The State of The Arsenal

The Arsenal
#21

How great is this potential? They’re doing well this season, but I feel like people are getting a bit too high on them right now. It’s a good run of form but the effect is pronounced because Spurs, Man U and Arsenal all look so shit. Even Chelsea too aren’t what they have been in recent years, though they aren’t as shit as us other three.

All it takes is a couple of those teams to get their acts slightly together and Leicester’s potential is back to being limited to Europa League qualification.

Still can’t see past Rodgers snatching the chance to manage one of the biggest teams in the country. Stadium, facilities, finances, reputation, ability to attract players… Leicester can’t compete here, and the potential for what Rodgers could achieve is fsr greater here than at Leicester.

But that is literally all just my opinion, and it seems I’m outvoted here, so maybe I know fuck all. Bit of an academic discussion anyway because there’s literally no way of knowing unless it happens, we’re all offering pure speculation.

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#22

Its a valid point but difference being for me he’s already had that experience at Liverpool.
Think overall seeing as he didn’t Moysie it he will still not be a million miles from a top 6 list after this job.
I think his style of football at Leicester will win plaudits with a better club than say the constant doubt you put with a Eddie Howe.

#23

Rodgers dropped guaranteed titles and European football at Celtic for mid table Leicester without even thinking. The notion that he wouldn’t drop Leicester for Arsenal in a heartbeat is a strange one to me.

He clearly only cares about moving up and the chance at another title run is something he’d get at Arsenal but probably never get at Leicester.

He wouldn’t even hesitate in leaving Leicester for Arsenal. The gulf in size of the two clubs is enormous.

1 Like
#24

The only positive thing I currently see is that we have a crop of new talented youngsters ready to shine a bright light on our club once Emery leaves.

The downside is that we are wasting a very good Aubameyang.

How to structurally change the mentality within the club, that is really difficult. But, how could we go from the confident Highbury era to the weak as fuck shittery of the Emirates squads. :frowning:

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#25

Honestly it’s like walking out on a Katie Perry video shoot.

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#26

Don’t know about that, he’s got some bunch of young talent and squad at Leicester. He’s onto something there. They could be a team up for another title challenge, wouldn’t see him leaving tomorrow maybe a few years down the line.

Just something isn’t right with the club right now, and I don’t think it’s all Emery either. I think some of those players are a problem and will be for other coaches if they don’t nip it in the bud. I think it’s a wide disconnection between players and the fans, the fact they chose Xhaka as captain and are still defending him after what he did, shows they clearly don’t have a clue to read the fanbase. I think the likes of Raul and Edu just want Yes men as coaches and don’t want anyone coming in questioning or demanding anything, the only reason Jose is looking for the job is his last two runs with clubs knocked his rep as a top manager.

I think it’s more to the state of the club then getting rid of Emery imo.

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#27

Let’s hope we quickly drop down the league into the bottom half so the board wake up and realise we won’t make top four with this poor excuse for a manager. The sooner we are down the more time we have to come back under a new manager.

#28

I’m just not into that thinking of us losing just to get rid of him. Sorry just don’t like that way of thinking.

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#29

Agreed and mainly because you’ve got people spending good money going to watch and just as importantly for me people thinking there’s no other problems at this club just poor management.

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#30

Till we get rid of Emery and Xhaka, all problems will remain.

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#31

I would have gotten rid of Wenger about 8 years sooner than we did because for every year he overstayed he set us back two years. We won’t be good again until the late 2020’s.

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#32

Think the culture at Arsenal changed a lot from when we were successful, when Wenger first arrived to when he left.

At Highbury we had physically and mentally strong players, with a strong, organised, defence and a will to win.
When we moved to the Emirates that all changed and went from that to smaller more technical players which was not as successful.

But in his last few seasons there was an air of complacency around the club with players that didn’t have to fight for their place, no matter how average they were.
We saw a lack of a ruthlessness, instead, we just went out to prove how many hundreds of passes we could string together and a complete lack of defensive organisation.

