Coombs wrote:
So much revisionism about project youth era. I remember all the spend some fucking money moaning and the beginnings of Wenger Out, not some nice period where everyone was happy enough with some pretty football.
In fact, the pretty football pissed people off even more.
It's all grass-is-greener contrarianism.
I remember the morons who would froth at the mouth each time we were linked with anyone below 20 well, but I think you're generalising. I gave project youth (and pretty football) my full backing in those days and I certainly wasn't alone. Things turned sour on project youth more broadly when we started selling these kids and often failed to replace them, Cesc and Nasri leaving was probably the final nail in the coffin as far as sentiment goes.
But it's not contrarianism to want to go back to that now, objectively speaking the club was probably run better during that post invincibles period than at any other point under Wenger. Conversely what followed has been a gradual decline into the situation we find ourselves in today. In the meantime, there's many examples of other clubs benefiting from the youth policy and able to punch above their weight, so it's clearly something that works. We have the benefit of having some financial muscle to go along with it, so if we did it well we could actually take it to another level.
And what was it that the naysayers wanted to do back then? Spend some money to compete with the best. It wasn't rooted in reality then and it's not rooted in reality now.
