Are the glory days over for good?

[Niall_Quinn]

Doesn't ring true to me, but the only real test of this premise will be how hard they will try to hold onto him in the face of declining results (and consequent revenue). If the board really doesn't believe in sustainability, let's see them a) pay a premium to remove Wenger, b) expend money to recruit and c) make substantial (unsustainable) funds to back their new man.

I see them as being highly resistant to this, Gazidis' flat refusal to consider sacking, suggests this.

Agreed, I see nothing changing whether Wenger stays or goes, maybe bar the usual, temporary bump gained when a new manager arrives. The facts of the matter are simple and yet almost completely ignored. The board has consistently failed to invest in the team. In fact it's worse than that, they have run down the team in a series of disastrous transfer windows. Whoever was calling the shots (let's face it, like any other company in the world it is the board that has the final say), the buck stops at the top. But the ultimate and damning indicator of who is most to blame for the demise of the team is spelled out clearly in the huge amounts of money the board members have personally taken at the very same time the team was descending into chaos. So many overlook this glaring point even though it is staring them in the face. This club is now in the hands of corporate rapists. They talk of sustainability and financial prudence, yet we cannot sustain even our 4th position in the league. Then again, they haven't been interested in sustaining the team for a long time now, as successive transfer windows have shown. But they managed to not only sustain but enhance their share value for the whole period up until they cashed in. This is why I'm sure they would say they have presided over great success. From their point of view it's hard to argue. Virtually zero money in and hundreds of millions taken out with a clean escape beckoning in time to avoid the ship sinking. They've done very well for themselves. I hope they die.

[IBK]

Agreed, I see nothing changing whether Wenger stays or goes, maybe bar the usual, temporary bump gained when a new manager arrives. The facts of the matter are simple and yet almost completely ignored. The board has consistently failed to invest in the team. In fact it's worse than that, they have run down the team in a series of disastrous transfer windows. Whoever was calling the shots (let's face it, like any other company in the world it is the board that has the final say), the buck stops at the top. But the ultimate and damning indicator of who is most to blame for the demise of the team is spelled out clearly in the huge amounts of money the board members have personally taken at the very same time the team was descending into chaos. So many overlook this glaring point even though it is staring them in the face. This club is now in the hands of corporate rapists. They talk of sustainability and financial prudence, yet we cannot sustain even our 4th position in the league. Then again, they haven't been interested in sustaining the team for a long time now, as successive transfer windows have shown. But they managed to not only sustain but enhance their share value for the whole period up until they cashed in. This is why I'm sure they would say they have presided over great success. From their point of view it's hard to argue. Virtually zero money in and hundreds of millions taken out with a clean escape beckoning in time to avoid the ship sinking. They've done very well for themselves. I hope they die.

Well said

[fakeyank]

Agreed, I see nothing changing whether Wenger stays or goes, maybe bar the usual, temporary bump gained when a new manager arrives. The facts of the matter are simple and yet almost completely ignored. The board has consistently failed to invest in the team. In fact it's worse than that, they have run down the team in a series of disastrous transfer windows. Whoever was calling the shots (let's face it, like any other company in the world it is the board that has the final say), the buck stops at the top. But the ultimate and damning indicator of who is most to blame for the demise of the team is spelled out clearly in the huge amounts of money the board members have personally taken at the very same time the team was descending into chaos. So many overlook this glaring point even though it is staring them in the face. This club is now in the hands of corporate rapists. They talk of sustainability and financial prudence, yet we cannot sustain even our 4th position in the league. Then again, they haven't been interested in sustaining the team for a long time now, as successive transfer windows have shown. But they managed to not only sustain but enhance their share value for the whole period up until they cashed in. This is why I'm sure they would say they have presided over great success. From their point of view it's hard to argue. Virtually zero money in and hundreds of millions taken out with a clean escape beckoning in time to avoid the ship sinking. They've done very well for themselves. I hope they die.

AW would have never stayed with the team and renewed his contract in 08 or 09 (?) if he had so much interference from the board in signing players. And I have said this many times... with the personnel he has at his disposal, we should be doing much better than 15th place and conceding 8 goals at OT. Every semi-decent manager wouldve sorted the defense out in 5 seasons! Board could be wrong... I say could because I dont know what they say to Wenger. I will judge the team based on the manager, his tactics and the personnel available... We have a more than strong squad to be easily in the 4th/5th position but where are we? What is our record since the loss to Birmingham in the CC? Its all down to AW tbh.. board members could be cunts but the amount of power that AW wields at Arsenal, I cannot point to anyone other than him for us being in the shit hole!

