Makes you forget Santos, Clichy and Gibbs. Gibbs lasted more than a season at Arsenal, guys. Just chew on that.

Gibbo was a good player, just not good enough for us.

for Wenger's ideas:
Offside: As long as any part of your body is onside you will be onside; advantage for attackers
They'll just use the crazy measuring stick to measure for onsides instead (his pinky was onside!). The problem is not the offside rule but the crazy measuring stick. Just force VAR to not be able to use it.

Corners: Outswinging corners the goes out of play and come back in will be deemed valid.
Gave it some thought and I think this will be abused. A total in-swinger is a huge advantage to the attacker, so much easier to head towards goal.

Throw Ins: Throw-ins that happen in your own half will be kick ins instead.
This is ridiculous tbh though I understand the sentiment. Throw ins take way too long. Not sure if kick-ins will improve the speed by so much though.

Freekick: You can play take a freekick to yourself.
Set plays adds interesting variety to the game. My initial reaction is that this change is daft, but perhaps the fact that you can take the fk the normal way anyway makes it perfectly fine.

Gibbo is a good player for the championship. Looks out of depth again when he comes back to PL with WBA

banduan wrote:

Gibbo was a good player, just not good enough for us.

for Wenger's ideas:
Offside: As long as any part of your body is onside you will be onside; advantage for attackers
They'll just use the crazy measuring stick to measure for onsides instead (his pinky was onside!). The problem is not the offside rule but the crazy measuring stick. Just force VAR to not be able to use it.

But that's where Quincy's point comes into force, since the rules already favour the attacking team you won't mind if the enforcement on the day may favour the defender.

The thing I have never understood about offside measurement is that surely, in this day and age, it can't be that difficult to fit each player with a tracker that shows where they are on the pitch and then it's a simple question of subtracting one co-ordinate from another? The cost can't be more than a $100k per year or something even assuming some of these things get broken / useless. I suspect VAR costs more than that.

By the way if anyone is interested this is the reasoning for this kick in rules in the own half.

I would also like to change the throw-in rule: five minutes before the end, a throw-in for you should be an advantage, but in these situations you are facing 10 outfield players in play, whilst you only have 9. Stats show that in 8 out of 10 of those throw-in situations, you lose the ball. In your half of the pitch, you should have the possibility to take a kick instead.”

That's an excellent motivation.

I'd like to see a source for that 8 out of 10 stats. Are they all based on Clichy and Gibbs cos it doesn't match up to what I think I see most of the time outside of Arsenal.

Clrnc wrote:

Gibbo is a good player for the championship. Looks out of depth again when he comes back to PL with WBA

TBF he kept Monreal out for a season on merit. He's certainly dis-improved with age though.

Qwiss! wrote:

I'd like to see a source for that 8 out of 10 stats. Are they all based on Clichy and Gibbs cos it doesn't match up to what I think I see most of the time outside of Arsenal.

It's just that for us, for the longest time, we take too long to take a throw in and teams come and put pressure on almost every receiver. Whereas we aren't as quick to put enough pressure on receivers when the opposition has the ball.

Haven't paid as much attention to our throw ins since Arteta took over so maybe things have gotten better but we certainly were one of the worst at that part of the game.

[size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,][size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]You received a lot of criticism over your career, more so towards the end of your [/font][/size][size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]time with Arsenal. Was there any that particularly affected you?
[/font][/size][size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]Samrat, India[/font][/size][/font][/size]

[size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]You have to analyse what is justified and what is not. I was, of course, affected by critics. Because nobody can say he is immune to that, especially when you feel you are giving it your best. The critics started in 2016, when we finished second in the league, because we didn’t win the championship. And I would say that if we finished second in the league today, it would be a huge success. But because Leicester won the championship, everybody else was guilty. But they had a super team and they lost only three games in the season. Overall, it is like that when you are a long time somewhere.[/font][/size]

yeah because there was no more hiding after leceister won, everything you were doing wrong was laid out for all to see. it's one thing to dismiss chelsea or city winning it as the impossible challenge of facing some jumped up oligarch club, but them? after basically saying all our wonderful squad needed was cech. nope.

mags wrote:

Guardian interview with release of AWs new book.
Good read.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2020/oct/11/arsene-wenger-arsenal-manager-football

It was a really good read Mags. I enjoyed reading that Mourinho isn't referred to by name at all in the book, although perhaps some juiciness would be appreciated by the Arsenal fans.

There is a question directed at Arsene in the article by a certain manager who remains unreferred to asking about him being on the Board.

Personally I think his football experience would be invaluable on the board now that a couple of years have gone by. I understand that you don't want the shadow of someone like that hanging over the club, and you can argue that Ferguson's presence at United hasn't helped there league position, but I do feel that Arsene brings the Arsenal traditions and the football knowledge. It would be fabulous to tap into that.

I'd think it's still too soon as the club hasn't settled as yet in terms of structures on or off the pitch. I also suspect AW is still too much the idealist to his vision of football & doing things 'the right way'. There are already indications of things on and off the pitch that we did not see under AW, so much would depend on how much weight his voice would carry with the BoD etc.

3 months later

Set of great interviews with Arsene released from Men in Blazers

This episode covers his coat turmoils and his view on what you should be developing by age stages.

Meatwad wrote:

[size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,][size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]You received a lot of criticism over your career, more so towards the end of your [/font][/size][size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]time with Arsenal. Was there any that particularly affected you?
[/font][/size][size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]Samrat, India[/font][/size][/font][/size]

[size=small][font=GuardianTextEgyptian,]You have to analyse what is justified and what is not. I was, of course, affected by critics. Because nobody can say he is immune to that, especially when you feel you are giving it your best. The critics started in 2016, when we finished second in the league, because we didn’t win the championship. And I would say that if we finished second in the league today, it would be a huge success. But because Leicester won the championship, everybody else was guilty. But they had a super team and they lost only three games in the season. Overall, it is like that when you are a long time somewhere.[/font][/size]

yeah because there was no more hiding after leceister won, everything you were doing wrong was laid out for all to see. it's one thing to dismiss chelsea or city winning it as the impossible challenge of facing some jumped up oligarch club, but them? after basically saying all our wonderful squad needed was cech. nope.

IMO that response is typical of the laissez faire approach to ambition, responsibility and accountability that is now the culture at the club on and off the pitch = I'm still angry and will probably remain so until the cult of AW is purged from the club.  I sure a fuck don't want him back in any capacity until it has been and we have new structures, culture, team and style in place.

a month later

Very interesting interview from the great man. A lot of what he's saying we've already known and heard anecdotes from various people near the club before, including out very own Speedy, but I think it's the first time he's spoken so explicitly about how much trouble the club was in.

He talked about the financial constraints we were under back then, and how we were forced to sell players every year that he didn't want to sell. He also talked about how he'd go into seasons knowing that we did not have the resources or the team to win the title but still needed to make at the minimum the CL each season otherwise the club would be in danger of going bust.

I totally agree with what he's saying that those years after moving over from Highbury is possibly some of the best work he's done at the club during his time with us considering the restraints we were under. I don't think anyone else could have managed us through those years without ruining the club. It's when the money became available in the latter years, and like Claude mentioned in another thread, and when he started being given 1 year deals that he started focussing on the short term rather than the long term. That's where it all went wrong.

There are a lot of people who owe him an apology I reckon. It's always been known that we had to sell players to survive. It was plain to see in the accounts and everyone inside and outside the club said the same thing: we would never have gotten through those years if it weren't for Wenger. The only ones who couldn't accept it were nutcases like Biggus.