Wenger's legacy - has it held us back

[KSE Comedy Club]

Lets just say, that team tonight, was picked for a reason.

Elaborate?

[Özim]

Lets just say, that team tonight, was picked for a reason.

Cub scout night?

[Olivier's xmas twist]

He won't be around for much longer. The pressure will get to him.

Will ?

The guy will be gone at the end of the season.

[Power n Glory]

Will ?

The guy will be gone at the end of the season.

This is the first time I've seen the media opnely question his ability. It's the first time fans have been vocal about it as well. But this is only the start. If he keeps pulling in bad results, pundits will continue to badger him and really probe as some of his silly answers. He needs to handle it better but he can't and this is only the start. If he keeps attacking the press and continues to isolate himself with that 'you English people' type talk, they're going to rip him to shreds. He needs to get a grip.

[Olivier's xmas twist]

This is the first time I've seen the media opnely question his ability. It's the first time fans have been vocal about it as well. But this is only the start. If he keeps pulling in bad results, pundits will continue to badger him and really probe as some of his silly answers. He needs to handle it better but he can't and this is only the start. If he keeps attacking the press and continues to isolate himself with that 'you English people' type talk, they're going to rip him to shreds. He needs to get a grip.

Yep the pressure is on here, he seems to be cracking up here and there, im telling you the end is nigh. Id be suprised if he is still here next season. Fans and Players have lost faith in him. He looks like he don't believe, lost his motivation. Too much pressure is not a good thing especially in sports management.

[IBK]

I feel the same way about Wenger as I felt about GG towards the end of his tenure. I've still got programme notes with Graham regularly stating that he was in the market for players but wasn't going to spend money on players that weren't any better than the ones we already had - does this sound familiar to anyone?

Don't get me wrong, but I loved GG and look back on what he achieved and how he achieved success with us with pride. But football moved on and GG did not and we progressively got worse and more and more uncompetitive - even with the great quality of the back four and a lethal striker.

I wanted GG out at that point - so it seems did the Board, but they were spineless bastards that used football bungs that were an endemic throughout football and an established part of the culture to hang him out to dry. The Board then were complete and utter ****s.

As for Rioch - what can anyone say? It looks like it was always the intention for him to be an interim Manager - what other rationale can there be for what happened? The treatment of Rioch was also compounded by the behaviour of Wright who publically treated Rioch with contempt and there were rumours that Wright even complained directly to Rioch's bosses about him.

Wenger didn't ride on anyone's success, he built on it beyond anyone's dreams to create a team that simply blew people's minds away delivering the type of success and football no one alive today has ever seen before at Arsenal.

But that was back in the day when he did innovative things such as invest in top top quality players. I don't see him ever doing that again, and just as football moved on past GG who demonstrated an inability to change, so it now has to Wenger.

Feeling that way in no way undermines the respect I have and how grateful I am of what GG and AW did for our Club, but both of them stayed on too long. I hope against hope that Wenger calls it a day.

Sorry to come so late to this, but isn't it telling that GG has been out of management since 2001. You could say that at least he acknowledge that his era was over.

[IBK]

Let's not get carried away here. Swansea are a well oiled machine and function like a team. If Wilshere, Kos, Verm, Sagna, Walcott, Cazorla...etc were integrated into their system and had back to back seasons playing under former manager Rogers, they'd be a lot higher up the table.

At the moment, we have collection of individual players and no team. There is no cohesion or unity and that is why Swansea play better than us.

Its embarrassing that Swansea played us off the park. Wenger should be ashamed.

[IBK]

Is this the argument about Wenger's previous successes being able to buy him time with the club and see out any remaining years on his contract? (Apologies if not) Thing is, I was thinking about this very thing and trying to relate it to Liverpool under Benitez. Even Hicks and Gillett (the best a man can get) could see that Benitez had lost it and needed another man to take the club forward, in spite of Rafa's previous successes in the Champions League and FA Cup. This, in arguably Liverpool's worst period running as a football club. Two bumbling fools who couldn't get on and knew as much about "soccer" as Alex Ferguson knows sobriety STILL had the wherewithal to sack Benitez because they knew it was the correct decision.

I think the only way our money-obsessed club will have the wake-up call to sack Wenger is through empty seats and fewer fans coming through the turnstiles at the Emirates. It's a little more difficult with Arsenal, methinks, seeing as there are always supporters waiting in the wings for seats and 60,000 brand new fans could fill out the stadium in the space of a week.

Horrible scenario all round with the club at the moment

Interesting observation.

[LDG]

Sub, not sure if you picked up on this one...but thought of you when I read it (no homo)...something you'd like I think.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...wenger-decline

[IBK]

Sub, not sure if you picked up on this one...but thought of you when I read it (no homo)...something you'd like I think.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/...wenger-decline

Excellent piece mate. And particularly:

He built — this is the romantic part — a team that could play the style of football he saw in his dreams. But he did it by exploiting market inefficiencies (signing players other Premier League clubs weren't scouting), embracing globalization (stocking Arsenal with foreign players at a time when the league was still mostly English), pursuing commercial partnerships (the deal with Emirates Airlines helped defray the cost of the stadium), and obsessing over easily controlled and replicable details like dietary balance. He didn't read his players "O Captain! My Captain!"; he got them personal trainers while tinkering with the shareholders' financial report.

Everyone else has caught up....and overtaken