Match reaction vs Pool

[Özim]

Sometimes it all just makes me want to cry like a bitch.

Wah, wah, wah, mummy.

Don't slip on your tears.

[JonasTC]

You seem to have an excuse for all our bad results, if we lose to City and Villa it's because of the ref, sure there are bad decisions but we didn't lose because of the ref (that's a cop out) we lost because they played better than us and we conceded 6 against City and 3 against Villa. If we lose to Man U it's because they're champions despite them losing to all and sundry this season.

Noone said all our players our sh*t, but the points about Wenger are very valid, who in their right minds goes into the season with the forwards we have, given that one is rarely played up front and is injury prone, one wanted out, one is a kid and was signed injured and has been every since and the other has not proved himself to be top class.

Unfortunately he's limiting our development due to his management style, both in terms of adequately strengthening the team/squad, tactics and motivating his players.

People expect us to make the most of what we have and after 8 years it's not unreasonable, who wants to keep seeing a side who collapse when it matters because their manager is unable to install the right mentality and refuses to sign the right players?

Ozil is a quality player no doubt, but he's played in the wrong system and looks pretty unhappy at the moment, he was voted best player in Germany mainly based on his performances for Real where he created a hatful of chances, for us he's found it tough, but it's his first season and he plays in a team that move the ball forward at snails pace, when he likes to run with the ball and create in fast moving attacks.

We've done well this season, but in the last few months we've been scraping wins with pretty poor performances and have only got away with it due to playing teams unable to take advantage of our very sluggish performances.

Now we're reaching crunch time and once again we seem to be coming unstuck (we're fortunate we'll be meeting one of the worst Man U sides in recent history on Wednesday, a team we still managed to lose to somehow), it remains to be seen whether it will continue, but the safe money would be that come March we'll fail to pick up the necessary points and get knocked out of the CL as we always have done, it's down to mentality, preparation and studying the opposition (or a lack of studying in our case). People have had their concerns over the last couple of months but have pretty much kept quiet as we've been winning, even though if we're honest it's been poor but after this beating their entitled to vent their frustrations without being called "brats" as you call them (how patronising can you be?).

The trick is to learn from your previous experiences, Wenger never seems to and therein lies the problem.

But zim, the villa and city games were heavily influenced by the ref, its not an excuse, its a fact. If the output had been the same with a proper ref, remains to be seen.

He went after Higuain, but to be fair, i think 35m is to much aswell when somebody tells him that he could get Suarez for 40m, when that didnt happend, Higuain was already sold. But to be fair, at that time i dont think Suarez was worth more than 40 either, he had only had one good season for Liverpool and had big disciplinary problems, looking back we should probably just had rasised our offer, but it always easy to look back and wish you had done differently. This is not football manager, it takes time to negotiate and so on, so you cant just jump around from deal to deal, when one dont work out.

He got rid of death weight, didnt sell any of our good players and added a world class player, i would say thats strengthing our squad and the results tells us the same, come january he got rid of more deathweight, but didnt strength because there was no proper deals out there (feel free to prove me wrong). This summer we'll get rid of even more deathweight and probably the biggest clown this club ever had (Bendtner) and therefor Wenger will 100% add a quality striker and probably even throw silly money after it, if everything goes wrong.

Zim come on, you dont believe that he actually got those awards for just being good in last season? Messi werent in the best-11 and his last season was crazy

Utd scraped wins for years, its what champions do, they play shit at times and still win.

I would say Wenger have shown this season that he have learned from previous experiences, just because he didnt throw silly money after a bad/decent player in january, doesnt mean everything is the same old. City couldnt even get what they wanted and they're willing to throw silly money at everything.

I dont think everything is a walk on roses, but i do believe that we're close to having a championship team and it seems like we're working hard towards it. In past transfer windows and so on, there's been some factors that sadly have worked against us and therefor we've been handling the transfer window with little bit the handbrake on. This summer there is non, absolute nothing that can work against us, we have the money, we only have 1 striker left, who's not good enough to get us the goals we need, there is quality strikers available out there, etc. by then IF he doesnt add a top striker (and a proper holding midfielder aswell), i will probably be joining the Wenger-Out Express, but until that, i'll be supporting this team with as much positivy as possible.

