Arsenal — Mid Table Realism: Page 2 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal — Mid Table Realism

Mirth

Klaus wrote:
We aren't capable of understanding football on any deeper level as a club, and personally I'm convinced it's our biggest failure, the biggest thing that is holding us back. Bergkamp would have been out the door years before the invincibles too if the club had been run the way it is now back then.

Great post Klaus, all I'd add is Bergkamp was treated in the same way too: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/bergkamp-contract-offer-embarrassing-agent-1.486692

Claudius

Klaus, love the post. Was thinking about exactly these issues last night. I was dreaming that we had a CEO who would lay out a vision for the club and really look to connect to the fans. Caring about the fans comes in many ways. I want someone who will say that Arsenal may not have the right to win trophies every season, but we are one of the biggest clubs in Europe and the biggest club in London. We are committed to competing for trophies while playing a thrilling brand of football.

In addition, I think we need to recommit ourselves to the local fans by finding a way to make a part of the stadium more affordable to a part of the fan base, even if its younger fans. Hiring a more capable commercial team will easily make up for any revenue loss we experience here, but ensuring that our team feels much more rooted locally is vital to our success.

As for the playing squad if you talk about competitiveness, then it needs to flow through to all systems. Recruiting and player lifecycle management should mean that at all times we are looking to acquire and retain players who exhibit the finest talent and attitude. Anything less should be quickly trimmed away to reinforce the winning culture. And all systems should be oriented towards winning - whether stats, diet, training, fitness, transport, etc. Everything!

Right now I do not get that sense. And it is not just about our position in the table. It is the way we play and the things that players say in interviews. When teams regularly manage 3 shots, players purposely do not show for the ball, do not defend their goalie when he is mugged by a thug on the field, and there is a culture of shirking work that has affected several players like Ozil, Ceballos, AMN etc, then you are as far away as possible from that high-performance culture as you can get. And all of that needs to change.

The board room is just as bad. To lose one player one a free may be regarded as misfortune. To lose at least three is sabotage. And now we appear at the mercy of bloodthirsty agents who sit in in the director's box.

I jokingly said we need a bankruptcy to restructure Arsenal, but we need a shake-up on that level if we are ever going to reclaim our rightful place at the top.

Gazza M

Yeah a bit of romantiscisng there. There wasnt much loyalty being shown even during peak years when we were offering reduced contract terms and slashed wages to the likes of pires and bergkamp, and yes, even ashley cole. The idea that sporting decisions have always trumped economic realities at arsenal simply isn't true. We had a once in a generation coach who balanced sporting and economic factors. You can't have one without considering the other. Even the concept of showing loyalty to the modern footballer seems like a ridiculous notion.

Clrnc

Gazza M wrote:
Yeah a bit of romantiscisng there. There wasnt much loyalty being shown even during peak years when we were offering reduced contract terms and slashed wages to the likes of pires and bergkamp, and yes, even ashley cole. The idea that sporting decisions have always trumped economic realities at arsenal simply isn't true. We had a once in a generation coach who balanced sporting and economic factors. You can't have one without considering the other. Even the concept of showing loyalty to the modern footballer seems like a ridiculous notion.

Agree. It hasn't changed since the past. We have to always balance future performance to wages offered and so far I don't see much wrong in the players we shipped out, certainly no regrets. Modern days football have no room for values unless your status at the club is legendary like Steven G to Liverpool for example.

I was looking through the league standings for the traditional top 4 clubs and the worse Liverpool ever fallen to was 7th-8th in 2 random seasons. Even when they were shite in the league they won the odd league cup and UCL. I think we are really rock bottom, close to falling out of top half. We have been in the bottom half and on negative goal difference for for quite a long period this season. The rebuilding task is so big it won't be done in 3 seasons

Claudius

Clrnc wrote:
Gazza M wrote:
Yeah a bit of romantiscisng there. There wasnt much loyalty being shown even during peak years when we were offering reduced contract terms and slashed wages to the likes of pires and bergkamp, and yes, even ashley cole. The idea that sporting decisions have always trumped economic realities at arsenal simply isn't true. We had a once in a generation coach who balanced sporting and economic factors. You can't have one without considering the other. Even the concept of showing loyalty to the modern footballer seems like a ridiculous notion.

