AVB? A few months ago he was the whiz kid/golden boy/genius, and i'm sure many here would have welcomed him with open arms. Just goes to show that you can only manage the squad you have. No manager is going to come in and make Ramsey/Arteta/Song a world beating midfield. Wenger isn't a PROVEN manager? 3 PL trophies, 4 FA cups, 3 time PL manager of the year.
There's a huge difference between a whiz kid and SAF. No so much as matter of talent or competence but status.
True that. I was initially impressed with Villas - Boas, but looking at Chelsea today, they are a team as rudderless as we are. They got taken to town by Birmingham. Out ran, out played for large stretches, it shows the danger of replacing a coach. Same as the inherent rewards of making the right change. Last year Sunderland was pretty dismal, and they've made the leap. Those guys were primed and motivated and played their butts off. And O Neill gets credit for that.
All of those players didn't cost much in relative terms. I think even Nasri cost as much as Henry did. Pires cost only 8 million, and Ljungberg only 3 million.
By the standards of the time, Arsene spent quite a bit. The book Pay As You Play suggests that the Arsenal of 1998-2005 cost the third (or fourth) most of any team in England. It's post-Emirates that the spending has become almost zero. I wonder if Wenger's read Moneyball - it's uncanny how similar Wenger's approach seems to be to Billy Beane's: buy younger players, groom them, and hope they pan out, because you don't have the money to compete with the big boys.
Billy Beane took a lot of his ideas running the A's from how Wenger was running Arsenal at the time. It's not a coincidence.
It's hard to say exactly what the thought process is for a guy like Roman Abramovich but if anything resembling normality he's got to be wishing he still had Ancelotti.
can we defend? all is not lost, but that's a classic case of "those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".
a weird stat, we have only given up 3 goals off corner kicks this season which is tied for 2nd lowest in the league. I think the Mert/Kos pairing are good enough, but with Mert out I am very concerned about the defending.
That's hardly revolutionary in football terms. The true pioneers of that strategy, such as busby, started it 60 plus years ago. Although I do agree with your sentiment about arsenals spending from about 10 years ago. Very different to now. But the biggest change though since then has been in terms of arsenals wage structure relative to other teams in the league.
Fair point - however, it's really, really hard to pull off, and it requires being a very capable evaluator of talent.
He and the team stop caring halfway through last season. Since then everyone has just been cashing their paychecks. There is no fight, no desire, and no heart in this team at all. And it shows on the pitch. Today's loss is just another layer...how many more embarrassments do we need in a season for people to take notice? I wish I was as positive as some of you guys who think a top three finish is possible. Or even a fourth for that matter.
Went numb a couple of months ago...maybe when that 8th goal went in. Now it's actually become laughable.
Amazing how Arsene built this team up, then proceeded to undo all of his efforts. This is easily the worst squad of the Wenger era; definitely worse than the one he started with. The gulf in class between this squad and the invincibles is remarkable.
To be fair the team isn't all that bad. The GK+Defence is as good as we've ever had it. The problem lies with the attack, the team is void of any creativity, passing ability and worst of all finishing quality(aside from RVP that is). It's understandable because we've lost some big players in that area through injury or to other clubs. Ramsey/Arteta/Gervinho/Oxlaid/Walcott/Rosicky at this point are no better than average squad players. If we could somehow get top players in their positions, we'd be sorted.
Disagree - the defense isn't all that. Maybe it's the injuries, but this side looks like it concede at any time. The problem is that Wenger's teams have always been built this way - the team is built around keeping the ball. The problem is that this side isn't any good at keeping the ball - possession gets given away cheaply, time and again, and that leads to goals on the break. The goals allowed go down when the turnovers go down. Wenger needs to completely rebuild the midfield though -this is the worst Arsenal midfield in a very long time.