[Özim]

But zim, the villa and city games were heavily influenced by the ref, its not an excuse, its a fact. If the output had been the same with a proper ref, remains to be seen.

He went after Higuain, but to be fair, i think 35m is to much aswell when somebody tells him that he could get Suarez for 40m, when that didnt happend, Higuain was already sold. But to be fair, at that time i dont think Suarez was worth more than 40 either, he had only had one good season for Liverpool and had big disciplinary problems, looking back we should probably just had rasised our offer, but it always easy to look back and wish you had done differently. This is not football manager, it takes time to negotiate and so on, so you cant just jump around from deal to deal, when one dont work out.

He got rid of death weight, didnt sell any of our good players and added a world class player, i would say thats strengthing our squad and the results tells us the same, come january he got rid of more deathweight, but didnt strength because there was no proper deals out there (feel free to prove me wrong). This summer we'll get rid of even more deathweight and probably the biggest clown this club ever had (Bendtner) and therefor Wenger will 100% add a quality striker and probably even throw silly money after it, if everything goes wrong.

Zim come on, you dont believe that he actually got those awards for just being good in last season? Messi werent in the best-11 and his last season was crazy

Utd scraped wins for years, its what champions do, they play shit at times and still win.

I would say Wenger have shown this season that he have learned from previous experiences, just because he didnt throw silly money after a bad/decent player in january, doesnt mean everything is the same old. City couldnt even get what they wanted and they're willing to throw silly money at everything.

I dont think everything is a walk on roses, but i do believe that we're close to having a championship team and it seems like we're working hard towards it. In past transfer windows and so on, there's been some factors that sadly have worked against us and therefor we've been handling the transfer window with little bit the handbrake on. This summer there is non, absolute nothing that can work against us, we have the money, we only have 1 striker left, who's not good enough to get us the goals we need, there is quality strikers available out there, etc. by then IF he doesnt add a top striker (and a proper holding midfielder aswell), i will probably be joining the Wenger-Out Express, but until that, i'll be supporting this team with as much positivy as possible.

Sure the ref made mistakes however would if have changed the result, who knows, I personally doubt it against City as they were just too good going forward (their goal record speak for itself).

Regarding the striker situation, we always seem to drag it out, we had 3 months to do our business and failed, there's no excuse for that. You put a timeline on your potential signing and if it doesn't happen you move on, most importantly though you make sure you sign one if you need one, there were plenty going around in the summer and you can always find a player if you try hard enough, it's not football manager but we're supposed to have a vast scouting network and should have all our targets identified long before the summer arrives and should look to get these deals done early, not drag them out until the 31st of August a month after the season has started.

I rate Ozil very highly, but overall he hasn't been great for us so far, now I'll give him time because it's his 1st season and IMO we're just not playing to his strength, but the fact is at Real he was a potent threat who created a hatful, he hasn't done this for us so the player of the year award he received has to be largely based on his time at Real and his play for Germany.

Man U have won lots of titles, but they also won plenty of games at a canter, because champions don't go a whole season scraping wins, they put together some telling runs of good form where they put teams to the sword as well.

I'm not convinced Wenger has learnt, look at our summer transfer window, that was a mess only rescued by a late chase for Ozil (great player but was he actually the player we needed the most?), a poor January transfer window where he signed an injured player as cover for our injured players and the same failing in big matches thus far, the lack of action on Saturday was poor, most manager's would have been trying to change something after 10-15 minutes or even a little later, but he just sat there and in the end we were lucky we went in at 4-0 at half time, it could have been worse.

Until we can beat top teams when it matters I think we'll struggle to win trophies, because most of the time you have to beat them to win. As for spending in the summer, we'll wait and see but I won't hold my breath, we don't handle our transfer affairs very well IMO and the World Cup will hamper us even more this time around.

