Former Arsenal Players Thread: Page 102 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Former Arsenal Players Thread

Don Pacifico

lorddulaarsenal Gervinho was also an elite dribbler. Mostly due to him being able to quickly shift his body weight mid move. Loved him

Absence really has made the heart grow fonder!

Gervinho was never good enough. A signing that typified the complete lack of ambition of the club in the latter stages of the Wenger era.

SimplyThePest

Don Pacifico Yeah, picking up Gervinho from Lille instead of Hazard was another reminder of our continued decline at the time...

Big Willie

Don Pacifico Gervinho was never good enough. A signing that typified the complete lack of ambition of the club in the latter stages of the Wenger era.

We missed out on Hazard and got this guy. He tried and didn't deserve the criticism he got for playing and being out of his depth though.

I remember his car either broke down or was out for some scheduled work in Cricklewood in an autoshop about 150m away from a cafe some friends and I used to frequent.

Some people realised who it was and went over but then you had some clowns taunting him telling him to "get the fuck out of our club" and other shit like that. Totally uncalled for by these bellends who claim to be supporters abusing one of our players (who's never disrespected the club) during his time off. This was 2013 or 2014 and was pretty much less than a couple months before he ended up leaving.

lorddulaarsenal

Don Pacifico not saying he was good enough - needed to finish with more conviction but he was definitely one of the best at being able to get past defenders

daredevil

Don Pacifico

It had nothing to do with ambition. You can't aspire your way to having more money to spend on transfer fees and wages.Wenger wanted Hazard. A blind man would have chosen Hazard over Gervinho.

We couldn't afford the best, so we had to sign inferior options. Signing Gervinho whilst Chelsea who had a bigger budget signed Hazard crystallised the different environments the two clubs were operating in.

Big Willie

Claudius Wish he can rediscover his best at some point.

He can only do that with gametime which he doesn't seem to be getting. ESR is one of the guys I'm really rooting for but slowly and surely I'm coming to the conclusion that he'd be better off elsewhere much as I'd hate to see him go, otherwise he'll end up being a bench warmer and stagnating like he's done over the last 2 seasons.

Claudius

Big Willie he’s been largely injured over the last two seasons. Guy has only really been available since late fall. But yeah, a couple from ESR, Nketiah, Nelson etc will need to be recycled for healthy competition

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

lorddulaarsenal weirdly I liked his stint at CF for us. It was refreshing having someone with pace and agility when we were so used to and sick of Giroud.

Big Willie

Lobbing Schmeichal who was pretty much on his line. Pure 🤤

Get him to watch some Pires @lorddulaarsenal

JazzG

That 01/02 season Pires was something else, he came back and scored but he never hit those 01/02 heights.

Oh and that above clip is a hell of a lot more enjoyable with Andy Gray's commentary.

TambourineMan

Andy Gray adored Pires.

Lukazan

TambourineMan To be fair I always felt Andy Gray liked us in general. I miss his commentary honestly.

"Well I'm sorry boys but you cannnot back off Dennis Bergkamp and back off Dennis Bergkamp and expect to not get punished."

JazzG

Apologies for the lack of pixels!

Don Pacifico

daredevil as others have said, think this is dependent on whether or not you believe we had more cash available than we spent.

Coombs

Wenger wouldn't let Arsenal overpay for players on principle, regardless of whether he wanted the player or not. It's well documented that he considered himself a steward of the club's finances, so I don't think it's particularly controversial to suggest that our footballing ambitions might've taken second priority to financial stability, even when we could possibly have afforded better players.

goon

Coombs

Wenger with the board essentially enforced significantly more stringent FFP rules on the club than anything out there today - at a time when FFP was pretty much a non-factor.

I don’t think it was all financially motivated though. Some of it was just belief in the players he already had.

daredevil

Coombs

If we had to do it all over again, i.e. manage the club through the transition, would you want Wenger to guide the club through it, or someone else?

Burnwinter

goon I don’t think it was all financially motivated though.

It probably wasn't all about saving money as it turned out, but about underinvestment to keep the stock down. Gervinho was signed just as KSE completed its takeover—not that that proves anything.

Did we ever find out if Wenger had the inside running on the years of labour to get Usmanov out prior to the current spending spree?

Claudius

Don Pacifico Lagos liked saying penny wise pound foolish.

JazzG

Had some brain dead moments for us but have a lot of time for him. Think he was a big positive influence in our young squad at a time where we were in a bad place

Qwiss

JazzG he was terrible for us both on and off the pitch IMO.

Clrnc

Wenger did a lot of wrongs, like Suarez, Xabi etc but Hazard was not one of them.

We had a bid accepted, his agent chose Chelsea. Too bad. It was confirmed by that Cagigao feature and also his agent.

https://www.squawka.com/en/eden-hazard-arsenal-chelsea-lille-move/

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