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cubeadvance

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JDubYes

JDubYes

Posted
Posted

That's such a poor argument to make though, unless you think the ambition of the club (any club) is just to play - not really contend, just play - in the Champions League each season. For a couple of seasons I think, yeah, it's good to consolidate that position. But then you need to push on and look to progress, otherwise what's the point?

Wenger doesn't spend much money because he *chooses* to not spend any money. They have 2 multi-billionaire major shareholders, so that isn't really an excuse (though I do commend the living within their means approach, the global football landscape would look very different if all teams adopted that approach.)

Let's not forget, the last 2 seasons it took remarkable runs (plus collapses from Spurs) to secure 4th, they were never comfortable for getting there. Does that not signal a bit of a decline?

Having two billionaire shareholders is an irrelevance if they don't make their fortunes available though, isn't it? Kroenke approaches the club as a business enterprise, and Usmanov won't invest without having a controlling stake. Bearing that in mind, we have to stay within our means, which, for the last decade or so, has included paying back substantial loans on the new stadium, and as such I'd say Arsenal's having played in the Champions League for the last 20 years or so is quite impressive.

Also, if we've had to rely on going on remarkable runs and/or collapses from our opposition in the last couple of years, and this year that seems unlikely, doesn't that suggest an upturn in our fortunes?

Arsene Wenger came in and had some remarkable, (quite literally) game-changing success, and has since then overseen a transitional period for the club, standing us in great stead for the future, all while keeping us competitive on what have been, compared to some of our rivals, relatively limited resources.

Whoever comes next come into a club with great players, resources, facilities and tradition. A lot of that will be down to Wenger, and I always think it's a shame when we forget that and get down on him because of a poor performance, or entirely understandable (if unfortunate) dry spell.

(Even though I sometimes do it too.)

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Lucky Gonk

Lucky Gonk

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Fucking Arsenal. I never thought we'd win but I hoped we wouldn't shit the bed to the magnitude we did. Clearly I was asking for the moon on a stick. There's something poetic about the degree to which we capitulated today. Wenger's 1,000th game? Honestly, it's like it was written in the stars.

Mourinho: "We came to kill and in the first ten minutes we destroyed. After that? Easy."

I swear if we could harness Mourinho's (entirely justified) smugness as an energy source the entire population of this planet would be good for the next 10,000 years. :(

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Gabe

Gabe

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Having two billionaire shareholders is an irrelevance if they don't make their fortunes available though, doesn't it? Kroenke approaches the club as a business enterprise, and Usmanov won't pour his funds in without having a controlling stake. Bearing that in mind, we have to stay within our means, which, for the last decade or so, has included paying back substantial loans on the new stadium, and as such I'd say Arsenal's having played in the Champions League for the last 20 years or so is quite impressive.

Well that's kind of the point - what use are wealthy owners if they aren't prepared to invest? Football clubs aren't generally a good investment unless the club is successful and being in the Champions League alone doesn't provide enough to suitably reinvest in the team each year.

Also, if we've had to rely on going on remarkable runs and/or collapses from our opposition in the last couple of years, and this year that seems unlikely, doesn't that suggest an upturn in our fortunes?

Does it? You haven't qualified yet, who is to say that this defeat won't start a Spurs-esque collapse for you this season? And, in fairness, both Tottenham and Man U have collapsed somewhat. (I do think you'll be fine, though, incidentally.)

Arsene Wenger came in and had some remarkable, (quite literally) game-changing success, and has since then overseen a transitional period for the club, standing us in great stead for the future, all while keeping us competitive on what have been, compared to some of our rivals, relatively limited resources.

Whoever comes next come into a club with great players, resources, facilities and tradition. A lot of that will be down to Wenger, and I always think it's a shame when we forget that and get down on him because of a poor performance, or entirely understandable (if unfortunate) dry spell.

(Even though I sometimes do it too.)

There's nothing wrong with respecting and appreciating the legacy he will leave, but that would have been true if he had left 3 years ago, too, and who knows what might have happened if he had? Like I said in a previous post, how long do you stick with him in the hope it will come good?

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Gotters

Gotters

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the new odd thing we've added this season is the inability in most games to play a decent first half - why are we constantly coming out so lethargically in matches, not just against the big teams, but in all the games that have been 0-0 at HT too - didn't we only score in the 1st half in 1 or 2 games in a run of 13 recently

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bear

bear

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Gabe, surely Wenger deserves a chance to reap the benefits of the stadium move over the next two or three years? He has the resources to compete at the top again now so why not see if he can deliver the title again.

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Gabe

Gabe

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Gabe, surely Wenger deserves a chance to reap the benefits of the stadium move over the next two or three years? He has the resources to compete at the top again now so why not see if he can deliver the title again.