Agree. It hasn't changed since the past. We have to always balance future performance to wages offered and so far I don't see much wrong in the players we shipped out, certainly no regrets. Modern days football have no room for values unless your status at the club is legendary like Steven G to Liverpool for example.

I was looking through the league standings for the traditional top 4 clubs and the worse Liverpool ever fallen to was 7th-8th in 2 random seasons. Even when they were shite in the league they won the odd league cup and UCL. I think we are really rock bottom, close to falling out of top half. We have been in the bottom half and on negative goal difference for for quite a long period this season. The rebuilding task is so big it won't be done in 3 seasons

Yet we are very often within 3 points of the top 5.
The effort to get back to top 4 or 5 is not gargantuan. That is the risk. That management could be tempted to tweak here and there.

But the reality is that we are rotting and it needs to end. And that is why a big change is needed. To say, let us use this unique opportunity to clear the decks, refresh and build a platform for competing rather than trying to plaster over the cracks.

Qwiss

The owners don't care. They have no ambition. That's the problem. They don't care about the culture, they don't care about being competitive. They've never reacted to the slide down the table. We won't do anything with them in charge.

Gunner89

Emery added a lot to the significant damage done by Wenger's final years and Gazidis's crap off-field management.

At least some of that damage goes away next year when Ozil, Mkhi finally leave and hopefully Lacazette is off the books too.

How badly mismanaged the club were in contracts & selling?

Ramsey leaving on a free
Ozil's huge wages when he ended up getting into the final year of his deal
All season saying Sanchez not for sale and then he nearly left for a 90m lemar and then actually for mkhitaryan
Sagna leaving on a free even though he was a bit old
Clichy was by no means a great player but 7m (Jesus christ)
Gibbs went for 5m without any English tax
Notable difficulties in getting rid off Almunia, Chamakh, Bendtner, Denilson, Squillaci, Park?
Paying millions to sign average strikers? Welbeck 16m, Perez 16m (left for a combined 3m?)
Give Cazorla a deal when he's going to miss most of the season and then let him leave when he's fit
Baffling chambers situation? Offered up to 24-25m by palace refuse to let him leave and then send him on loans and barely given a chance. Now injured long term.
Watching the market inflate over interest rates on saving the same money
Spend a summer not signing an outfielder as no quality available to getting Xhaka and Mustafi the next year
Paying exorbitant loan fees and wages to sign players that contribute nothing

I look at the transfers of the last 5 years (since 2015/16) and there are only 2 unquestionable successful signings- Aubameyang and Leno.

That's it.

Claudius

Qwiss! wrote:
The owners don't care. They have no ambition. That's the problem. They don't care about the culture, they don't care about being competitive. They've never reacted to the slide down the table. We won't do anything with them in charge.

True, Qwiss.
The way we dithered between Baku and Manchester City is completely the opposite of how a success-driven owner would've handled things

Burnwinter

Kroenke is an apathetic prick, but he has been willing to bankroll us beyond our cynical expectations nevertheless.

Recruitment, morale and contract management seem to have been bigger problems on the squad management side.

As a mid table realist, I also have to get used to the idea that our best talents are going to want to leave Arsenal very often, and that our leaders, the hard-working players who have longevity at the club, won't be the best players on the planet.

We urgently need to pin down a young guy like Saka who a decade ago would have been a sure thing. Bellerin might be the type of player we get to hang onto a while longer—he's very settled in London, and he's motivated by things and ideas beyond his playing career. He's not setting the world on fire but he's fine for a mid table club.

There are fully two dozen football destinations in Europe more appealing than us, minimum.

awooga83

The hierarchy at the club for over a decade took a very complacent position. Wenger felt that we could never complete with the super rich clubs do never really tried to build us up. That outlook for shown up by Leicester's title and if we had properly strengthened the team we should have taken advantage of that.

Instead we felt we will always be in the top 4 because we are just better then the rest. But none of those teams below took the attitude of we can never topple Arsenal. They went about trying to build teams however they could in their circumstances.

