If only we had van Persie and Fabregas fit and playing together, I'm certain we wouldn't have gone 9 years without a trophy

Clunk wrote:

Ricky1985 wrote:

It's also what can happen when you don't get slaughtered with injuries from game one. Imagine what our lot now could do with our best players playing 30+ league games each?

Which was what happened to that side isn't it? Rosicky injured, RvP injured.. many players suffered injuries here and there resulting in the likes of Senderos, Eboue (RW), Hoyte, Song, Denilson, Gilberto (in defence), Diaby (LW) all playing. The amount of injuries and lack of depth in the squad costed us badly.

Of course it will look stupid if you are comparing to the side now and how the players of that season faltered subsequently, but make no mistake Gallas, Fabregas, Hleb, Adebayor, Van Persie, Rosicky were top players at that time. Clichy, Sagna, Flamini, Toure also had excellent seasons.

We put all our points on the board early and we had basically everybody fit. Rosicky got injured in January, but most of the players that formed the spine and came together to form an effective and balanced team were fit from the start until March or so, when it all started to fall apart.

It's about consistency of selection, as we saw this season. You don't need the best players in the world, but you find a system that works, you keep picking the players that are doing well and you build a head of steam. Most weeks in the first two thirds of that season we picked Almunia in goal, Sagna, Toure, Gallas and Clichy in defence,  Rosicky, Flamini, Fabregas, Diaby/Eboue in midfield, with Hleb playing off Adebayor up front. The fact that I know that 8 years later tells you how consistent the selection was. In the seasons since, we've rarely, if ever, been fortunate enough to put our best team, or thereabouts, on the pitch from the start of the season and then deep into it. We've always lost key, spinal players every single season, and we've had no consistency there in those key positions because of it. Impossible to from a balanced and effective team when the key components keep on changing from one week to the next.

We did better than our quality suggested we would that season, in my opinion.

The players just found a nice rhythm and understanding which just went after injuries started striking.

We just need to look at where some of the mainstays of that side ended up after leaving us. Wenger got a lot of that squad of players and then let them down in the winter transfer window. It still amazes me that with some of the players we had playing a lot of minutes that season, we were just a win at Old Trafford away from winning the title.

marv3llous wrote:

in 2012, things seemed grim. we've come a long way from when van Persie left us. his funds have gone into the kitty that helped us get some of the guys above. we are best cleansing ourselves of the group from that era. was a very dark period for both the players and the fans. (and probably for Wenger as well)

Never mind the big names that have come in, if the worst players that come into the club are on the level of Debuchy and Welbeck, I'd say it's progress. Certainly an improvement on signing Chamakh, Gervinho and Squillaci

Welbeck definitely hasn't shown that he is a better signing than the Mack/Gervinho attack...

He'd be equally derided if he had had to play in the 2007-2011 squads.

But, we are definitely headed in the right direction of course, and yeah, fuck Van Persie

flobaba wrote:

Welbeck definitely hasn't shown that he is a better signing than the Mack/Gervinho attack...

He'd be equally derided if he had had to play in the 2007-2011 squads.

No but he isn't a regular starter like Gervais.

Gervinho and Walcott played together

Forgive me if I'm not necessarily over the moon with this signing. I think he's a little past it. Feels like a stop-gap while Chesney gets his game sorted.

Well, that just makes you wrong. Better start to get over the moon really fast, or there will be repercussions!

General Mirth wrote:

Never mind the big names that have come in, if the worst players that come into the club are on the level of Debuchy and Welbeck, I'd say it's progress. Certainly an improvement on signing Chamakh, Gervinho and Squillaci

I don't think you can really claim Welbeck has been better than Chamakh or Gerivinho were. Gervinho was a bit lazy though, at least when Welbecks being shit he's still working hard.

Chamakh, Denilson and Bendtner were players i felt were better than we saw and gave us performances worse than their actual capabilities.
Eboue and Gervinho were okay in their natural positions of right back and left wing respectively and wouldn't have caught flak if Wenger had played them there. Eboue didn't help his cause with his theatrical diving as this annoyed the fans whereas Gervinho lost his confidence after Wenger tried and failed to replicate his "Henry-type" conversion on him.
He tried the same crap with Ozil and that, also, didn't work.
Quote:
So how does one turn someone comfortable supplying into someone who can switch his attention to finishing? "By practising on it and convincing him by showing him situations where he can shoot more," says Wenger. "He will do that.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/feb/11/arsene-wenger-mesut-ozil-arsenal-goals

Gervinho was terrible on the wing, he was already a laughing stock well before his little stint up front. In fact, he actually performed better up top in those 5 odd games than he did out wide.

Definitely, I even quite liked gervinho up front.

I think you could count the good games he had up top on one hand but, on the wing, he did a far more respectable job in many more games. If he was terrible there, i wonder what word you would use for anyone else from that squad on the left wing.

Qwiss! wrote:

General Mirth wrote:

Never mind the big names that have come in, if the worst players that come into the club are on the level of Debuchy and Welbeck, I'd say it's progress. Certainly an improvement on signing Chamakh, Gervinho and Squillaci

I don't think you can really claim Welbeck has been better than Chamakh or Gerivinho were. Gervinho was a bit lazy though, at least when Welbecks being shit he's still working hard.

Not a comment on their individual quality, but Gervinho and Chamakh were sort of signed as first choice. (Well, Chamakh was cover for an injury prone van Persie) whereas Welbeck is probably on the same level as a those signings but far away from the first team.