[Olivier's xmas twist]

AW would have never stayed with the team and renewed his contract in 08 or 09 (?) if he had so much interference from the board in signing players. And I have said this many times... with the personnel he has at his disposal, we should be doing much better than 15th place and conceding 8 goals at OT. Every semi-decent manager wouldve sorted the defense out in 5 seasons! Board could be wrong... I say could because I dont know what they say to Wenger. I will judge the team based on the manager, his tactics and the personnel available... We have a more than strong squad to be easily in the 4th/5th position but where are we? What is our record since the loss to Birmingham in the CC? Its all down to AW tbh.. board members could be cunts but the amount of power that AW wields at Arsenal, I cannot point to anyone other than him for us being in the shit hole!

Did not know the season had finish. Its silly to put the blame on 1 person when the problem is bigger then that.

[Power n Glory]

When Wenger was at Monaco it was a similar parttern. He wouldn't spend the money.

[fakeyank]

Did not know the season had finish. Its silly to put the blame on 1 person when the problem is bigger then that.

You take one part of the post and make a point. How about you answer why we have such a fantastic record since the loss to Birmingham. I think that stretches to something like 19 games and 19 points (?)- relegation form. And add the failures of the last 5 seasons and you know that the problem lies with AW, not the board. None of you 'board haters' EVER answer why our defense is bad, why players are out of position, why our formation sucks, why we didnt sign a player like Parker, Cahill etc.. All you 'BH' (Board haters) will say that the board stopped Arsene from spending. Ok fine, but none of the questions above needs major spending or no spending at all!

Yes, go ahead and find something else to say against the board.. lets see how ticket prices are the reason the players cant defend!

[Japan Shaking All Over]

I said on a previous thread that I see both sides and the blame is more collective rather than individual.
Without a shadow of a doubt the blame for our pitch performances lie with Wenger but the fact he has been allowed to continue in the same vein is nothing but the highest case of negligence!
Due to Wengers almost immediate success the board has become blind, naive, you name it to what is going on.
As Wengers success, influence grew the boards interest in what was going on on the pitch diminished. So much so that when things started to go south they didnt know what to do then or thought they have no choice to follow the only guy who has brought success to the club mainly because he was saying that all they need to do is trust him a la the phrase 'Wenger knows'.

So what we have is a manager leading a board and a board being lead, a manager that thinks he knows more about football, success and the way to combine both than anyone in the club and a board who are still willing to listen.
We have a manager that fails to change his plan, that fails to see that other teams have him sussed, players like Carrol get license to run amok and CBs are told to pile forward every set piece, and not alwsys to score but to cause panic in our fragile defence because you can be sure we will shoot ourselves in the foot at some point. Midfields become congested and balls are played over our ridiculously high line of defence.

Do we change to combat that? Hell no! . . . .ahhhh wait a mo, yes we do! We play Theo wide instead of Arshavin
What we dont have is a manager willing to recognise failure or a board strong enough to tell him he is failing because do not tell me for all their lack of knowledge of the beautiful game that they do not see what id happening;

1) 6 years no trophy
2) constant collapses of league campaigns
3) little progress on orevious bests ie constant 4th finishes, knock out stages of of CL
4) average loss of 1 star player a season (that will change though but only because we wont have any star players)
5) and more

All of the above really supports FakeYank but for the BHs I support them vy adding we dont have a board that has the balls to slam their hand on the table and say 'enough' - they cant insist that we buy this guy or that because Wenger will just retort with his knowledge of the game but they would be wise to remind him and maybe themselves that ultimately the success of the club is what goes on on the pitch, sure they might be making a killong personally at the moment but that wont last forever especially with Cesc gone, there are no more cash cows RvP, Oxo maybe but when people start forgetting who we are as they are to a certain degree in Japan, no games for Miya, no Cesc = little interest, the board are going to have to look out.

I dont want to say sack Wenger but the board have got to state the obvious to him and that he is not getting it done, they need to be strong, no sports team allows for some much failure especially on the back of some much promise.

As I said before the two parties seem to be working to an agenda, which benefits no-one but themselves, but there is a risk, Wenger will completley destroy an increasingly tarnished legacy and the board will end up with nothing.
I honestly feel that before this happens Wenger needs to walk and take the majority of the boarf with him. . . . .

