The Wenger Thread!: Page 44 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

The Wenger Thread!

Kel Varnsen

I can sympathize with Wenger in the transfer market. I don't want us to spend 20-25 mill on a striker that is marginally better than Giroud; we have money, but we don't have City or Chelsea money. I'd rather wait for a top class striker to become available.

I'm more worried about match day tactics and the lack of any clear style. Defensively we are solid, but we are not very good at winning the ball back quickly and in good positions. Our defensive pressing could use a lot of work. Going forward we look completely lost at times, with no clear plan of attack. The ball is passed around slowly, without any quick and determined movement off the ball. Yes, we play a lot of matches and it is difficult to develop the way we play, but teams like atletico madrid, liverpool and dortmund have proved that is possible. Wenger is a good manager, but he's not the best out there...

Irishgunner

The most striking thing about us currently, especially against Stoke, is that our players just don't move at all off the ball. It's incredibly frustrating to watch.

Bold Tone

Tried , but failed, to keep out of this thread as everything that is being said has been discussed ad nauseum over the years.
This season many of us thought we might make it when Ozil's and Flamini's contribution coupled with Giroud's and Ramsey's early season form propelled us to the top of the table.
The back 5 was sorted last year and now we are refusing to give Sagna a deal that will keep him here for the next 3 yrs yet we have all seen the "quality" of FBs we have bought recently, (Jenks, Santos and Monreal).
We could still sell him if we manage to get a better FB as i think, like Eboue, he wouldn't want to become a bit-part sub.
As for match-day tactics when things go wrong, we seem to be waiting on individual players to dig us out of poor team performances. Even top class teams (Bayern, Real, Juve) filled with world class players employ quality managers to set their tactics and get the best out of the players they've got.
Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, it is hard to defend his management skills over our lame perfomances over the past 3 months especially when things go wrong on the pitch and he sits there hoping (?) this player or that player does something to change the situation.
The only time i can remember this tactic working, this season, was when Sagna scored that header against the scum and the team turned the game around.

Cannon

If liverpool finish above us. I am through with Wenger.

MistaT

Cannon wrote:
If liverpool finish above us. I am through with Wenger.

Should evaluate our players and coach on our own performance not others. Too simple of a view - if we were to do the FA/CL cup double but finish 4th it would be hard to argue that Wenger should leave.

Rex

😆 Maybe we should reserve that particular discussion for when it looks even remotely likely it could happen.

Jed

YounGunner wrote:
Wenger's teams have almost always been quite mentally weak. The only Arsenal team who i would describe as being mentally strong is probably his first title winning side in 97/98 but that was mainly George Graham's dressing room with the likes of Adams, Bould, Dixon, Keown, Seaman etc and even they managed to bottle it under Wenger in 98/99. Losing the league title in the last two games of the season is just unacceptable. After the old guard began to fade away one by one Wenger's teams regressed mentally. Look at his greatest ever team between 2003-2005. Even though they were successful, they still underachieved and choked time and time again. Gift wrapping the title to Utd in 02/03, being eliminated by a mediocre Chelsea side in the CL in 03/04, completely collapsing after losing our unbeaten run at Old Trafford after a strong start. Its just something you have to accept with Wenger's teams.

Spot on. They say a team is a reflection of its manager and our mental weakness stems from Wenger himself. It's precisely the reason why everyone has lost hope and given up on the title after the Stoke defeat despite there being still 10 games to go. No one can see us turning this around and going on a winning run towards the title because Wenger's teams just don't do that. But you'd back them to do the opposite - crumble when the heat is on.

Timbob

Nah it's bullshit. Easy to sit on yer arse at home saying a team that won 2 league titles and 2 fa cups in 3 seasons was mentally weak.

And nobody expects us to win the next 10 games because its obvious we don't have enough quality in the squad, nowt to do with mentality.

MistaT

Shit, our mentality has been one of our strongest points this year in that we've rebounded incredibly well from every blip.

flobaba

Yep, it's the sickening nature if those (predictable?) blips that hurts us.

You can't keep getting turned by the same sort of teams in the same sort of games, and with sometimes the same extremely embarrassing score lines every season, and expect questions not to be raised about the mental make up of your team.

We've done well all in all, but the Stokes and ManUs are the sort of games we really ought to be winning, or at least putting up performances which will not be generally described as "utterly shit" if we had genuine designs on winning the league this season. These are the "big" games, especially at this crucial stage of the season. The games we get an opportunity to make a statement.

I believe we've made our statement.

Jed

Timothy wrote:
Nah it's bullshit. Easy to sit on yer arse at home saying a team that won 2 league titles and 2 fa cups in 3 seasons was mentally weak.

And nobody expects us to win the next 10 games because its obvious we don't have enough quality in the squad, nowt to do with mentality.

We had club stalwarts TA6, Keown, Bould, Nige, Dixon in those days, GG's men, and they had more to do with instilling mental strength and winning attitude than Wenger did and I'm 100% convinced of that. Examples such as when Adams asked Dennis how much he wanted to win on the couch back from an away game or when Vieira said he learned all about winning from the likes of Keown and Adams reinforce this belief. Wenger gives players freedom, confidence, faith. If he gave them a winning mentality we wouldn't be on our 9th trophyless year.

