Simeone has one of the most expensive assembled squads ever and he plays football that would make prime Trapattoni teams look free flowing and expansive
What he did when he won the league first time was outstanding but Atletico have been spending a fortune for years now.
And as for the argument about Wenger, I’m not buying that a man who went 9 years without winning a trophy belongs in any discussion for over achieving as a manager. He always had a squad fit for top 4 and that’s about where he placed post-Invincibles. Can’t credit the man for finishing 4th with the 4th best team lol
I really hate this notion of selling assets being something to celebrate and net spend conquering all.
Barcelona were a car crash and fucking idiots who set their sights on individual players and didn’t give a shit about the money. Conning them into paying 150m for a player you basically don’t need doesn’t make you a genius.
If Barcelona don’t come knocking that sale never happens. It’s not like they’d have sold him for 120m to someone else because they were so great at selling. You always need a mug who wants to buy.
But we’ve now (potentially, this season isn’t over) gone 4 seasons without CL football with heavy investment.
And we can point to his last couple of seasons (5th, missing it by 1 point, and 6th) but I think, overall, Wenger has us in the CL places and he has us with better records against Man City and Liverpool if he stays on.
He potentially also attracts a world class calibre of player by using key elements like Ozil and Aubameyang to assemble a squad.
The whole point of sacking Wenger was to push on and get a new manager to challenge for the title. Instead, we’ve gone backwards.
I often get the impression that Wenger was like Superman, holding the train tracks together to allow the train to pass over him, a la Superman 1. (Nice little analogy for a Saturday morning!)
Wenger went 2 seasons without CL football, and was at a point where he didn’t even know how to build a squad anymore. He signed 2 strikers in the space of 4 months, made Mustafi and Xhaka focal points of our team and was ready to give Oxlade-Chamberlain a £180k a week multi year deal to convince him to stay.
By the time Wenger left he was so far past his prime that his squad building alone put us in a position of having a shit tonne of unsellable crap on huge contracts with many years remaining. I don’t think people truly appreciate how many years Wenger set us back by with some of his transfer business
I think that these (along with Perez, so you know I’m not coming from a pro-Wenger stance here) were absolute duds. But I do feel they were anomalies. It doesn’t help that they were all grouped together as signings and all towards the end of his tenure. It feeds into the ‘Wenger’s lost it’ narrative.
The only thing I do agree with is that he lost his ability to win the league. Even if we did sign a Suarez, a Higuain etc, it wouldnt have been enough for us to win a league (even in 2016 against Leicester). The mentality was missing.
However, Wenger still had that allure of attracting a world class player over here. Combine that with his uncanny knack of getting CL football, and the likes of Locatelli and/or Vlahovic aren’t thinking twice about signing for The Arsenal.
Pepe also wouldn’t cut the tragic figure he currently is.
