Klaus wrote:
There's a truckload of evidence to be honest. The number of great players who credit him with their careers range from George Weah and Liliam Thuram to Thierry Henry. What's happened in the last 6-8 years is that he had lesser talents to work with, that's all. Wenger himself is partly to blame for that, so he gets no sympathy for sticking with halfwits. Said halfwits are still better footballers today than they would have been under most managers though.
I don't think AW actually developed them - most of his successful players in terms of quality were signed after they'd been developed elsewhere. Even Fabregas was primarily developed at La Masia to the point that he was deemed good enough to be a starting player here. IMO Aw is more a finishing school to enable players to express themselves on the field, as opposed to developing their attributes for a position or role.
IIRC Fabregas had played as both a goal scoring role as well as DM whilst as a youth at La Masia, and the latter position is where Guardiola became his inspiration/favourite player.
IMO none of the players AW has developed via the academy & u21s at AFC have been well rounded in their development, and none stand out in any position or role without also having some glaring deficiencies. Essentially he makes technical players for his team collective system, and IMO this is why very few of his players excel elsewhere because no other manager uses such a system. It also explains why we seem to have too many players that are much the same, and why we don't see players who seem best suited to certain roles or positions, and why we struggle to achieve a team balance, particularly in regards to defensive capabilities.
He likes to develop players by them learning on the job, and in a variety of positions as opposed to drilling them in a position or role as GG did with the Legendary back4. There have also been a number of former players who have said that in the normal training sessions that they did very little specialist training regarding their position or role, and that if they wanted this then they did so outside of the scheduled sessions. AW has also alluded to this himself on different occasions in referring to players showing their desire and strength of character by doing 'extra' training to work on specific skills. It also explains as to why so many youngsters seem to stagnate once they've broken through into the senior squad, and why we see the likes of Walcott, Ox, Wilshere & Rambo still without clear positions or roles, and why Gibbs & Bellerin still have deficiencies in their defined position and roles.
