Yeah Wenger deserves credit for the cups of course, but they totally flattered to deceive.
At the same time in which we won trophies again, we slipped further and further off the pace in the league and eventually we became a Europa League club.
Wigan won the FA Cup and got relegated, so you can’t use it as a true barometer of where the club sits.
My point was that he did not have the ability to consistently do it particularly in the league and Europe, the fact you’re banging on about the FA cup more than proves my point.
Yeah FA Cup is a crapshoot knock out competition with lots of rotation by big teams. You might only have to beat one or two top teams during the 6-7 games or whatever number is the total. It is a wonderful honor but hardly a measuring stick of season performance… look at who played in finals last decade.
If that’s true, then why did he keep spinning the line, every season, that we didn’t need to buy, and this group of players can win the PL title?
He bought all our players and a lot of them weren’t good enough but rather than admit he was wrong, which he never did, he would persevere with them.
There’s no use in making these very logical points; Wenger’s defenders will just continue to ignore them and find every other excuse in the world for him lol
This is more complicated, as we all know. Did he really think that or was he spouting only possible company line during years of austerity? Not saying he was great last 5-7 years… he prob should have left after that first FA Cup post stadium.
I don’t how much of it was towing the company line but then why did he stay?
At his peak he could have gone anywhere he wanted so what would have been the point of staying at a club that hampered his ambitions.
He was either a control freak that liked being at a club that gave him control over almost every aspect of running the club, as well as being under very little pressure, or was he simply going along with what the board told him, or a bit of both.
It seems a bit stranger that someone who is famous for his winning mentality would stay at a club so long, without the transfer budget to compete properly.
He had already been successful when he first came here and made himself a reputation as one of the best managers in Europe, playing some of the best football, so why not go to a club where he can work with the best players again?
Yay. This again
I think he had sufficient hubris and a vision of helping create the nextgen Arsenal. Anyway, this is beat to death, no?
Name me one manager who can do that with shit players on regular basis.
It’s a money game.
Because he is not dumb to announce we are broke and lessen any chance of landing players like oh I don’t know Ozil, Sanchez, Cech etc.
There were several transfer windows where Wenger said we were after a top quality player but wouldn’t pay what the selling club wanted, which is fine, but then would buy no one.
So when we were desperate for a striker or CB or DM he would leave it for several seasons and do nothing about it.
If you can’t get the player you want then go out and get the next best thing, you don’t just leave it.
That’s like having a flat tyre on your car, then going to a tyre shop and saying, “can I have a new Pirelli tyre please,” and the shop saying “sorry, we’ve only got Michelin” and you saying to him, “ok, I really wanted Michelin, I’ll walk home then.”
That’s why winning 3 straight out of 4 FA cup comes into picture.
You can luck out once but doing it consistently adds value to the argument.
All this has changed since Wenger left, right?
How was your experience of Loan transfer window we just went through?
Meh not really. We beat Hull, Aston Villa and Chelsea in the finals. Year before we beat Hull, Wigan won the FA Cup. Yeah, it’s a nice accomplishment but pressed against 38 games and/or Europe where competition is stronger, to me it really doesn’t compare as measuring stick.
To reach finals we beat United, Liverpool, Tottenham, City etc.
Simply brushing off the trophies is a huge disrespect to the trophies.
If PL & CL are only trophies that matter, let’s just give up because we ain’t doing shit against City, Chelsea, PSG, Bayern, Barca, Juventus, Real etc with our shit budget.
That is a good question.
If it turns out Emery isn’t given the funds he needs then Wenger might have just been going along with what the board told him.
Although that still doesn’t answer the question of why he stayed so long at an unambitious club with an owner that wasn’t going to invest in what we needed to challenger for the PL and CL.
Aren’t knockout games more about tactics than season games. The fact is in 2014 we beat second place Liverpool with defensive tactics. In 2015 we beat United at Old Trafford. In 2017 we beat Pep’s City with defensive tactics and dominated the midfield against title winners Chelsea.
In the CL we beat Bayern with defensive tactics, Dortmund with expansive tactics in the latter years. We only lost on away goals against Bayern beating them on their ground the season they won it too despite having a comparatively crap side. We beat Barce when they were one of the best sides in history. We beat Prime Milan, Juve, Real Madrid.
But our performances gradually got worse because player recruitment got worse and our best players left or got old.
Because he is the most loyal fan Arsenal’s got.
Like I said earlier, to win it you usually have to win one tough game, maybe two. And what? Seven total? 4-5 of which are probably lower half of prem or below. There is just no comparison.