Who Will Win The League - 2

[Niall_Quinn]

I think what the players are guilty of is complacency. Wenger can only do so much but when they step onto the pitch you'd expect a certain degree of fight and professionalism, that should come from within.

I'm sure he doesn't tell them to only turn up for 15 minutes a game and dick around for the rest. Where he does need to take the bulk of the blame though is the failure to get a response from these players, probably due to them knowing they will receive ample opportunity to put things right even if it's too late.

I'm pretty damn sure he does. His stupid fucking red zones and efficiency and make the opponent chase the ball, and tippy tappy triangles. It's not football, it's some form of weird energy management regime that is constantly preserving the players for something that never arrives.

[Power n Glory]

I think what the players are guilty of is complacency. Wenger can only do so much but when they step onto the pitch you'd expect a certain degree of fight and professionalism, that should come from within.

I'm sure he doesn't tell them to only turn up for 15 minutes a game and dick around for the rest. Where he does need to take the bulk of the blame though is the failure to get a response from these players, probably due to them knowing they will receive ample opportunity to put things right even if it's too late.

All teams are guilty of complacency. There are only a handful of sporting individuals that never switch off. I'm talking the Michael Jordan's, Ronaldo's, Messi's Schumacher's....that abnormal concentration and hunger to train and be the very best. Not everyone is like that. They need a motivational character to keep them on track when things go slightly off and when they start to doubt. Or to be taken to the side and shown the steps again to recover that confidence. It's human nature.

Where Wenger really screws us is the culture he breeds throughout the club. He doesn't say anything at half time and just leaves the players to themselves only to speak in the last few minutes before they go out again for the next half. It's no coincidence we often concede right after half time and look half asleep making a slow start. Wenger chooses not to shout orders from the touchline to remind them of where they're going wrong. He told Pat Rice not to shout down the touchline and you can see Bould in most games doing the same. I takes no care in who should be captain and says all our players a leaders! Bollocks. Is Wilshere a leader? What example is he setting off the pitch with his smoking and clubbing?

Yes, the players should have some pride and fight. They really should. But I don't think it's intentional. When something is badly organised there is only so much you can do. Wenger is out here praising our mental strength.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/footba...hailed-7681132

Now if it goes belly up for us this season and the manager is saying we had the right mental attitude what's the problem we have here? It can't be technical because our players should be miles ahead of what's above us in the league.

[Niall_Quinn]

so what about the winning teams he created? (wenger that is)

Totally different philosophy. Maximum effort from super fit players over 90 minutes. Power, movement at pace, direct. Bang, bang, bang, goal. We were famed for scoring from opposition corners. Opponents were on their guard when they were in our half, always frightened because if they lost the ball we'd be up the other end in seconds. Now look at us. Sideways, sideways, back, the opponent has all the time in the world. We play an idiotic system that give the opponent every chance. I don't know when Wenger got scared and became so conservative. Maybe that 2006 FA Cup final where we played anti-football for maybe the first time under Wenger. Horrible match. We robbed them. It was embarrassing.

[Power n Glory]

so what about the winning teams he created? (wenger that is)

The old GG team had a different mentality. They'd talk to each other and wouldn't take any crap if someone wasn't doing a proper job. Henry learned that mentality from them also and has recently said it players seem afraid to talk to each other these days. I don't know if that's the case for other clubs but it feels like that for ours.

Also, we had the confidence in the Premier League and domestic cups but we looked a totally different team in Europe. That confidence wasn't there and it's why we had a poor record in Europe.

[alexander]

Dont get me wrong, I would like a change of manager, but some of the stuff on he that gets leveled at him is just plain stupid.

Its like he was not really responsible for anything he has won with this club. It was the players that were there with GG that passed things on, he didnt buy the back four, he tells them to go and play for only 15 mins, any wins are due to players taking things into their own hands. On the other hand when they dont win its because they didnt have a winning mentality instilled in them by Wenger. Players he looks at buying are no good and only the ones from this `stat-dna` computer thing or whatever its called are worth a rub. We maybe did bore our way through that final, but that was what was needed at the time, had we played like we had been, gung-ho we would have been beaten. He changed tactics to win. You seem annoyed we won it by in that way, would you rather we lost? in which case you would have moaned. I understand people want change but come on, we are starting to rubbish his entire career at arsenal now!

I just think some of the rubbish on here gets a bit much. If he wins because of good tactics and team selections he gets the praise, equally if he messes up because of poor choice of team or tactics, he deserves to be held to account. If he gets us to a CL final (I know that wont happen!!) and we bore the shit out of the game and win, well thats what it takes, winning first, then winning looking pretty second.

Give him his dues for what he has done for not only the club, but the league, and what he has won us and that we are a massively rich club. Yes he has seems to have been struggling these last few years, but its certainly not all his fault, and not through want of trying. Dont make him out to be some moron that has no idea about the game and wants us to do the bare minimum and fail. Thats just stupid.