[Globalgunner]

I find all this talk of progress absolutely baffling, Where is the progress and by what yardstick. Is it points,is it playing style, because, all I see are the same inadequacies that have bedevilled us for years. We can only truly have said to progress if by end s3ason we are in a better position than we were last season. No point progressing in steps if everyone your competing with is moving ahead in strides. We are in a competition, with Chelsea, United and City, all with greater resources than us . Yes its unfair but its reality, so face it, stop living in this pseudo reality where we claim moral superiority just by competing and winning plaudits in our own little world. Liverpool can be said to have improved but we have not, as we are more or less where we have been for years, in and around the top 4. If United can be discounted and we end up 3rd. Then have we really improved

Many posters here retreat into a world of moral rectitude and financial prudence and award us titles that we never win on the pitch. Fuck that. We have resources that we never fully utilise, we, can mark off the calendar by our routine collapses. We have a manager who ignores the bleeding obvious and tells himself and the world outside that we are moving in the right direction. Are we a football club or the investment branch of the Bank of England?

[Letters]

If you haven't seen any progress this year then you haven't been watching.
Whether we sustain that or collapse remains to be seen.

[selassie]

Aye, that's a pretty shit post selassie. At least try to address tbe points in JonasTC's post if you're going to reply.

His post was ridiculous, he stated it was our first proper loss of the season, WTF?!!! That's why I replied with the "burying your head in the sand" image, the post got the reply it deserved.

[selassie]

But zim, the villa and city games were heavily influenced by the ref, its not an excuse, its a fact. If the output had been the same with a proper ref, remains to be seen.

He went after Higuain, but to be fair, i think 35m is to much aswell when somebody tells him that he could get Suarez for 40m, when that didnt happend, Higuain was already sold. But to be fair, at that time i dont think Suarez was worth more than 40 either, he had only had one good season for Liverpool and had big disciplinary problems, looking back we should probably just had rasised our offer, but it always easy to look back and wish you had done differently. This is not football manager, it takes time to negotiate and so on, so you cant just jump around from deal to deal, when one dont work out.

He got rid of death weight, didnt sell any of our good players and added a world class player, i would say thats strengthing our squad and the results tells us the same, come january he got rid of more deathweight, but didnt strength because there was no proper deals out there (feel free to prove me wrong). This summer we'll get rid of even more deathweight and probably the biggest clown this club ever had (Bendtner) and therefor Wenger will 100% add a quality striker and probably even throw silly money after it, if everything goes wrong.

Zim come on, you dont believe that he actually got those awards for just being good in last season? Messi werent in the best-11 and his last season was crazy

Utd scraped wins for years, its what champions do, they play shit at times and still win.

I would say Wenger have shown this season that he have learned from previous experiences, just because he didnt throw silly money after a bad/decent player in january, doesnt mean everything is the same old. City couldnt even get what they wanted and they're willing to throw silly money at everything.

I dont think everything is a walk on roses, but i do believe that we're close to having a championship team and it seems like we're working hard towards it. In past transfer windows and so on, there's been some factors that sadly have worked against us and therefor we've been handling the transfer window with little bit the handbrake on. This summer there is non, absolute nothing that can work against us, we have the money, we only have 1 striker left, who's not good enough to get us the goals we need, there is quality strikers available out there, etc. by then IF he doesnt add a top striker (and a proper holding midfielder aswell), i will probably be joining the Wenger-Out Express, but until that, i'll be supporting this team with as much positivy as possible.

Actually Jonas it's not a fact that the Villa and City games were influenced by refs, it's your opinion. Sure there were questionable decisions in both games but I don't think the decisions determined the result. We lost both games, it happens, everybody loses.

