Wenger pretty much believed in his project 'years ago' though - last season was the first time he fell outside the top four. It seems like the "board" brought in two key backroom staff after Wenger signed his contract precisely because they realised they needed to plan for his departure.

Besides, if we can't trust based Ornstein who can we trust.

It is when it took them 3-4 years to do so.

Bunch of cretins but let's hope our club will soon become great again. I'm excited.

#MAGA?

Luis, Löw, or Leonardo?

A true visionary

Wenger is out so I'm back.

Agreed to the suggestion that he jumped before he was pushed.
Also think that the timing is ideal from a PR perspective in terms of goodwill, team support, season ticket renewals and potential new commercial deals.

Also think that the club needed to extend AW last season because they weren't prepared for his potential departure combined with the failure to retain top4/CL. I suspect that AW was extended because we weren't ready for him to depart, and he was also given this season as an opportunity to turn things around. Unfortunately for everyone he remained steadfast to his beliefs and this season finally stripped away the rose coloured spectacles and sense of misguided loyalty. That said I do not think the decision was made based upon the football, but more so the financial impacts both real and potential.

With his impending departure I celebrate both his success of his Highbury Years, as much as I now celebrate his departure and the beginning of our rebuilding of this club. I do not fell sad or sorry with his departure, he was very well renumerated and was allowed to be the master of his own destiny until the point that his beliefs began to cost the club financially. Rather than a Cnut (Canute) I think of him as more a Don Quixote type & trapped within his own steadfast idealism and unable to adapt to the changes in the market.

There have been a number of suggestions as to when it all started to go wrong on or off the pitch, and for mind the single biggest factor has been the departure of DD, not just in regards to the balance he provided to keep AW on task, but just as importantly in regards to his ambition and his voice within the BoD. The club looked to AW to become the rudder, but equally AW had lost his sea anchor.

The King is Dead and with him an era comes to a close, long live the club.

Welcome back, Anzac. Great post.
I’m looking at your paragraph on where it went wrong vis-a-vis DD’s departure, and it makes me cast my eyes towards United. I think one of the most damaging things to happen to United towards the end of Ferguson’s reign was the absence of a strong DoF type. Clearly, Ferguson channeled all the club’s resources towards ensuring he got a league trophy on the way out. The squad Moyes received was not one positioned for future glory, and he was barely given time to restructure it. Nor was LvG. Finally in Mourinho, they have a man who has never looked out more than 12 months, further exacerbating the problem. Incoherence rules at Old Trafford.

Hopefully, with the trinity of Raul, Mislintat and the new manager, we are able to achieve that healthy tension of striving to win immediately while also building for the future in a systematic manner.

The thing they did at United that in retrospect seemed to cause a tremendous problem was replacing Gill with Woodward at the same time as Ferguson left.

I've been glad to see the distance in thinking developing between Gazidis and Wenger, and the appointment of Sanllehi and Mislintat. It bodes well that we're not screwing up by trying to do everything at once.

Claudius wrote:

Welcome back, Anzac. Great post.
I’m looking at your paragraph on where it went wrong vis-a-vis DD’s departure, and it makes me cast my eyes towards United. I think one of the most damaging things to happen to United towards the end of Ferguson’s reign was the absence of a strong DoF type. Clearly, Ferguson channeled all the club’s resources towards ensuring he got a league trophy on the way out. The squad Moyes received was not one positioned for future glory, and he was barely given time to restructure it. Nor was LvG. Finally in Mourinho, they have a man who has never looked out more than 12 months, further exacerbating the problem. Incoherence rules at Old Trafford.

Hopefully, with the trinity of Raul, Mislintat and the new manager, we are able to achieve that healthy tension of striving to win immediately while also building for the future in a systematic manner.

Pleased to be back in more ways than one.

A MU mate had told me that MU essentially under estimated the requirement to establish a new structure under a new manager AND continue their ability to retain top4/CL.  IMO it's the same lesson identified as our failure to recognise and replace DD in his relationships with both AW and his voice on the BoD.  This has nothing to do with him as an individual and everything to do with his impacts.  

IMO the new backroom SME's shows me that we have indeed identified and learned those lessons and are in a far stronger position to not make those same errors.  Recent reports are that Gazidis wanted to go further but it was thought to be too much too soon.  I'm intrigued as to what remains undone as yet.

