Anzac wrote:
Captain wrote:

Old man Wengs did a better job on his tod than our so called modern management structure. Says it all.

By the same token most of what ails us was either started by him directly or became established under his watch.
That is not to say it is all his fault as IMO the BoD prior to KSE is equally culpable for allowing/enabling it to happen.

What started under him? The club has been overhauled from top to bottom and is currently in it's worst slump in 2 million years - absolutely nowt to do with Wenger.

Captain wrote:
Anzac wrote:

By the same token most of what ails us was either started by him directly or became established under his watch.
That is not to say it is all his fault as IMO the BoD prior to KSE is equally culpable for allowing/enabling it to happen.

What started under him? The club has been overhauled from top to bottom and is currently in it's worst slump in 2 million years - absolutely nowt to do with Wenger.

Stagnation, soft centre, lack of leadership, excuse culture, lack of accountability or responsibility, lack of a sustainable style of play, lack of any ambition on or off the pitch, imbalanced recruitment and squad, acceptance of compromise as a constant factor each season, lack of a robust coaching structure, lack of balance in any area of the team - the club and team is not fit for purpose other than with AW holding control as it was conformed to his vision.

Again, the club has been overhauled from top to bottom and the current malaise has about as much to do with him as it does you.

Wenger can’t wash his hands of this entirely. He left us with an imbalanced squad and ageing players on pay beyond their worth which made it tough for the next regime or three to shift them and go about tidying his god awful mess.

Only Ozil fits that description.

They started buying players over wenger's head sometime before he left and since then we have changed the executives, changed the coaches, changed the scouts, changed the squad significantly, changed the youth set-up, changed the kit man and so on. And here we are - 10th after nearly half a season, with it looking like it will get alot worse over the next month.

Love him or hate him, Wenger would have never overseen this madness.

Captain wrote:

Only Ozil fits that description.

They started buying players over wenger's head sometime before he left and since then we have changed the executives, changed the coaches, changed the scouts, changed the squad significantly, changed the youth set-up, changed the kit man and so on. And here we are - 10th after nearly half a season, with it looking like it will get alot worse over the next month.

Love him or hate him, Wenger would have never overseen this madness.

The core senior players are from AW's tenure - Laca, PEA, Ozil, Xhaka, Mustafi, Bellerin.
We have changed a lot on and off the pitch but we have yet to replace the void left by AW's departure.
AW is not solely responsible but he has played a major role.

Hard to tell. Signs were the rest of the league were catching up and overtaking. He assembled some horrid teams towards the end of his tenure. There wasn’t much indication he could spend well will bigger sums of cash either.

It's not a coincidence that the quality of signing dipped when Gazidis started promising signings and forced stats dna upon us.

The slide absolutely started with Wenger. Let's not try to re-write history. But it's certainly accelerating now and that's squarely on the current heirarchy.

No doubt it started with Wenger, that's why he was let go. We've had every chance to right the ship though, so I'm honestly surprised he's still being blamed for the state of the club. He still left the club better of than he joined it, and if every manager did that we wouldn't have any problems.

The slide definitely started with wenger. One can only speculate that he wouldn't be presiding over the current slump. I'm not entirely convinced. His judgement was severely impaired towards the end, and his ability to pull the team out of nosedives was slipping away as well. Assuming he'd be doing much better had he stayed on is a big assumption to make

That said, the current execs have thus far proven themselves incapable of transitioning into the post-wenger era. Its never easy to get it right immediately in the wake of a giant like wenger stepping down

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

No doubt it started with Wenger, that's why he was let go. We've had every chance to right the ship though, so I'm honestly surprised he's still being blamed for the state of the club. He still left the club better of than he joined it, and if every manager did that we wouldn't have any problems.

Disagree = he inherited The Legendary Back4 + Seaman to build upon, what did he leave behind that was any match for that in any area of the pitch, let alone that we are supposedly better off?  

AW & Gazidis have been the key personnel on and off the pitch for over a decade & they essentially not only shaped the club but also acted as the glue to keep it together simply because they provided the glue that kept everything together for so long.
As such it is little surprise that things are falling a[part when you lose that continuity.
In many ways Gazidis' departure from a brand new backroom structure put together by him is just as debilitating as AW's departure from a football structure based upon his preference for player intuition.

Anzac wrote:
Quincy Abeyie wrote:

No doubt it started with Wenger, that's why he was let go. We've had every chance to right the ship though, so I'm honestly surprised he's still being blamed for the state of the club. He still left the club better of than he joined it, and if every manager did that we wouldn't have any problems.

Disagree = he inherited The Legendary Back4 + Seaman to build upon, what did he leave behind that was any match for that in any area of the pitch, let alone that we are supposedly better off?  

They weren't quite as legendary then...

Captain wrote:

Only Ozil fits that description.

They started buying players over wenger's head sometime before he left and since then we have changed the executives, changed the coaches, changed the scouts, changed the squad significantly, changed the youth set-up, changed the kit man and so on. And here we are - 10th after nearly half a season, with it looking like it will get alot worse over the next month.

Love him or hate him, Wenger would have never overseen this madness.

Exactly. He would have made sure we were 6th rather than 10th in the league.. 

Yeah, that one time he came sixth having been sacked in January, is emblematic of his time at Arsenal.

But whatever really, if anyone thinks Wenger is at fault for the state we are in now, fine. If anyone thinks our mutitude of talking heads etc. is doing a better job than him, that's also fine. Waste of words talking about it any further.

Well I didn’t say finishing 6th represented his time here, but he clearly wasn’t improving the team in his final years, to assume he would have is just fanboy behaviour, which you’re entitled to do if you want.

Yeah, to assume a manager who is a million times better at every job at the club than everyone who has been at the club since he left is fanboy behaviour. Right.

Wenger oversaw the consistent decline from 1st to 5th. This was a decline in competitiveness where player quality and determination to win all declined. The budgets, scouting, turnover of poor players all suffered. We know full well how we failed to strengthen the Fabregas team and then likewise the Sanchez-Ozil team. Each time we filled the team with scrubs, except by the end it was expensive scrubs like Mustafi, Perez, Xhaka, etc.

This is just a continuation under our lord Kroenke. I foresee more pain.

Captain wrote:

Only Ozil fits that description.

They started buying players over wenger's head sometime before he left and since then we have changed the executives, changed the coaches, changed the scouts, changed the squad significantly, changed the youth set-up, changed the kit man and so on. And here we are - 10th after nearly half a season, with it looking like it will get alot worse over the next month.

Love him or hate him, Wenger would have never overseen this madness.

There was a story a prominent journalist (whose name escapes me) put out there last week about Wenger being furious at the sanctioning of such a masisve contract for Özil.

I think Gazidis is more to blame for the problems we've seen. He had his chance to oversee a move away from Wenger doing everything to a more modern set-up and he fucked it up. And then he fucked off to boot.

I still think Sanllehi and co., are trying to clear up that mess and get the club on a better footing, and that it's too early to judge their competency.