[IBK]

I said on a previous thread that I see both sides and the blame is more collective rather than individual.
Without a shadow of a doubt the blame for our pitch performances lie with Wenger but the fact he has been allowed to continue in the same vein is nothing but the highest case of negligence!
Due to Wengers almost immediate success the board has become blind, naive, you name it to what is going on.
As Wengers success, influence grew the boards interest in what was going on on the pitch diminished. So much so that when things started to go south they didnt know what to do then or thought they have no choice to follow the only guy who has brought success to the club mainly because he was saying that all they need to do is trust him a la the phrase 'Wenger knows'.

So what we have is a manager leading a board and a board being lead, a manager that thinks he knows more about football, success and the way to combine both than anyone in the club and a board who are still willing to listen.
We have a manager that fails to change his plan, that fails to see that other teams have him sussed, players like Carrol get license to run amok and CBs are told to pile forward every set piece, and not alwsys to score but to cause panic in our fragile defence because you can be sure we will shoot ourselves in the foot at some point. Midfields become congested and balls are played over our ridiculously high line of defence.

Do we change to combat that? Hell no! . . . .ahhhh wait a mo, yes we do! We play Theo wide instead of Arshavin
What we dont have is a manager willing to recognise failure or a board strong enough to tell him he is failing because do not tell me for all their lack of knowledge of the beautiful game that they do not see what id happening;

1) 6 years no trophy
2) constant collapses of league campaigns
3) little progress on orevious bests ie constant 4th finishes, knock out stages of of CL
4) average loss of 1 star player a season (that will change though but only because we wont have any star players)
5) and more

All of the above really supports FakeYank but for the BHs I support them vy adding we dont have a board that has the balls to slam their hand on the table and say 'enough' - they cant insist that we buy this guy or that because Wenger will just retort with his knowledge of the game but they would be wise to remind him and maybe themselves that ultimately the success of the club is what goes on on the pitch, sure they might be making a killong personally at the moment but that wont last forever especially with Cesc gone, there are no more cash cows RvP, Oxo maybe but when people start forgetting who we are as they are to a certain degree in Japan, no games for Miya, no Cesc = little interest, the board are going to have to look out.

I dont want to say sack Wenger but the board have got to state the obvious to him and that he is not getting it done, they need to be strong, no sports team allows for some much failure especially on the back of some much promise.

As I said before the two parties seem to be working to an agenda, which benefits no-one but themselves, but there is a risk, Wenger will completley destroy an increasingly tarnished legacy and the board will end up with nothing.
I honestly feel that before this happens Wenger needs to walk and take the majority of the boarf with him. . . . .

A good post lamentably ignored.

Of course its a collective responsibility. But in the same way as I think its a bit facile to blame the players for their lack of performance, I think its ignoring the root cause to blame AW rather than the board.

Of course, there is a failure at player level. Cesc showed what was possible from a player at the top of his game basically being self-motivated and having exceptional talent - and we are seeing (and have seen since his spirit was broken at Wembley) the extent to which he carried our team.

But the level of self-motivation/leadership required is not something that is easy to find - and AW has taken it for granted too much.

To an extent, all footballers have motivation - it is needed simply to have made it to a team playing in the top league. But that x-factor that drives the team to succeed is a rare animal. We tend to see the 'fighting spirit' as quite an English trait - and maybe AW's selection of so many foreigners who don't have the tribal background of home growns is a factor in our lack of it. There is no escaping the fact that AW since 2004 has gone for technique over character - and that is down to his choice of player. My own theory is that the manager requires absolute subservience to his way of playing football - and that is why he eschews the likes of Scott Parker; Chris Samba etc even when they are within his reach. But he has sacrificed passion, heart and fight in doing so.

Secondly, if these qualities are missing from his team, it is for the manager to instill these in his players - and from where I am sitting, AW has utterly failed to do this. How? - By allowing players to underperform again and again yet keep their places. By his constant and increasingly bizzare excuses for failure. By his tolerance of the kind of stupidity we have seen from Diaby; Gervinho and (until recently) Eboue. By a managerial approach that sees him say nothing at half time until the last 5 minutes because he doesn't think there is enough to say for 15. By his lack of tochline instruction during games...the list goes on.

And this doesn't even begin to touch on the managerial failures that other people have mentioned - players out of position; the lamentable failure to admit his mistakes and get in a proper defensive coach; refusal to take into account the other team's set ups and amend his own accordingly; lack of training for set pieces etc.

