Klaus wrote:
People have talked about it for years, it just gets drowned by the loudmouthed "Fuck off Wenger" brigade and the equally loud and overly optimistic people who think Arsenal is a stellar example of how to run a football club. Most people hold one of two polarizing views on our affairs. In reality a club is made up of a lot of parts, and we haven't applied due pressure on most of them to keep themselves up to date and improve.
Take the academy for instance. Both data and analysis showed we'd been lagging behind the competition for a whole decade, and we only began to take steps last year to rectify it. We were officially under threat to lose our top academy status.
The scouting has come under similar scrutiny from people in that line of work. It doesn't bring us the players we need and our methods are quite outdated. There was a quite revealing article one or two years ago outlining how we were one of few clubs that didn't work well with statistical models. Where other clubs refined their search areas to kep up with a more competitive market and found plenty of hidden gems we kept scouting like you did in the 90s. This is reflected in our transfer record. Who apart from Koscielny have we unearthed in the last 5-6 years? And Kos was a direct inside tip from someone at Tours who Wenger trusted personally, if I remember correctly.
When it comes to medicine and physical therapy we've been known to hire outright pseudoscientific experts, like osteopaths and chiropractors. We let van Persie handle his injuries by seeing tui na practitioners and then we wondered why he didn't improve. We have had the worst injury statistics in Premier League for over a decade and yet the same people have been in charge up until recently.
We've taken small steps to improve some of those areas, but we're moving forward too slowly to be able to reestablish ourselves ahead of the curve. And that's the big problem really. Football is about marginals, and it's becoming highly competitive in every aspect. You can't stick with something that 'sort of' works. But that's what you're left with when you strip the upper tiers of the club of people with expert football knowledge. There's one man at the club currently who's being asked to chip in on all aspects ranging from the academy to the scouts, and he himself is doing a very questionable job managing the first team.
I think that has been my issue with Wenger and the club over the past few years. I understand money was tight due to the new stadium but it felt like everything behind the scenes fell apart. Strange through despite all that we built up big cash pile but didn't seem prepared to invest any of it to rectify these things. Even now we aren't fully up to speed and when things go wrong, it isn't our fault. Why is it no other club gets as many injuries as us, despite having the resources we still find ourselves with more injuries than other clubs. It has been incompetence, we happily protect our bottom line profit
We had over £60m to spend in the summer and apart from Cech not a single player was available to strengthen our team. Cazorla + Coquelin were a flawed partnership last season and they still are now and nothing has been done to rectify that. We miss more clear cut chances then another other side but we can't find a better striker than fucking Giroud.
I remember a few years ago on TV someone described the main difference between Wenger and Fergie. He said Fergie was proactive manager, he would respond to issues within the squad before they became a big deal. Wenger on the other hand was a reactive manager, he would only respond when the he had no other choice. Look at our GK situation, it took him almost 8 years to find a replacement for Lehmann. He carried on with Alumunia and Chesney despite it being so obvious even an idiot could see they weren't good enough. It has been clear Arteta & Flamini are past it and we came by Coq by accident, still nothing has been done. We've been without a world class striker for years, every damn club knows we are flush with cash and desperately need a player. Our bargaining position is fucking weak yet we still fucking don't stop.