When Emery took over I thought he would change the culture of the club and we would see a ruthless manager that would stop us leaking goals and get the players fighting for the club.

Instead, he just carried on where Wenger left off.
Repeating the same mistakes and the same level of stubbornness when dealing with players as well as no real direction or organisation.

Whoever the next manager is, will have an extremely difficult job changing the entitled culture that we’ve seen with some of our players, so it will have to be a very strong character to sort this continuing mess out.

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#33

Arsenal and Wenger lost their status and identity on that heavy defeat at United.
A new manager with a big personality is important.
The Emirates era has been bland years and never got started.

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#34

I think this is overstated. If prime tikataca Barce played with their midgets they’d win the league.

The real reason we won things when Wenger first came is because A) We had world class players in every position B) The league was weaker if we’re honest.

The reason we didn’t win things after that is because we had weak links in multiple positions and players that shouldnt be starting for us.

I do agree with the entitled not giving a shit attitudes endemic in the club. Roy Keane says the reason for United’s success was because they trained the hardest in the country.

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#35

This was definitely the reason we didn’t challenge like we used to.

I always thought it was strange that Wenger changed from having a team that was full of very powerful, tall, fast players like, Vieira, Petit, Campbell, Toure, Lauren, Aadams, Keown, Gilberto etc, to a team with so many smaller players that weren’t physically as strong.

Almost every player in the Invincibles side was six foot or more and physically imposing and then he became obsessed with small, lightweight, more technical players like Cesc, Arshavin, Sanchez, Rosicky, Wilshere, Cazorla, Walcott etc.

He also chose to bring in ball playing CB’s rather than taller, stronger players that used to have, which worked so successfully.

But the lack of winners and leaders is what has dragged us down the most.
Like you say, there were no weak links in the title winning teams, but there were gaps all over the sides we saw when we moved to the Emirates, and those gaps remained until he left and he chose to do nothing about it.

Emery clearly isn’t the manager to sort this out, so the board had better come up with a viable alternative, who can turn our club around.

1 Like
#36

I hated the way Wenger used to neglect games, too. The FA Cup 5th round game at home to Blackburn springs to mind. With one eye on Bayern Munich in the week, he gambled and lost both! FFS.

He did this a lot for PL games as well. 3pm. Saturday. Get the players up for it. We lost/dropped points on some embarrassing games over the years. Even with the awful records we had against Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and even Manchester City in his latter years with us, we ought to have always won the “bread and butter” games and always finished only a few points away from the title, not absurdly far off

#37

It’s a complacent money making machine for all key people involved. The players, the coaches, the senior management and the owners.

No urgency, no drilling down on the millions and millions of poorly spent and wasted money and wages.

The only ones who really care are the fans who pay for it all through gate money, merchandise and TV subs etc.

We routinely get out played by much smaller clubs as a result of this complacency where nothing really changes. Raul and the Board must change this culture and change it now. Let’s hope they’ve got it in them to do this or we’ll be fighting in mid table on a regular basis before we know it. Big clubs like Newcastle can go down the shitter. We’re not immune.

#38

More likely with anyone else we would have been out of Top 4 8 seasons ago.

#39

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Trion hard at work

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#40

I fucking hate our club at the moment.

I understand it’s mostly to do with the Manager but his tactics are highlighting each player we have at our disposal for all of their weaknesses and it’s disgusting to watch. We have no identity we have no control we have no attack its pathetic.

If we even try to defend emery , and we look at his tactics which are draw out the other team, win the ball ,counter , if we lose the ball after that counter, press high and intense , if they sit deep overlap the wings.

If we look at them general instruction and we imagine that is what our players practice in a daily basis, where the fuck is the quality of pass, where is the quality of ball control, where is the central midfielders offering out balls to pressed players, where is the cohesion in press that they much practice in training. It’s all just fucking horrible to look at.

I dunno man I’m just fuming at the whole entire club its pathetic.

Sorry for the awful writing style, I’m doing it staggered whilst cleaning.

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