is Arteta. Campbell has shone through. You can take the minuses and pluses and still struggle to figure out the real difference when basing it entirely on our squad. So you have to try to encompass ourselves, opposition, quality of players, league - and it's all still a guess at best.
That's all I'm offering but I'd rather base it on a wider range or criterea than just the problems our manager poses because as fans of the club we choose to be myopic at the best of times, whether positive or negative. City were underperforming last season and even when they have won the title, usually leave it to the last minute, while Tottenham are overperforming when you look at the age and inexperience in their squad, again, all very much based on the organisation of their set-up.
Last edited by Kano; 26-01-2016 at 01:53 PM.
We had 42 points from 24 games last season. This season we are on 44 after 23 games, clear improvement but it could have been much better had we not dropped points in the last 3 games.
All that might be true, pluses and minuses and difficult with direct comparisons - fair enough.
But we have one thing that's not intangible. The manager. Fix that and you haven't fixed every issue but you've taken a massive stride forward. There may be other broken parts but why leave the biggest malfunctioning part of all in place without question?
However, he's here until 2019. And that means, whatever else is fixed, the main problem won't be.
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I agree. We can’t keep looking at outside factors as a way to explain our short comings. The leagues supposedly weaker yet with our new financial muscle we’re just as weak as before?Certain things are beyond our control but when it comes to investing in players, improving them, team selection, injuries….that’s within our control. Leicester City are top the table! That says enough. All this talk reminds of Wenger’s financial doping excuses. It’s time to stop it. Even with the doped up teams on their knees we can’t take advantage but somehow Leicester City are able to.
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