Arsène Wenger

If you don’t have the personnel, then don’t try to be like Barcelona. This surely would constitute as basic logic and is a part of tactical nous?

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I think it’s because he could do the the latter at one stage in his career and by the tail end of it - he looks so inept.

For example he can see the importance of a midfield battle in Europe yet year on year kept losing the midfield battle.

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Me neither when everyone knows very well that being able to sit on the internet and point out where things went wrong or right and make insightful comments is a totally different thing to actually being able set a football team up to compete and succeed at the highest level like some dude who won multiple PL and FA cups and had a dozen knockout runs in the CL including semi finals and finals runs.

Sorry I had to lol but there is also a point there. He did get somewhere, maybe just not all the way.

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Haha but this is basically my whole point! Just because you know the importance of winning the midfield battle and point it out on the telly does not mean you’re able to ensure you win the midfield battle against the best sides in the world.

Its not exactly the same thing, but reminds me of Neville post Valencia, with loads of people saying it would damage his rep as a pundit and his ability to do it with authority. No it won’t, they’re two totally different things. Him not being cut out to manage, or not being cut out to save Valencia, has zero bearing on his ability to analyse a match that has already happened on the telly for an audience.

Tactics won’t matter if players are shit.

If they did, lower teams would have more of a chance against bigger teams than they actually do.

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Tactics matter even with shit players. You can have shit players not lose 8-2 against a top team. And you can have Arsenal who do.

Chelsea’s players aren’t shit. They still lost 5-0 against City.

It’s often a mix of circumstances. Tactics, players’ skills and momentum.

Leicester’s players weren’t best of the league when they won the league, but their tactics and momentum did contribute to their success.

I will reiterate, if Wenger wants to play a certain way and his players are not good enough to do so, it is the manager’s fault for having little tactical nous to adapt to the opponent and to identify that his players aren’t of the standard to play the way he wants them to.

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Yeah basically Wenger’s biggest downfall was sentimental feelings to players that he formed a bond with, that’s what I can gather from listening to his punditry.

But they are inferior to City’s bunch.

You can have all the tactics and as many compromises to adapt to one’s opponents but you can get away with it only a few times.
Over many duels, one with significantly better set wins.

Tactics only matters when the quality difference is not that high.

It is not true. I just gave you examples why it is not true. Lol.

Tactics matter. Through tactics an inferior team can stunt against a superior team. Be it take a draw. Sneak a win or minimise losing to the opponent.

Chelsea losing 5-0 means tactics were shit. Just as Arsenal losing 8-2 means tactics were shit.

Tactics matter even more when players are shit, because that is how you counter their weaknesses.

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Lol exactly.

If that were the case every league in the world wouldn’t be won by obvious candidates.

It’s effing delusional to think tactics can regularly fill the weaknesses of a side.

Were Chelsea & Arsenal players in their respective matches were of equivalent quality as their opponents.
No is the answer.

And no self respecting manager will set up to not concede more goals. That’s what relegation fodder managers do.

They can, however, enable you to punch above your weight which is something Wenger was not able to do in the latter half of his tenure and a key reason for our regression under him.

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He knows a lot about football. Just outdated as manager.

He had his team punching well above their capabilities through out Emirates era bar last 2 seasons.

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Consistently against equal and better opposition?

Hardly.

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As I said shit players can’t topple bigger teams.
What Wenger managed was to make sure Arsenal didn’t drop down to level of Liverpool, Spurs and other similar candidates in that time period.

We didn’t always have shit players though did we?

Wenger’s so called tactics in the latter half of his tenure were dog shit and cost us so many times it’s actually insane.

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