The fallacy of the long term manager

[Marc Overmars]

Stability is overrated. You only need stabilising if you're swimming against the tide and we're most certainly not anymore.

I think we should be very grateful for the stability Wenger provided during the early years of the Emirates move, I don't think there are many managers around who would have kept us relatively competitive with a minimal net spend and a squad of ordinary players. The problem for him is that circumstances change, everything in football changes, yet he's not really shown much to suggest he can keep up with that.

Now we need to move forward but we're stuck with a manager well past his sell by date. Tactically he's really poor, seldom do we pick up wins against teams we're competing with and his performance in the CL over 18 years speaks for itself. Squad management is poor, he'll run players into the ground, play them out of position (through refusal to buy specialist players) and won't make the necessary personnel changes until they've slapped him in the face. Something he was once famed for, player development, is now non-existent. All of our young players (in some cases, established ones too) tend to have an explosive start but then they seem to stagnate or even regress. Lets all take a moment to pray for Bellerin.

Finally, what he did in the transfer market this summer was laughable. Every year we see players come into this league and take to it like a duck to water but he couldn't find anyone to improve us because he was too busy waiting like a tramp around the dumpsters at Real Madrid, PSG and other clubs who may have a top player surplus. Fancy not signing anyone because his own personal valuations were not met, that alone would have him sacked at any top club, hell, I'm pretty sure pub teams wouldn't stand for that either if money was available.

He's a great man but nothing lasts forever, he's had his time in the sun. The biggest shame of all though, is that we have a board who do not give a fuck as long as the money is rolling in.

[Letters]

The scone was awesome
Scones

[Marc Overmars]

Enjoy the scone but reconsider who is doing the patronising. If you don't appreciate that one then maybe this will help you understand plus it has the bonus of being genuinely patronising.

Letters needs to get from his house (point A) to his job (point B) every morning. It's a long drawn out journey so he takes the bus.

On day #1 the bus turns up, the drivers smiles and he conveys Letters from A to B in double quick time.
Same thing happens on day #2
Same thing happens on day #3 and for the whole week the journey keeps getting faster and faster. Excellent service. Well worth the money.

Next week comes along, Letters takes the bus as usual, driver smiles, puts his foot down and off we go. However, over the weekend roadworks have been set up, there's a hole in the middle of the road. So a small diversion is in place.

Problem is, the bus driver ignores the diversion and continues up the road past all the warning signs. Straight into the hole. Everyone survives and a few passengers grumble about the shitty bus driver who can't follow simple warnings. Letters writes it off as a lapse in concentration. After all, this driver did the business the week before.

Day #2 of the new week dawns. Letters hops on the bus, same driver (a bit patched up but still with a cheery disposition), off we go.

The fucker ignores the signs and drives the bus into the hole. WTF? Everyone survives and more of the passengers have a grumble - what is WRONG with this arsehole? Just follow the bloody sign! A few decide they will walk.

Day #3, on the bus, ignore the sign, bang. In the fucking hole.

Day #4, in the hole, Day #5 in the hole. By day #6 Letters finds he's the only passenger remaining. The driver is in casts and bandages, hardly recognisable but still smiling and chatting as if nothing has happened. But still, bang, in the fucking hole.

Letters asks the driver, what's up with that fucking hole? The driver replies, I am the bus driver - how many buses have you driven? He also notifies Letters the fares are being doubled from tomorrow.

Day #7 dawns.

Now then, what does Letters do?

Does he:

A: Get on the bus and wait until the end of the journey to judge things?
B: Ring the bus company and ask for a better driver?

Yes of course, he gets on the bus. Can anyone predict what happens next?

[Özim]

There isn't another club in the world where a manager would hold onto his job as long as Wenger has delivering so little and compounding it by making the most ridiculous mistakes that anyone with half a brain could avoid making.

- His transfer policy is a total joke, he can't find better players than we have which is ridiculous seeing as we have some dogshite (and have had for years).
- His tactics are non existent
- His substitutions are nonsense
- His team selections - enough said about those

He's not bringing anything to the table for us now and hasn't for a number of years, he refuses to change things when they're not working, he's a dinosaur in a time when dinosaurs are extinct, but sadly we're stuck with him.

[Globalgunner]

The key to success in any walk of life is self motivation. it makes you want to be better just for its own sake. Ferguson had it in spades, he was also a monster, but apparently not a control freak. He understood the dynamics of achievement especially in the context of a team sport. That is why he dealt mostly with upper management executive decisions, buying players, team selection, etc, but he knew his limitations or better put he knew he couldnt do everything, this is why he had so much success with at least 5 different assistants in his time. At Arsenal, there is no change, in 16 years the same backroom staff except for the physio who left for England and was replaced by his brother. To me Wenger is motivated mostly by job security. He wants to stay in the job till he no longer feels comfortable. Not for him is the concept of failure an indication of redundancy. Every calamity is quickly brushed off and consigned to the bin marked; Bad luck.

If you are not motivated by success then inevitably failure/mediocrity becomes your constant companion.

As to our boardroom, It exists in name only. Cardboard cut outs who cant say boo to the manager, but only collect sitting allowances, they own next to no shares. Given our shareholding, Stan probably never speaks to any of them except the CEO. Wenger goes above all their heads and talks to the owner directly. So how is he accountable?. Only to the owner who cares for nothing except the bottom line. All Kroenkes teams are non performers. Include Arsenal in that stable. The only blame you can attach to the board members is that they have next to no shame.