[Niall_Quinn]

Is there anyone here trying to deprive Wenger of credit for the first stage of his career at Arsenal? Not sure there is. For me it's the special nature of that early success and the type of football we played that makes it even harder to bear his cowardice and two-faced dealings in later years.

[alexander]

Is there anyone here trying to deprive Wenger of credit for the first stage of his career at Arsenal? Not sure there is. For me it's the special nature of that early success and the type of football we played that makes it even harder to bear his cowardice and two-faced dealings in later years.

Well you are tracking back to 2006 now, 12 years ago. Power n Glory is saying Henry learnt the mentality from GG teams players, totally negating Wenger then? he had no involvement? and he didnt pass it on then? I read over and over that Wengers early success was built on GG back four. Yes, those players were there before he arrived, but they were doing very little until he arrived. I just feel the anger towards Wenger is mostly unjust. He isnt perfect, but he isnt the shower of shite that some are making him out to be.
Im still in the change manager camp though, although I fear us ending up like ManU.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

Is there anyone here trying to deprive Wenger of credit for the first stage of his career at Arsenal? Not sure there is. For me it's the special nature of that early success and the type of football we played that makes it even harder to bear his cowardice and two-faced dealings in later years.

I think Zims hatred of Wenger is pathalogical

I am fairly relieved that he has no more say in who replaces Wenger than the rest of us (nil) because he seems to be under the impression that anyone and everyone would be better than L'Ouisseau.

Or you get cretins like Piers Morgan who said in August that he'd take Gary Neville as Arsenal manager in a heartbeat. The kind of cretinous remark that anyone who isn't Piers Morgan would have occasion to regret making.

And whilst there are people who can definitely take us forward where he can, I think we have to be incredibly careful in who we choose. And I am inclined to think without a change at the board level that we won't be significantly better off whoever comes in.

[Niall_Quinn]

Well you are tracking back to 2006 now, 12 years ago. Power n Glory is saying Henry learnt the mentality from GG teams players, totally negating Wenger then? he had no involvement? and he didnt pass it on then? I read over and over that Wengers early success was built on GG back four. Yes, those players were there before he arrived, but they were doing very little until he arrived. I just feel the anger towards Wenger is mostly unjust. He isnt perfect, but he isnt the shower of shite that some are making him out to be.
Im still in the change manager camp though, although I fear us ending up like ManU.

I haven't mentioned Graham's back four, so dealing with just the 2006 final I believe it was a nasty turning point in the mentality of the club as a whole. It was as if we singled out a showcase event to announce our shift in focus. And we certainly delivered thereafter, in every negative sense. That was the end of Wenger MkI, fittingly smack in the middle of his tenure. Wenger MkII has been nothing short of disgraceful, though inertia has eased the decline in terms of the right and proper backlash which eventually had to come. All this keeping us top 4 crap can be easily translated into keeping CL cash pouring in. All the most notable landmarks in the period have taken place in the boardroom rather than on the pitch. This has been the decade where Wenger assisted some rather unsavoury characters in dismantling the football club and rebuilding it as a business. I could have lived with that if the football had survived the transition but it didn't. And for a manager do go backwards so comprehensively in terms of what ought to be his primary concern, the football, is shameful. He has no excuses. It's simply not valid to say the chavs or the gypos or the economy forced him to deliver shit, boring, conservative crap when he'd already demonstrated what he was capable of. A reversal like that is cowardice. I give him every credit for his first 10 years (bar that turning point in the cup which was sad and humiliating) but he deserves the contempt he's receiving for his part in the latter half of his time here. Even more frustrating is we know his teams can still play decent football if that famous handbrake is released, which it rarely is these days. I can forgive anything except the awful football.

[Niall_Quinn]

I think Zims hatred of Wenger is pathalogical

I am fairly relieved that he has no more say in who replaces Wenger than the rest of us (nil) because he seems to be under the impression that anyone and everyone would be better than L'Ouisseau.

Or you get cretins like Piers Morgan who said in August that he'd take Gary Neville as Arsenal manager in a heartbeat. The kind of cretinous remark that anyone who isn't Piers Morgan would have occasion to regret making.

And whilst there are people who can definitely take us forward where he can, I think we have to be incredibly careful in who we choose. And I am inclined to think without a change at the board level that we won't be significantly better off whoever comes in.

This is a dilemma that has been deliberately constructed, Wenger being one of the key architects. They even boast about the comprehensive extent of the subversion. A club transformed from top to bottom, all the old stripped away from inside leaving a mere facade and this new appalling purpose installed at every level. Money, money, money. There's no going back and fixing it.

So maybe a bit of decent and purposeful football can ease the pain? There's where the real urgency to get rid of Wenger originates. He won't do it. He won't grow a pair and go for the win, not even in a season as strange as this one. Not even when it's on a plate. It's hard to think of many managers who could be so impotent.