Arsenal's Decline: Are there any easy answers?

[Niall_Quinn]

They have a 12 month lock down period, do the current board.

I wonder who insisted on that? Whether it was Kroenke who thought it would be good for continuity or whether those cunts are so insanely greedy they demanded a cherry on the sugar on top of the whole fucking cake?

[KSE Comedy Club]

They employ him simples our owner is happy to sit in Yank land and watch this go down. no one from the board has ever said its unnaccetable the way we are performing not even out chairman.

all they care about is their pockets. Its ok AW can take the blame for them too.

Yes, but again, that is a seperate issue.

We have the money/board issue and the football issue.

Whilst they do relate to each other to some extent, Wenger is the man who is is responsible for the football issue.

I dont buy this idea of 'poor wenger, he's doing his best but his hands are tied' its bullshit. The man has done as much as he can and has taken the club as far as he possibly can, but you have to face the fact that he isnt one of the best managers in the world.

[Flavs]

Something else i dont understand as well, Wenger and the club always claim that if the right player becomes available we would sign him, we have a world class scouting network, academies and feeder teams all over the world and a manager who apparently knows something about every player there is.

We also get told that Wenger only likes certain players and that we wont buy a certain type of player under any circumstances, now i presume when we look at a player we judge them technically, physically and mentally as well as financially. If all that is the case how come we end up with players like Arshavin and Chamakh? Players of undoubted physical or technical ability but who have the mental application of a turnip? I watched Arshavin play in Russia and at the Euros and he was mindblowing, a bit of a cunt yes, but a great talent yet we barely see it. Chamakh was outstanding in France, a real danger yet here? Same goes for Reyes and Hleb and many others as well?

Also why do we end up with the Adebayor and Nasri types? Who are very good players but so easily swayed by their "advisors" they end up taking our money and running?

[Niall_Quinn]

What happens if 'they' don't get the rewards of Champions League money (which Wenger, in his own words called compulsory)? Do they then embezzle it out of the £40 million or whatever it is for finishing in the top 8 and continue as if nothing has changed?

I think a lot of financial shenanigans have already gone on. Our transfer pot is never used, we make profits year on year and yet the pot is always the same - that fucking £30mill that never materialises. They also fudge the wage figures don't they, like including the fucking Christmas party clown and the milkman's bonus in the figures to make it look like we spend with the best. We never get a straight answer from these guys so we could only guess. I bet their fucking bonuses are tied to the performance on the balance sheet rather than wins on the pitch though. Some might say that's right because that's their job. But that's where the whole problem lies as far as I'm concerned. They have no incentive to do what's best for the club in entirety, including the football and the fans on which everything is based long term. They have their money now and all the rest is gravy. So flogging RvP and diverting cash to prop up the the books doesn't cost them a damn as they don't have to be here in 2 or 5 or 10 years. That's why they can say success on the pitch would be "nice" but isn't strictly necessary. The guy actually said that. Then Gazidis talks about City being jealous. Jealous of what? Not success on the pitch, that's for sure. He had to be talking about balance sheets again. Profit versus loss. Is Kroenke going along with this or is he just letting them slide out the door before he rolls his sleeves up? I don't know, they don't tell us shit.

[LDG]

Something else i dont understand as well, Wenger and the club always claim that if the right player becomes available we would sign him, we have a world class scouting network, academies and feeder teams all over the world and a manager who apparently knows something about every player there is.

We also get told that Wenger only likes certain players and that we wont buy a certain type of player under any circumstances, now i presume when we look at a player we judge them technically, physically and mentally as well as financially. If all that is the case how come we end up with players like Arshavin and Chamakh? Players of undoubted physical or technical ability but who have the mental application of a turnip? I watched Arshavin play in Russia and at the Euros and he was mindblowing, a bit of a cunt yes, but a great talent yet we barely see it. Chamakh was outstanding in France, a real danger yet here? Same goes for Reyes and Hleb and many others as well?

Also why do we end up with the Adebayor and Nasri types? Who are very good players but so easily swayed by their "advisors" they end up taking our money and running?

Arshavin can still be good. And he was when he joined. It was money well spent IMO. His management since has been shit.

Chamahk was free....it was a no-brainer for TPTB :charlie:

[Olivier's xmas twist]

Yes, but again, that is a seperate issue.

We have the money/board issue and the football issue.

Whilst they do relate to each other to some extent, Wenger is the man who is is responsible for the football issue.

I dont buy this idea of 'poor wenger, he's doing his best but his hands are tied' its bullshit. The man has done as much as he can and has taken the club as far as possible, but you have to face the fact that he isnt one of the best mangers in the world.

Never said he was one of the best managers in the world, I agree on the pitch stuff is down to wenger, i don't belive he has faith in this squad as much as he says he does. He only built a team this year that he thought would finish top 4 but once again its backfired.

He says if he don't get top 4 it will be a disaster and faliure, if he feels that way and we don't then she should walk.

If the board can't see we have been a failure and continue to employ this man, then what does it say about them?

[Niall_Quinn]

Yes, but again, that is a seperate issue.

We have the money/board issue and the football issue.

Whilst they do relate to each other to some extent, Wenger is the man who is is responsible for the football issue.

I dont buy this idea of 'poor wenger, he's doing his best but his hands are tied' its bullshit. The man has done as much as he can and has taken the club as far as possible, but you have to face the fact that he isnt one of the best mangers in the world.

Nobody said "poor Wenger" Wenger has made more and more mistakes. But when you are playing with much less quality you have to invest a lot more in hope than is healthy. You hope for the best when you don't have the tools to do the job. You bodge it.