Do you honestly believe Arsene handled the Summer transfer window well? In my opinion he made a complete pigs ear of it and totally botched up signing a striker. He had the whole of the summer to address the centre forwards position...because effectively we have one centre forward at the club and still do. Arsene absolutely failed and has not excuses, he cannot hide behind valuations and such stuff. He was even told publicly what it would cost to buy 2 of his preferred striker options but baulked and walked away. Arsene did in fact jump around from deal to deal lowballing.

To make matters worse, the signing of Kallstrom has pretty much exposed the lack of planning we have in terms of player recruitment, Arsene even admitted he was aware of his injury problem, I mean does this not sound ridiculous to you? Why are we even entertaining the idea of signing crocked players? Kallstrom is no use to us!!!

One thing I do agree with is that he did well getting rid of all the deadwood in the summer, but removing deadwood doesn't equate to strenghtening your squad. Strengthening the squad would be upgrading/solving problem areas. Of course the Ozil and Flamini signings did improve Midfield, though by how much and whether these areas needed strenghtening is still up for debate.

I do agree we have made progress this season and appear to be more organised but one of the reasons I have raised concerns post Liverpool and probably why many others have is because of what looks like a lack of planning on our part when approaching these crucial games, one thing I will say about Arsene is he appears to be very reactive and not proactive in his approach, be it tactics, team selection or his player recruitment policy (if one exists). Nobody is saying we are all doomed and rubbish, legitimate concerns are being raised about our manager and the team, that's the way I see it anyway.

[LDG]

We've definitely improved, no doubt about it.

But I think this result shows that we're still short of a team capable of winning the league. Not necessarily through lack of talent, but more through lack of attention to detail.

You still feel the team has a horrendous fuck up in them, even though we are most definitely more consistent. We haven't abolished the ability to embarrass ourselves, it's just that it happens slightly less often now.

It's completely a mental thing. And it is something that has needed addressing for a long time, in most Wenger teams over the last decade. It's carelessness in attitude, concentration, and also slightly to do with a real competetive desire.

[saintnickle]

Actually Jonas it's not a fact that the Villa and City games were influenced by refs, it's your opinion. Sure there were questionable decisions in both games but I don't think the decisions determined the result. We lost both games, it happens, everybody loses.

Do you honestly believe Arsene handled the Summer transfer window well? In my opinion he made a complete pigs ear of it and totally botched up signing a striker. He had the whole of the summer to address the centre forwards position...because effectively we have one centre forward at the club and still do. Arsene absolutely failed and has not excuses, he cannot hide behind valuations and such stuff. He was even told publicly what it would cost to buy 2 of his preferred striker options but baulked and walked away. Arsene did in fact jump around from deal to deal lowballing.

To make matters worse, the signing of Kallstrom has pretty much exposed the lack of planning we have in terms of player recruitment, Arsene even admitted he was aware of his injury problem, I mean does this not sound ridiculous to you? Why are we even entertaining the idea of signing crocked players? Kallstrom is no use to us!!!

One thing I do agree with is that he did well getting rid of all the deadwood in the summer, but removing deadwood doesn't equate to strenghtening your squad. Strengthening the squad would be upgrading/solving problem areas. Of course the Ozil and Flamini signings did improve Midfield, though by how much and whether these areas needed strenghtening is still up for debate.

I do agree we have made progress this season and appear to be more organised but one of the reasons I have raised concerns post Liverpool and probably why many others have is because of what looks like a lack of planning on our part when approaching these crucial games, one thing I will say about Arsene is he appears to be very reactive and not proactive in his approach, be it tactics, team selection or his player recruitment policy (if one exists). Nobody is saying we are all doomed and rubbish, legitimate concerns are being raised about our manager and the team, that's the way I see it anyway.

Some good points there.Some posters on here cant be honest and see the truth if theres anything negative in it.We all want things to be rosy and our team to be the best on and off the field but despite all the good Wenger has done for this club(most pre 2005)i cannot ignore the last 9 years and those flaws because of it.

[Letters]

Some posters on here cant be honest and see the truth if theres anything negative in it.

That's simply not true. Some posters simply think other posters are over-stating the problems.