I don't know, does he? Of the big clubs I don't actually mind Arsenal and in any given season if we (Liverpool) don't win the title then I am happy to see Arsenal win over Chelsea/United/City.

But it's been 8 years since the stadium move, what has the average attendance gone up by since that switch? And isn't 8 years long enough for that to start being felt?

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bear

bear

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Arsenal locked themselves into long term deals on the shirt sponsorship and suppliers sides to help pay for the stadium so it has taken until now for the real benefits to start being felt. I'm sure the Arsenal fans will correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the new deals with Puma and Emirates are worth something like an extra £40 million a year compared to the old deals with Nike and Emirates.

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The Fox

The Fox

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The psyche of this team is so weird. Normally defensively sound but capable of totally going to pieces and making the most basic errors. Capable of bouncing back from poor results and not getting into a slump against that adversity, yet capable of mentally falling apart within the space of 90 minutes.

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Cosmic_Guru

Cosmic_Guru

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I don't normally post in this thread after every game, but, really, what a dismal day. I can't understand why so many experienced Arsenal players perform so abjectly against the biggest sides, when even mediocre sides can often defend a 0-0 for the first half, and hope to nick something late on.

What a strange season.

Does anyone know of the club has given up on Chuks Aneke? He seems to be banging goals in regularly on loan for Crewe.

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V3zna

V3zna

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As much as I'm sure Wenger was upset, I really think he should have faced the music after the match. It just sends all the wrong signals, especially since he's always showed up before.

He spoke to Radio 5 at least.

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Rev

Rev

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Oh, fair enough. I'd just read he'd refused the press conference.

Sadly whilst Arsene is in charge of every single aspect of the club, he's not in charge of the team bus leaving.

Bless 'im.

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Gabe

Gabe

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By "all" you mean "Steve and a Liverpool fan with a very rudimentary understanding of the club", to be fair.

Well I'm not against Wenger - after all, it makes absolutely no difference to me if he stays or goes. I was really just thinking aloud and whilst I do understand he has done a lot behind the scenes (but perhaps not exactly what that entails), that's not to say no other manager could have done what he has done (or have taken over and built upon it x years ago).

I guess what I'm badly trying to say is that you keep waiting and waiting for these things to come to fruition and they never do - so when do you think a change is needed?

We've had false dawns at Anfield a number of times where we thought we'd turned a corner and we never did - but we've still won things. And I'd suggest that you've had better resources than us at any point over the past 10+ years plus the attraction of always being in the Champions League in to tempt players. I just think you'd underachieved, is all.

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carlito

carlito

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It's very strange coming to terms with a defeat like that especially when it's the third time in a single season it's happened. That hopeless feeling of being completely out of a game before it's even started is just too familiar.

It's hard to accept that weaknesses in the team which are obvious even to the most casual observer were not taken into account and the responsibility for that has to lie with the manager.

We knew that, despite his ability to carry the ball and run at the opposition which has been so welcome in recent games, Chamberlain has form for giving the ball away in dangerous positions in the midfield. He's made up for it a few times by tracking back and putting in great tackles, which he deserves credit for, but that doesn't take away from his propensity to make the errors in the first place. We knew this and yet still the decision was made to play him in a central position where losing the ball could hurt us and yesterday it did in gratuitous fashion. Quite apart from the damage to the morale of the team and our title ambitions that decision contributed to you have to wonder what kind of effect this will have on the confidence and development of a young player who has yet to really find his role in the team. I mean what did we buy Kallstrom for if not experience and cover?

We also know that, given the limited mobility of our deeper midfielders, we expose ourselves to counterattacks when we fling our fullbacks forward with no one to cover yet time after time we did it yesterday. We know that we rely too much on our fullbacks overlapping as part of our attacking strategy in the absence of Walcott's pace on the wing and Ramsey's drive from midfield but why didn't we cater for that? Why didn't we hedge that exposure with a conservative midfield with Flamini and Arteta tasked with sitting back and providing cover?

I guess I feel there are so many caveats to our qualities, in terms of individuals and as a team that we seem to ignore.

We've got great passers of the ball BUT no runners to actually pass to.

We've got a big centre forward who can win the ball BUT no one around him to pick up the second ball.

We've got experienced deep midfielders who, alternately, can read/direct the play and break it up BUT both we will beaten for pace by an average Premier League player.

We can leave ourselves open at the back IF we are scoring goals at the other end.

You can go on and on and I think, to a large degree, these caveats can be addressed with recruitment - I think we need an athlete playing a holding role in our midfield, we need some direct pace on our flanks as cover for Walcott and we need an attacking player to compliment Giroud - BUT we still should be making more of an effort to cater for them with the players we have.

It doesn't require a great deal of analysis to see these flaws and it's for that reason that three separate times this season our "rivals" in the league have been able to take the absolute piss out of us.

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