[Flavs]

Arshavin can still be good. And he was when he joined. It was money well spent IMO. His management since has been shit.

But thats what i mean, we should have known that Wengers style wouldn't get the best out of Arshavin before we went anywhere near him. He, like many others, doesnt fit with our tactics either, while i agree that a certain amount of versatility is needed in modern football players have strengths and should be bought and then played for those strengths this isnt something Wenger does at all.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

I think a lot of financial shenanigans have already gone on. Our transfer pot is never used, we make profits year on year and yet the pot is always the same - that fucking £30mill that never materialises. They also fudge the wage figures don't they, like including the fucking Christmas party clown and the milkman's bonus in the figures to make it look like we spend with the best. We never get a straight answer from these guys so we could only guess. I bet their fucking bonuses are tied to the performance on the balance sheet rather than wins on the pitch though. Some might say that's right because that's their job. But that's where the whole problem lies as far as I'm concerned. They have no incentive to do what's best for the club in entirety, including the football and the fans on which everything is based long term. They have their money now and all the rest is gravy. So flogging RvP and diverting cash to prop up the the books doesn't cost them a damn as they don't have to be here in 2 or 5 or 10 years. That's why they can say success on the pitch would be "nice" but isn't strictly necessary. The guy actually said that. Then Gazidis talks about City being jealous. Jealous of what? Not success on the pitch, that's for sure. He had to be talking about balance sheets again. Profit versus loss. Is Kroenke going along with this or is he just letting them slide out the door before he rolls his sleeves up? I don't know, they don't tell us shit.

I'm not sure, we've had numerous £10 million or thereabouts signings. On the main point though, I don't think I see this divide between Wenger and the board that others do. What you say about success on the pitch would be nice but not necessary can be reflected in Wenger saying winning the Carling Cup can't really be considered a trophy yet the top four, effectively is though. Both are effectively saying achieving a target isn't that important, it's just the 'competitions' that differ. Having said that though, I doubt Wenger would believe finishing in the top four is compulsory, if it hadn't been express to him, that was the case.

Wenger has maintained the self-sustaining rhetoric just in the same way as Gazidis has bundled his lines. Like you say Kroenke talks about Wenger in glowing terms but from what we know about Wenger and his stance on owners (of the Citeh and Chelsea kind), I'd hazard a guess that it's reciprocal.

[bignev]

I’m just fed up of us being so ordinary. RvP is the only reason we’re not deeply mid-table and he will leave in the summer if he knows what’s good for him. He’d be stupid not to.

I remember us being ordinary before of course but I wasn’t paying £1500 a year to watch them being so ordinary then. We weren’t in a shiny new stadium which we were promised would allow us to compete with Europe’s elite. Instead for years we have replaced top class players with average ones. We all knew there would be a bit of belt tightening when the new stadium was being built and you can’t legislate for billionaire owners throwing trucks of money around. I accept we can’t compete with City and I wouldn’t want us to try. I don’t want to play that game where any achievement is marred with the knowledge of how it’s achieved. But I do expect us to compete with Spurs. In fact, Spurs shouldn’t be anywhere near us. We have a far bigger stadium, a far bigger global fan base, a far bigger income in every way. We have CL football to offer players, a manager who is respected around the world, a legacy of (fairly) recent success. There is no way that a team like Spurs with far less resources than us should be allowed to catch up with and then overtake us. It’s embarrassing mismanagement from top to bottom. I don’t think replacing Wenger will make a whole lot of difference because we’ll still have the same board who are clearly complicit in it all. Were they not they’d have sacked him years ago. They’re clearly happy with his policy of minimising expenditure and maximizing income and, to an extent, Wenger has done well to keep us top 4 till now. But there’s only so long you can go on replacing top players with average ones before it starts to seriously hurt and we’ve reached that point now. We already had last season to an extent but then in a car crash of a summer we went and sold our 2 best midfielders and bought a few decent but not really world class players (even then it was only last minute panic-buying, were it not for the Old Trafford debacle you have to wonder whether we’d even have done that).

Wenger has been far too patient with players who just aren’t up to it. Theo is one of them, but there are others. At our pomp we were a terrific side, arguably the best ever PL side. It was a joy to watch and it’s sad if Wenger’s legacy is anything other than that side. And I knew it wouldn’t last. It’s not realistic to expect us to sustain that. But to see us fall from that to being so…well, I’ll say it again, so ordinary. It’s sad and infuriating. It is, as Oscar Wilde (or was it Didier Drogba) once said “a disgrace, a f***ing disgrace”. The atmosphere on Saturday is going to be…interesting. People’s patience has finally run out and if we go in at half time 0-0 or, worse, behind, then it’s going to get ugly. Our success has raised expectations but so has raising the ticket prices. And they haven’t gone up by 10% or even doubled. I used to pay 2 or 3 hundred a season, now it’s £1500. If they raise them this summer then it’ll be the final “screw you” to the fans. Were it not for dad wanting to go and me valuing the time I spend with him now as he gets older and confuseder they wouldn’t see me for dust. They could have thrown us a bone in the January window. Something, just something, we could maybe get a bit excited about. But no. So on we plod in the battle against mid-table. Spurs are gone, they’re a much, much better side than us. Top 4 is just about do-able but only because of other team’s ordinariness and right now I wouldn’t back us in that race.

In brief, balls to it. Balls to it all.

Excellent post. Sums my feelings up exactly except I don't think fourth is possible for us unless we completely change overnight which isn't realistic.