We had strong enough team to beat Birmingham in the Carling Cup final. On paper, that team should have won easily but we didn't. The mentality of the team is weak, we buckle under pressure, don't defend as a unit and leak a lot of goals. We need stability in our squad but players won't stick around when key problems go unresolved.
Personally I think that team needed another finisher, someone with some leadership and a tackler in midfield (better on than Song).Originally Posted by LDG
It's not just 11 players though, we get an abnormal amount of injuries (it's not coincidence anymore), so the players that come in need to be able to do a good job. From what I've seen they either haven't or we haven't had proper cover for some positions....we've taken the cheap option like Squillaci and Silvestre for example.
Our lack of real leaders in the team has always concerned me though, when the going gets tough you need a few players who will get stuck in and steer the ship, what we've seen repeatedly is calamitous collapses and we've had nothing to reverse these.
Title winning teams also need a good defence, I don't think we've ever had, be it because we didn't play as a group or because we couldn't deal with aerial threats, or even because we didn't cover for players who went forward...the fact is the defence has never been good enough.
then look at the subs, arteta, merts, oxlade, rosicky, ramsey, jack etc. thats a very good squad. we really are on the verge of something special but in two seasons are best players have fucked off.
take last season, a good team who fight to win, they didnt give up, and got third. an improvment, we then made two great signings imo and by accounts not finished yet. yet two statements damage that badly, split the fans etc. from two people who supposdly love the club
on paper, man city should have hammered us, they didnt, spurs should have finished above us, chelsea should have hammered us. but they didnt, we improved because we built a team who cared. its been undone now by two statements.
Just like the first two lines of my post said.
Do you not think they might resolve quicker of half the team stuck around to work on it?
But no. It's not about building sides anymore. It's about buying them from a supermarket.
Nobody is saying Wenger deserves no blame. What I am sympathetic to, however, is that he has tried (and ultimately failed) to put a team together, which was supposed to grow together. The quality was there to do that. The means, and perhaps will from the players was not.
The players took the easy way IMO.
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
We've always pulled off big results. Point being, you can't look at our squad and say if we'd have stuck together we'd have eventually won a title. If you can't defend and give teams too much time on the ball without pressing, you will get punished. Our defence record and off the ball movement hasn't improved. It needs addressing before we can talk about winning titles.
You say this however many of our players have made repeated calls for us to sign some quality (this has been happening many years), we haven't. I've lost count the amount of times the transfer window has been open and we've failed to sign what we needed.
If you want players to believe then you have to show you're progressing, not that you're just hoping things will turn out well because you think they will.
And that's just on the transfer market. We don't train our players to play a more pressing game. We don't study the opposition players enough either. That's part of the reason why players aren't happy either.
I've just said, we didn't add back-up / experience, and that is Wenger's fault. It's there in my post.
But the point still remains. If the players stuck it out together, rather than all leaving one by one each season, we wouldn't have to keep chopping and changing.
If Cesc and Nasri had stayed, I would be assuming that RVP would not be going. It's all cause and effect, and that is the frustrating thing, because without Wenger, you don't have these money-grabbing ****s in the first place!
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
I'm not talking backup/experience I'm talking quality....we needed quality players to rely on we never got them.
I've just said, we didn't add back-up / experience, and that is Wenger's fault. It's there in my post.
But the point still remains. If the players stuck it out together, rather than all leaving one by one each season, we wouldn't have to keep chopping and changing.
If Cesc and Nasri had stayed, I would be assuming that RVP would not be going. It's all cause and effect, and that is the frustrating thing, because without Wenger, you don't have these money-grabbing ****s in the first place!
They left because they didn't believe and had opportunities to go somewhere offering a far better chance of success, Cesc was here for years and never won anything, I think we saw in his body language how disappointed he was when we once again collapsed.
The transfer market has long been a problem with us, we collapse so players expect changes to be made and quality to be brought in, we fail to and so the cycle continues.....eventually the players realise nothing will change and leave.
I don't think we show enough ambition, I've long said this and maintain it, a manager's job is also to convince players that we're moving forward and are doing everything possible to achieve success, it's clear the manager is no longer able to do so, after 7 years maybe it just sounds like a broken record to them.
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