[Letters]

There isn't another club in the world where a manager would hold onto his job as long as Wenger has delivering so little and compounding it by making the most ridiculous mistakes that anyone with half a brain could avoid making.

- His transfer policy is a total joke, he can't find better players than we have which is ridiculous seeing as we have some dogshite (and have had for years).
- His tactics are non existent
- His substitutions are nonsense
- His team selections - enough said about those

He's not bringing anything to the table for us now and hasn't for a number of years, he refuses to change things when they're not working, he's a dinosaur in a time when dinosaurs are extinct, but sadly we're stuck with him.

We finished 3rd and won (retained, actually) the FA Cup.
How can anyone as inept as you suggest possibly have overseen that?

[Dein-machine]

Come on Letters - even his own wife wants rid of him now - the life of the arrogant fraud is falling apart around him because of his reluctance to listen or change, both at Arsenal & at home, probably for a good few years now - but at least he won the FA cup twice.

[Dein-machine]

Only the twattiest of internet twats would ever regard him as a hate figure.

What I don't understand is...we did win the FA Cup last year, and the year before that. And finished 4th then 3rd. Wenger's hardly taken us into mid-table, or worse. Clough got Forest relegated and he's still revered up there, all Wenger's done is gone too long without a trophy and we've dropped from 1st to 4th - in no small part due to the billionaires.

We were a bit spoilt by the first half of Wenger's reign but some people's take on how bad things are is way overboard. With our resources we should be pushing harder but the level of criticism he gets is somewhat out of proportion. Moyes showed us what a properly poor manager can do when let lose at a big club.

I had this debate with you before. Your response is fine if you were a yid or a Liverpool fan but not for us. We pay the highest season tickets in the land on the back of moving to a new stadium built to make us a European footballing powerhouse - Wenger was part of the team making these promises. Making fans pay to be on the season ticket waiting list, all desperate to get seats to watch this new era of greatness, Spuds & Scousers were never promised this, they cannot moan about 3rd or 4th places because they weren't doing better than that before a stadium move resulted in the highest ticket prices in Europe - we were.
There has been no new era greatness - we have gone backwards since our Highbury days, we have been lied to on a massive scale, the ambition of the club so clearly highlighted with Wenger's summer transfer activity.
He deserves ALL & MORE criticism that he gets, especially from the board but he is untouchable. He has been rewarded with a 400% increase in salary during a time when he has taken us backwards in football terms, becoming the least successful manager in the history of the Champions league in games to wins ratio. He is a major player in the "Great Emirates Fraud" that we have all witnessed over the past decade & the early success (which he has clearly shown he has no idea how to replicate) is a distant memory.

[Letters]

Come on Letters - even his own wife wants rid of him now - the life of the arrogant fraud is falling apart around him because of his reluctance to listen or change, both at Arsenal & at home, probably for a good few years now - but at least he won the FA cup twice.

6 times, actually.

[Letters]

You don't understand what competition is Letters, therefore you can't understand the entirely justifiable criticism a supposed top manager at a supposed top club is attracting.

I do understand criticism. I have joined in with it. I just don't understand the extent of it and the ridiculous hyperbole about how terrible our situation is, from some.

I'm not going to go round and round the circle of the argument about the tail end of last season, it's boring. I understand your argument, I'm sure you understand mine. I don't agree with you and vice versa so let's move on. But the end result of last season was we finished 3rd and won the FA Cup. I may have mentioned that. Could be better, could be a lot worse. We all agree we need to push on and win the biggest prizes and so far the CL campaign has been a fiasco. The league results so far...well, we're in touch so for now that's good enough. I saw the Chelsea game as an important indicator but when the ref decided to start kicking the ball in the net for them all bets were off on that one. Now we have Utd at home - they're going to be there or thereabouts come May so if we're serious about a title challenge we have to win on Sunday. If we don't then fine, same old Arsenal. Ultimately a season should be judged at the end but during it you get indicators and Sunday is one, so long as the ref behaves himself. If we don't challenge for the title THIS SEASON then Wenger should go, especially if it's as a result of his failure to land a striker this summer, something it was clear we needed.

Your bus post, as funny as it was, is too simplistic. People talk about the "last 10 years" as if they should all be regarded in the same way. The fact is that in most of those years we had some financial restrictions while the billionaires were running amok. I personally think Wenger was a bit too cautious financially during those years but our long term future is better served by being too cautious than too reckless. Obviously we'll never know but I think we'd have won a title or two were it not for Chelsea and City buying half of them since we last won it. But a couple of years ago when the new financial deals were in place there was a clear difference in our spending power, players like Ozil and Sanchez are the result and it's made a difference, certainly to our trophy cabinet. And that means Wenger should be judged differently. We now have the money to seriously compete but we haven't had that for the whole of the last 10 years, it doesn't make sense to lump that whole period in together as one thing when the circumstances have changed.

The lack of a title challenge last year was a disappointment the two FA Cups have gone some way to make up for it. What we have to do this year is to push on. If we're champions come May then I won't be crying about a poor CL campaign. I think we're good enough to seriously challenge, I don't know yet whether we will but games like Sunday will tell us something.