Jed

Look at ManUre last year, had a worse squad than ours, but they also had a manager with a relentless desire to win. They ended up champions with a few games to spare. Fast forward one year and a midtable manager and they find themselves struggling for a Europa League spot.

JazzG

Timothy wrote:
Nah it's bullshit. Easy to sit on yer arse at home saying a team that won 2 league titles and 2 fa cups in 3 seasons was mentally weak.

And nobody expects us to win the next 10 games because its obvious we don't have enough quality in the squad, nowt to do with mentality.

Exactly, complete nonsense to sit here and say we were mentally weak. Our problem as always under Wenger is our squad depth. In 02/03 Vieira getting injured and injuries to CB cost us and in 03/04 we didn't go on in the CL because our squad had been overplayed and you could see in that Chelsea game after 60mins we were finished. Also that mediocre Chelsea team finished 2nd in the league and had record investment put into it with top players joining them that season.

Jed wrote:
Look at ManUre last year, had a worse squad than ours, but they also had a manager with a relentless desire to win. They ended up champions with a few games to spare. Fast forward one year and a midtable manager and they find themselves struggling for a Europa League spot.

Last season they took the team the finished 2nd on goal difference in 11/12 and added the best striker in the league. RvP and Carrick put in World class seasons and City were poor in comparison. Fergie knew the limitations of his squad and had good tactical people around him.

Moyes doesn't look like he has a clue what he is doing, playing his 4-4-2 system which clearly it doesn't suit his players and not having any fall back plan

goon

ManUre? It's like being back in the playground.

So this time last season we had to win virtually every game from this point onwards just to have a hope in hell of getting 4th spot. Despite the team playing some god awful football, it scraped it's way into 4th with a terrific set of results, overhauling a huge deficit. That to me shows a lot more 'mental strength' than losing to Stoke.

I find it quite bizarre how we supposedly have a squad with glaring weaknesses, a manager that doesn't know tactics and a team that's supposedly mentally weak, and yet we've lead the table for most of the season, and sit just 4 points off the top in March, 14 odd points ahead of the reigning champions.

Klaus

Jed wrote:
Timothy wrote:
Nah it's bullshit. Easy to sit on yer arse at home saying a team that won 2 league titles and 2 fa cups in 3 seasons was mentally weak.

And nobody expects us to win the next 10 games because its obvious we don't have enough quality in the squad, nowt to do with mentality.

We had club stalwarts TA6, Keown, Bould, Nige, Dixon in those days, GG's men, and they had more to do with instilling mental strength and winning attitude than Wenger did and I'm 100% convinced of that. Examples such as when Adams asked Dennis how much he wanted to win on the couch back from an away game or when Vieira said he learned all about winning from the likes of Keown and Adams reinforce this belief. Wenger gives players freedom, confidence, faith. If he gave them a winning mentality we wouldn't be on our 9th trophyless year.

So essentially 'Graham's lads' get credited for the wins that team racked up but Wenger is blamed for when they failed?

kamikaze

our teams from 01/02 to 04/05 weren't mentally weak. they were incredibly thin - there was hardly any backup at all. that's why we "choked" in the CL - that's when the injuries and fatigue would pile up, and we'd start players who were not really fit because we had no choice.

MistaT

Exactly.

I've been a huge critic of how Wenger gives players freedom on the pitch, rather than a stricter role, and think at times that has cost us. But playing loosely/haphazardly is not the same as being mentally weak.

Jed

Why do we always choke under pressure if we had this supposed mental strength? It's not a myth, there's enough evidence to suggest we're mentally weak. We've got the bottlers tag over us for a reason.

2007-08: We were the best side in the league, then threw it all away in the business end, including getting knocked out of the cups.

2010-11: Wenger typically failed to add a striker in January when the whole world and its dog thought he should, especially in light of Van Persie's injuries. Anyway we were top of the league until February, we drew 4-4 at Newcastle in the biggest choke I've ever seen from an Arsenal team and it was downhill from there. We naturally also got knocked out of all the cups in the space of two weeks.

2011 Carling Cup final: Birmingham fucking City. Need I say more?

Oftgoon, are you suggesting that scraping 4th is the same as winning the title?

To win the title you need special mental resources as Wenger would say (funny how no other top club manager mentions the words 'mental' and 'strength' as much as Arsene does; perhaps because he doesn't actually believe we have it?).

kamikaze

not gonna defend the teams after 2005 against allegations of being mentally weak. they sucked, bunch of losers they were.

ludovicvanzis

Jed wrote:
Look at ManUre last year, had a worse squad than ours, but they also had a manager with a relentless desire to win. They ended up champions with a few games to spare. Fast forward one year and a midtable manager and they find themselves struggling for a Europa League spot.

United had/have a top class squad. But they were Ferguson's players and he knew how to get them to perform. Moyes isn't doing poorly because he's a midtable manager but because he has his own ideas. Whether he turns out a success for them depends entirely on how well he handles the pressure that the inevitable short term failure will put on him.

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