Hmm - manager vs board?
Personally, I think that this is the wrong way to debate the issue. Clearly, both are to blame for what has happened to our club, and I don't think it is any benefit to try to apportion levels of blame.
As this is a thread about our manager, I'll refrain from bringing the board into it, and can debate the shocking level of complacency/passivity, lack of commercial nous and, frankly, incompetence that we have seen from AFC at that level since DD left somewhere else.
But Wenger needs to bear his portion of the blame. Even the staunchest Wengerite has to accept that he enjoys, and has enjoyed, a level of control and influence at our club that is almost unprecedented. So for me it just doesn't make sense to portray Wenger as the 'victim' of a self-interested and incompetent board. Even if he were being exploited by the board, at the very least he would be complicit in this, by being prepared to draw a massive salary while he watched the club decline around him, but I don't think he is. For one - why would someone with the reputation and past achievements that Wenger has put up with this, particularly given that he is supposed to be a man of principle? He would walk.
So in IMO, Wenger has to answer for the gradual decline of our club in a number of ways.
First and foremost for appearing to surrender the club's principles in the face of the new money coming into the game. People say that Wenger's will to win burns as brightly as ever. I'm not convinced by that at all. There's the continual talk of us not being able to compete financially; the financial doping etc, which while it may be true is pretty defeatist in my book. I don't see Brendan Rogers moaning about how he can't compete on a relative pittance. It is very, very difficult to escape the conclusion that the manager is resigned to being no more than a top 4 team, and some of his managerial decisions certainly tally with that.
What managerial decisions? Well these are the second aread of fault, IMO. Redknapp said the other day that managers basically need to get one thing right, and that is the ability to sign the right players - and lets face it, for all Wenger's residual skill in this department, Twitchy has wiped the floor with him recently in both the calibre of players he has assembled, and the deals he has done. Wenger has made a right mess of at least 50% of his signings/attempted signings in recent years - whether in the players themselves, or the manner in which he has gone about trying to sign them. But to make matters worse, our manager has played fast and loose with the resources we do have - paying way over the odds in wages for players who have proved nothing, and in some cases who are worth only a fraction of what they are paid. So we are so over-committed in wages that we have to go bargain basement hunting when it comes to transfers. Other reasons to believe that winning the league is no longer a priority are firstly, the risks he takes in committing big sums to mere potential, and secondly his utter refusal to cut his losses when the gamble has clearly not payed off. This hurts the performance of our team. Then there are the gambles he takes on the fitness of our players - not signing another striker this season, not signing a defender last season....these are not the actions of someone seriously focussed on winning things. They are the actions of a man determined only to prove himself right - and misguided ones at that.
And this is the final area where Wenger must shoulder some culpability. The increasing myopia; the refusal to seek the advice of others; the lack of objectivity, and the continued belief that he knows best when certain truths are apparent for all to see. Nowhere have we seen this more than in his obvious belief that Fabregas and Nasri could be persuaded to stay - to the extent that nothing was done to cover the possiblity that they would not. And watch it happen with RVP at the end of this season. Stubbornness has always been a Wenger trait. Its tolerated when things are going well. When things aren't going well it should be recognised for the liability that it is. It happend to Brian Clough; it happened to Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Its happening to our manager - and I think that Gooners can now see that the decline in both our club and our manager is long term, not an aberration.
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Originally Posted by Boss