While we tolerated unambitious players. Cech comments about how easily Arsenal took defeat in the dressing room compared with Chelsea just shows that we allowed a non competitive attitude to develop.

Fast forward to now and the team is full of players who want no responsibility but rather just enjoy everything that being at a top club brings. Look at the Xhaka incident, I know I've said it before but that should be a line where you get him out. But we eventually welcome him back into the fold it's these kind of poisonous characters in the squad that we need rid of bit we've collected do many of them.

On the business side, I get that idea from the Kroenke they just want to keep things profitable but I've never understood that even in running a business they couldn't realise you need to have a product that can be up there with the best to keep generating money. So you might not go all out to beat city or Liverpool but you have to invest to keep yourself in that top tier.

Like most here I don't see an easy way out, we don't have the right staff in the key positions to oversee a overhaul. We need to really focus on picking up as many talents at the early stage, copy Leicester, Wolves and Watford scouting as they've been producing some decent young and overlooked talent through their networks.

speedy

Emery himself after he left said arsenal really need xhaka in the changing room. Hes exactly the type of character who isn't poisonous. And the players voted for him as captain.

The less good a team you are the softer you have to take defeats. Because it's going to be a big part of your season.

Qwiss

Burnwinter wrote:
Kroenke is an apathetic prick, but he has been willing to bankroll us beyond our cynical expectations nevertheless.

When has he bankrolled us?

speedy

It looked like he did, but then we sold iwobi and it was pretty much a £40m net spend which was the budget.

Anzac

I think the issues are connected to our culture and traditional values, centering around our self sustaining financial model and a culture of only ever doing enough on or off the pitch to achieve the bare minimum requirement each season.

At some point (possibly the departure of DD), sustainment became the objective as to how we approached things on and off the pitch - not just in terms of finances or revenues, but also in terms of expectations for the season. In terms of the season the aim was to maintain a points tally of around the mid 70s so as to maintain top4/CL revenues. Irony of this being that the only season the average failed to retain top4 was when we finished 5th by 1 point on 75 points, in the season MC broke FFP and finished 3 points above us. In the last 2 seasons 75 points would have retained top4.

We saw the signs re Abramovich and CFC but we refused to adjust or adapt our approach on or off the pitch. We only created a commercial team after MC turned to oil money. We knew the impact of the new TV deal is terms of PL club revenues yet we did nothing to avert 150+m in Cash Reserves become irrelevant overnight once the rest of the PL clubs decided to spend their equal share in advance, whilst we waited for the money to hit our accounts before we acted.

Maintaining the façade of our values and principles became more important than what we did or didn't do on the pitch. We forgot / chose to ignore the club exists to support the football team.

I absolutely hate that AW considers his best work for the club as a whole, was during 'the years of financial restraint after the move' from around 2006-2014 before the new commercial deals kicked in. IMO this is when the team became a commodity within our self funding model towards retaining our ability to be self sufficient.

Perhaps worst of all is that we weren't even particularly good at it because we only ever look to do the bare minimum. From all of this comes the culture of excuses & the lack of accountability as sustainment became stagnation, and we forgot what it took to succeed. We forgot how/what it is to win titles and how to be ambitious. We still do not seem to know what we want as a football club or how to go about it.

Clrnc

Claudius wrote:
Clrnc wrote:
Agree. It hasn't changed since the past. We have to always balance future performance to wages offered and so far I don't see much wrong in the players we shipped out, certainly no regrets. Modern days football have no room for values unless your status at the club is legendary like Steven G to Liverpool for example.

I was looking through the league standings for the traditional top 4 clubs and the worse Liverpool ever fallen to was 7th-8th in 2 random seasons. Even when they were shite in the league they won the odd league cup and UCL. I think we are really rock bottom, close to falling out of top half. We have been in the bottom half and on negative goal difference for for quite a long period this season. The rebuilding task is so big it won't be done in 3 seasons

Yet we are very often within 3 points of the top 5.
The effort to get back to top 4 or 5 is not gargantuan. That is the risk. That management could be tempted to tweak here and there.

