The lowest point......: Page 4 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

The lowest point......

Shady

Ah yeah, forgot about Birmingham 2008.

Probably that, then the collapse of the Invincibles, then Birmingham 2011.

Champions League was a horrible night, but not a low point. We did better than expected really. I was still proud of the team.

MistaT

You could be proud of the team after the CL Final, not sure the same could be said after Birmingham fiascos.

QuincyAbeyie

MistaT wrote:
You could be proud of the team after the CL Final, not sure the same could be said after Birmingham fiascos.

You can be proud and still feel that it is a low point. It's not a given that you feel lower when Arsenal are crushed by Liverpool than when we're cheated by the referee and lose because of that.

Biggus

Rayman wrote:
Getting kicked out the CL by Bayern Munich in 05 sticks to the memory.

As opposed to getting kicked out of the CL by them or Barcelona every other year? :hmm:

Claudius

Goodness, Lagos. Where did you dig that up from? Eduardo, Clichy, Gallas. What a day.

MistaT

Quincy Abeyie wrote:
MistaT wrote:
You could be proud of the team after the CL Final, not sure the same could be said after Birmingham fiascos.

You can be proud and still feel that it is a low point. It's not a given that you feel lower when Arsenal are crushed by Liverpool than when we're cheated by the referee and lose because of that.

With all the shit we've been through in the last decade you would think the lowest point wouldn't be one with any positive emotion.

Rex

This is all very subjective, and it has to be. I chose the moment which for me was emotionally hardest to take. Nothing comes even close to the CL final for me. It doesn't matter that we put in a heroic performance and that the players didn't let themselves, or the fans, down. I was absolutely gutted for days.

My second worst moment was being in Barcelona when Henry left. The transfer itself made me sad, but it was the Catalans' reaction to the transfer which was the real kick in the teeth; those fucking wankers were blasé about it! 'Henry? Decent signing I suppose, but I'd rather we had signed so and so'. Their attitude made me want to puke.

mags

Eduardo at Birmington was the beginning of the end..........And more draws after that draw....The loss to Birmingham in '11 was the final nail in the AW coffin.....Wrung me dry......

mdgoonah41

the birmingham game. the CL final stung, but after going down to 10, i'd already calibrated expectations. and at that point, i did not think a huge dropoff in performances was right around the corner. the birmingham game was capitulation. everything went wrong right at the end. we should have won the league that season. and its weird to think how things might have been different over the last 5-6 years had we won the league that year.

Anzac

IMO AW & the BoD have pssed away more potential titles during The Emirates era than we won during The Highbury Era. That's not to say that we didn't also pss away titles during The Highbury Era as well.
Self righteous pack of b*stards.

Mirth

We didn't really piss away titles during the Highbury era.

Anzac

General Mirth wrote:
We didn't really piss away titles during the Highbury era.

We didn't defend any.
Depends on your definition of p*ssing them away.
For me it includes not doing anything to strengthen or to directly address the requirements to strengthen.
For example IMO even The Invincibles season is not beyond criticism for not winning more,
and IMO we should have won a Treble during the first 5 seasons on the new millennium when the squad were at their peak, and the CL should have been the cherry on top.

Gazza M

02/03 is the only one time when i genuinely felt we threw a league title away, because we were the best side during that 01-04 period

Burnwinter

There's a much stronger argument that the Invincibles should have won more than that we've squandered truly golden chances in the years since 2006.

Mirth

Anzac wrote:
General Mirth wrote:
We didn't really piss away titles during the Highbury era.

We didn't defend any.
Depends on your definition of p*ssing them away.
For me it includes not doing anything to strengthen or to directly address the requirements to strengthen.
For example IMO even The Invincibles season is not beyond criticism for not winning more,
and IMO we should have won a Treble during the first 5 seasons on the new millennium when the squad were at their peak, and the CL should have been the cherry on top.

But back then we were genuinely resource strapped. We couldn't afford to have a squad deep enough to compete with United, but also with Madrid, AC Milan and Juventus.

United were the richest club in the world between 1999-2004, by a comfortable margin.

If anything, there's a stronger argument that United were the under achievers.

Anzac

For mind we blew it in 07-08, 09-10, 10-11 & 13-14.
02-03 & 04-05 we should have done better,
and 05-06 IMO we were distracted by the CL run.
Not saying we should have won any of them but that we should have done better than where we finished.
Whilst I understand the argument in support of the instigation of the Youth Development Project, IMO the failure of 07-08 and the break-up of that squad compounded the impact of the break-up of The Invincibles' squad post the CL Final loss, and was more detrimental than the impact of the summer of 2011.

Gazza M

Anzac wrote:
For mind we blew it in 07-08, 09-10, 10-11 & 13-14.
02-03 & 04-05 we should have done better,
and 05-06 IMO we were distracted by the CL run.
Not saying we should have won any of them but that we should have done better than where we finished.
Whilst I understand the argument in support of the instigation of the Youth Development Project, IMO the failure of 07-08 and the break-up of that squad compounded the impact of the break-up of The Invincibles' squad post the CL Final loss, and was more detrimental than the impact of the summer of 2011.

to me those squads never really convinced. 04/05 chelsea finished with a points record so there wasnt much more we could do.

02/03 was the the only time i felt we were more than good enough with a team full of world class proven winners, but ended up blowing it

Burnwinter

Anzac wrote:
For mind we blew it in 07-08, 09-10, 10-11 & 13-14.

To say we "pissed away" titles in those seasons is hyperbole, though, isn't it? I thought we we could've gone close with one more key player in 07-08 and 13-14, but even with that player we would by no means have been guaranteed anything.

Mirth

Anzac wrote:
For mind we blew it in 07-08, 09-10, 10-11 & 13-14.

We probably 'blew it' in 2007-2008 in that I thought we had a good chance but our refusal to strengthen in January and some bad luck with Eduardo and Rosicky pretty much ended that. But yeah, I agree we were close.

In every subsequent season we didn't piss away the titles, we just weren't good enough and significantly behind the title winners.

02-03 & 04-05 we should have done better,

Agree on 2002-2003 but in 2004-2005 Chelsea absolutely bossed the league and finished with a record points total that hasn't been beaten yet. Yes, they had plenty of financial fire power but you've got to hold your hands up to them.

and 05-06 IMO we were distracted by the CL run.

We weren't distracted by the CL run, we were out of the title race by November and getting routinely dicked away from home. We managed to salvage a strong run in the CL from February when we had fuck all to play for. Furthermore, the title was long gone for every team in the league because Chelsea had comprehensively walked it. People go on about this current Chelsea team as if they're they best team ever, but they aren't even the best Chelsea team Ive seen in the past decade.

Anzac

Burnwinter™ wrote:
Anzac wrote:
For mind we blew it in 07-08, 09-10, 10-11 & 13-14.

To say we "pissed away" titles in those seasons is hyperbole, though, isn't it? I thought we we could've gone close with one more key player in 07-08 and 13-14, but even with that player we would by no means have been guaranteed anything.

As I said in my line following I'm not saying we SHOULD have won the league, but at the very least we should have done better with what we had, and had we strengthened as needed we COULD have potentially won, let alone had we actually looked to employ a more pragmatic approach to tactics rather than 'player intelligence' or to prioritise development via playing time, or the cluster that was our entirely raw midfield on 08-09 & the issues that continue to plague us to this day.

At the end of the day it felt/feels to me that we didn't give it our best shot on or off the pitch.

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