But in the same way as responsibility for players' performances lies with the manager, responsibility for the manager rests with the owners and the board. It is they who have allowed Wenger to attain this God like status - it would appear for financial rather than footballing reasons. It is they who have self-evidently run scared of questioning the manager's methods; it is they who have refused to invest in the playing side of the team - when over the past few years modest investment could have turned top four into champions; it is they who have failed to secuure key contract renewals; it is they who by their neglect and negligence in giving the manager carte blanche over every aspect of the footballing side, and failing to question the manager's misguided faith in his best players' loyalty have ultimately overseen the running down of our team to a stage where we may well have dropped semi permanently out of the CL places and be seeing a real decline of the business of the club. A business that they are supposed to be such responsible custodians of.

[Flavs]

Of course its a collective responsibility. But in the same way as I think its a bit facile to blame the players for their lack of performance, I think its ignoring the root cause to blame AW rather than the board.

Of course, there is a failure at player level. Cesc showed what was possible from a player at the top of his game basically being self-motivated and having exceptional talent - and we are seeing (and have seen since his spirit was broken at Wembley) the extent to which he carried our team.

But the level of self-motivation/leadership required is not something that is easy to find - and AW has taken it for granted too much.

To an extent, all footballers have motivation - it is needed simply to have made it to a team playing in the top league. But that x-factor that drives the team to succeed is a rare animal. We tend to see the 'fighting spirit' as quite an English trait - and maybe AW's selection of so many foreigners who don't have the tribal background of home growns is a factor in our lack of it. There is no escaping the fact that AW since 2004 has gone for technique over character - and that is down to his choice of player. My own theory is that the manager requires absolute subservience to his way of playing football - and that is why he eschews the likes of Scott Parker; Chris Samba etc even when they are within his reach. But he has sacrificed passion, heart and fight in doing so.

Secondly, if these qualities are missing from his team, it is for the manager to instill these in his players - and from where I am sitting, AW has utterly failed to do this. How? - By allowing players to underperform again and again yet keep their places. By his constant and increasingly bizzare excuses for failure. By his tolerance of the kind of stupidity we have seen from Diaby; Gervinho and (until recently) Eboue. By a managerial approach that sees him say nothing at half time until the last 5 minutes because he doesn't think there is enough to say for 15. By his lack of tochline instruction during games...the list goes on.

And this doesn't even begin to touch on the managerial failures that other people have mentioned - players out of position; the lamentable failure to admit his mistakes and get in a proper defensive coach; refusal to take into account the other team's set ups and amend his own accordingly; lack of training for set pieces etc.

But in the same way as responsibility for players' performances lies with the manager, responsibility for the manager rests with the owners and the board. It is they who have allowed Wenger to attain this God like status - it would appear for financial rather than footballing reasons. It is they who have self-evidently run scared of questioning the manager's methods; it is they who have refused to invest in the playing side of the team - when over the past few years modest investment could have turned top four into champions; it is they who have failed to secuure key contract renewals; it is they who by their neglect and negligence in giving the manager carte blanche over every aspect of the footballing side, and failing to question the manager's misguided faith in his best players' loyalty have ultimately overseen the running down of our team to a stage where we may well have dropped semi permanently out of the CL places and be seeing a real decline of the business of the club. A business that they are supposed to be such responsible custodians of.

you fucking rock dude

The board wont sack Wenger as long as we are making money simple as that, the reason being is that they are money men not football men. And the more that get replaced by these Kroenke flunkees the worse it will get.

Balance sheet>team sheet

[Letters]

None of you 'board haters' EVER answer why our defense is bad, why players are out of position, why our formation sucks, why we didnt sign a player like Parker, Cahill etc.. All you 'BH' (Board haters) will say that the board stopped Arsene from spending. Ok fine, but none of the questions above needs major spending or no spending at all!

And none of you WH's concede the point that staying top 4 in the PL every year despite billionaires spending silly money, other clubs spending big too and our relative lack of investment is a pretty impressive achievement.
Some of the problems you cite above are, of course, down to Wenger. But some of you act like any idiot could keep a team in the top 4 of the PL year after year despite many clubs spending big and going through manager after manager and failing to achieve that. City and Chelsea had to spend obscene amounts of money to achieve it.

IMO it's idiotic to blame either the board or Wenger alone. If Wenger is being stubborn and refusing to spend money then the board should be insisting he does. If the board are refusing to let him spend more then Wenger's being put in an impossible situation. IMO there's blame on both sides.