But the reality is that we are rotting and it needs to end. And that is why a big change is needed. To say, let us use this unique opportunity to clear the decks, refresh and build a platform for competing rather than trying to plaster over the cracks.

No, like I said last season and proven right again, you can't measure like this. There are a myriad of reasons why we are just a few points away, and that includes how shite the other teams and how competitive the mid table teams are, but if you think its easy to claw back just that "3" points its missing the point. Last year some people stupidly thought we were just one point away, its easy but as performances indicated, we are so far away in actual fact from the top 4.

I think to get back to top 4, you need a serious rebuilding and from scratch. Not just 2 or 3 players. There are too many problems in our club from the start of this decade and slowly eroding into the entire organisation. We are not winning easily in a straight fight match vs teams like Everton, Wolves, Leicester etc and in fact has lost more than we won recently. And that says it all. Theres where we are at.

Anzac

Burnwinter wrote:
There are fully two dozen football destinations in Europe more appealing than us, minimum.

I don't think players who are hungry for success/titles see us as anything other than a stepping stone at best.

Post Highbury I think they still came because of what AW had achieved, and because of the environment he created for the team. I also think the environment was also used in terms of the players want for nothing in terms of the facilities.

Post AW I think the lifestyle of being in the richest city in Europe plays a big part, but that does little to attract players who are motivated by football reasons.

Anzac

Clrnc wrote:
Claudius wrote:
Yet we are very often within 3 points of the top 5.
The effort to get back to top 4 or 5 is not gargantuan. That is the risk. That management could be tempted to tweak here and there.

But the reality is that we are rotting and it needs to end. And that is why a big change is needed. To say, let us use this unique opportunity to clear the decks, refresh and build a platform for competing rather than trying to plaster over the cracks.

No, like I said last season and proven right again, you can't measure like this. There are a myriad of reasons why we are just a few points away, and that includes how shite the other teams and how competitive the mid table teams are, but if you think its easy to claw back just that "3" points its missing the point. Last year some people stupidly thought we were just one point away, its easy but as performances indicated, we are so far away in actual fact from the top 4.

I think to get back to top 4, you need a serious rebuilding and from scratch. Not just 2 or 3 players. There are too many problems in our club from the start of this decade and slowly eroding into the entire organisation. We are not winning easily in a straight fight match vs teams like Everton, Wolves, Leicester etc and in fact has lost more than we won recently. And that says it all. Theres where we are at.

Agreed.

Yet this was the basis for AW's strategy going into each new season = to close the points gap from where we finished to where we wanted to be. When we finished 5th all he talked about was the 1-2 points to finish ahead of LFC who finished in 4th place immediately above us.

Claudius

Clrnc wrote:
Claudius wrote:
Yet we are very often within 3 points of the top 5.
The effort to get back to top 4 or 5 is not gargantuan. That is the risk. That management could be tempted to tweak here and there.

But the reality is that we are rotting and it needs to end. And that is why a big change is needed. To say, let us use this unique opportunity to clear the decks, refresh and build a platform for competing rather than trying to plaster over the cracks.

No, like I said last season and proven right again, you can't measure like this. There are a myriad of reasons why we are just a few points away, and that includes how shite the other teams and how competitive the mid table teams are, but if you think its easy to claw back just that "3" points its missing the point. Last year some people stupidly thought we were just one point away, its easy but as performances indicated, we are so far away in actual fact from the top 4.

I think to get back to top 4, you need a serious rebuilding and from scratch. Not just 2 or 3 players. There are too many problems in our club from the start of this decade and slowly eroding into the entire organisation. We are not winning easily in a straight fight match vs teams like Everton, Wolves, Leicester etc and in fact has lost more than we won recently. And that says it all. Theres where we are at.

I think we are agreed. That you need to stop using band-aids. And really fix the problems. Band-aids are a Wenger era fix that we need to move away from.

Anzac

What gets me angry is all the BS and crap we put up with since the move, and what good did it do and where has it got us. All the long term plans for the future & where are they now?

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

Exactly. We were sold a dream when we left Highbury. It's been nothing but bad news since we gave it up.

And the only reasons for the failure are self-inflicted ones.

« Previous Page Next Page »