Anzac wrote:

Claudius wrote:

Welcome back, Anzac. Great post.
I’m looking at your paragraph on where it went wrong vis-a-vis DD’s departure, and it makes me cast my eyes towards United. I think one of the most damaging things to happen to United towards the end of Ferguson’s reign was the absence of a strong DoF type. Clearly, Ferguson channeled all the club’s resources towards ensuring he got a league trophy on the way out. The squad Moyes received was not one positioned for future glory, and he was barely given time to restructure it. Nor was LvG. Finally in Mourinho, they have a man who has never looked out more than 12 months, further exacerbating the problem. Incoherence rules at Old Trafford.

Hopefully, with the trinity of Raul, Mislintat and the new manager, we are able to achieve that healthy tension of striving to win immediately while also building for the future in a systematic manner.

Pleased to be back in more ways than one.

A MU mate had told me that MU essentially under estimated the requirement to establish a new structure under a new manager AND continue their ability to retain top4/CL.  IMO it's the same lesson identified as our failure to recognise and replace DD in his relationships with both AW and his voice on the BoD.  This has nothing to do with him as an individual and everything to do with his impacts.  

IMO the new backroom SME's shows me that we have indeed identified and learned those lessons and are in a far stronger position to not make those same errors.  Recent reports are that Gazidis wanted to go further but it was thought to be too much too soon.  I'm intrigued as to what remains undone as yet.

Some great posts here.

I have been thinking about the possibility that Gazidis now brings in a director of football (technical director). Now he has a clear run, it will be interesting to see what he does. The club has been floating along for far too long now. It will be interesting to see what happens from this point.

This summer will be very interesting.

Things are going to be interesting again. I don't know if it'll be for better or worse but at least there's going to be new things to talk about.

What ever we do will need to be done quickly because of the truncated pre-season
with the transfer window closing mid-August with the start of the season,
let alone if we start Europa qualification in mid-July.

ohboy!!! wrote:

Anzac wrote:

Pleased to be back in more ways than one.

A MU mate had told me that MU essentially under estimated the requirement to establish a new structure under a new manager AND continue their ability to retain top4/CL.  IMO it's the same lesson identified as our failure to recognise and replace DD in his relationships with both AW and his voice on the BoD.  This has nothing to do with him as an individual and everything to do with his impacts.  

IMO the new backroom SME's shows me that we have indeed identified and learned those lessons and are in a far stronger position to not make those same errors.  Recent reports are that Gazidis wanted to go further but it was thought to be too much too soon.  I'm intrigued as to what remains undone as yet.

Some great posts here.

I have been thinking about the possibility that Gazidis now brings in a director of football (technical director). Now he has a clear run, it will be interesting to see what he does. The club has been floating along for far too long now. It will be interesting to see what happens from this point.

This summer will be very interesting.

The suggestions I saw seemed to indicate changes to the coaching staff.
Wonder if Bould will survive the winds of change?

Only seen it briefly mentioned here, but don't you think this was essentially a somewhat graceful sacking? I don't for a second think this was Wenger's choice; I think he was given this opportunity to bow out as gracefully as possible, but that it was made clear to him that he was not going to be the manager next season. Only a few weeks ago he was reiterating that he always follows through on his contracts, and then this. I just don't buy that he did this willingly.

Well he's hardly going to start spouting footballer cliches now as in "who knows where I'll be next season" - for all his flaws - or rather possibly the biggest compliment you could give him - is he's absolutely nothing like a football manager. He's been a part of the club for so long that he literally identifies with it. Regardless of whether he did it on his own account or whether the board nudged him to he'd always put the good of the club above his own. Even when he should have resigned earlier there's no question that he genuinely believed he could turn around.

jones wrote:

Well he's hardly going to start spouting footballer cliches now as in "who knows where I'll be next season" - for all his flaws - or rather possibly the biggest compliment you could give him - is he's absolutely nothing like a football manager. He's been a part of the club for so long that he literally identifies with it. Regardless of whether he did it on his own account or whether the board nudged him to he'd always put the good of the club above his own. Even when he should have resigned earlier there's no question that he genuinely believed he could turn around.

Which is why he has said a number of times that he feels his best work for the club were those years just after the move until we could improve our commercial revenues.

With Ornstein's comments (about him almost leaving last summer), I suspect that he decided to stay to enable the club to put things in place even knowing then that he was on a hiding to nothing and unlikely to see the deal through if things went sour.
That said he still got paid 10m for this season and reports are he will have the remainder of his contract paid in full to leave,
let alone that he was still allowed to do much as he wanted and wasn't required to change his principles.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some big twists left in Wenger's tale.

He'll be getting lots of intriguing offers and it'd hardly be a shock if in six months he'd decided to embark on some zillion dollar project in China.

I just hope he gets his tell-all book out before football takes over again.