Quote Originally Posted by Letters View Post
Re Wenger's management (or lack thereof) of the team and the way we play.

This is not a new thing. Wenger has always been like this. He sets the team up to play a certain way but gives the players freedom too. People keep on picking up faults Wenger has and acting like he's suddenly developed these faults. He hasn't.

Wenger's job is results, When he won big trophies it was because we had a better team than everyone else. He let the players express themselves and they did the rest, helped by a strong captain. Now we don't have a strong captain and we don't have a better side than everyone else and with the money sloshing around in the game we're unlikely to again.

BUT we do have a better team than most. We have a better team than Swansea, or Watford, or a very weakened Utd side. The players don't get off the hook for those results. IMO the lack of a strong captain to demand more of them in games like that - Wenger has always needed that to help him - is the biggest factor in our recent collapse.

But, ultimately, Wenger is responsible for results. The buck stops with him. But I don't absolve the players of blame. You shouldn't need a manager to kick you up the collective backside when you're 2 nil down against Watford and you're going out of the Cup. They showed in the last 10 minutes what they can play like, just get going 10 minutes earlier and we'd have won. The twats.
Our style of football has completely changed in that time as well though.

His 20 years are like two contrasting sides. The first 10 years was tough playing, fast, counter attacking football with the fancy stuff thrown in for fun because we could.

However the last 10 years have been slow, technical (technically bad tbh), tippy tappy, passing instead of shooting, boringly predictable, uninspiring, namby pamby, slow & boring drivel.

It's no surprise to see that when you take the decent game out of the players then the faults of wengers management and his 'vision' of how the game should be played are laid bare for all to see.

And he comes up drastically short.