Quote Originally Posted by alexander View Post
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.