Arsenal Thread

[Rantboy]

Wenger is the right man for the job. I wouldn't take even Ferguson to replace him. Let's not forget that Ferguson has always had a much higher budget to work with, while Wenger has to work his magic.

AW has been unlucky with mostly everything - too many injuries, oil moguls, sheikhs and sugar daddies alike creating unfair financial competition and explicit public tapping up of his best players during a time when he's the most fragile (during a 7 year trophy drought). So he was left with little to offer to players who want instant trophies, swimming pools of money or both.

Even when he could assemble a great team that could compete with United and a financially doped Chelsea, he's had his squad badly hit with injuries.

I still remember the 2007-2008 season as one we would normally have been champions. We had an excellent team we had with Flamini, Fabregas and Hleb in midfield, and we had just sold Henry. Van Persie was one of our main hopes but he spent the whole season injured collecting his paycheck (no complaints about the club's direction by that time, I suppose). But alright, we had an in form Adebayor and had signed Eduardo to be his partner. Eduardo was getting better and better until that almighty cunt from Birmingham assaulted him on the football pitch. By march we were leading the league table and we finished only 4 points behind the champions. If we had our proper attacking options and didn't go through that traumatic incident with Eduardo, I'd like to think we would have had more than those 4 points.

Wenger is now getting rid of the fifth columnist agitators and wantaways, and rebuilding the squad. Let's see the man do his job.

Nobody is perfect and I agree that Wenger's tactics seem too predictable, naive when defending (hopefully Bouldy will sort this) and almost allergic to shooting from outside the box. These things frustrate me too, but all in all he is the best fit to manage Arsenal.

Just for the record, if Wenger decides to call it a day, I'd happily take Moyes to be our manager. I am a great admirer of his work and agree with joeryan says about his work at Everton.

 

[BobbyBox]

Wenger is the right man for the job. I wouldn't take even Ferguson to replace him. Let's not forget that Ferguson has always had a much higher budget to work with, while Wenger has to work his magic.

AW has been unlucky with mostly everything - too many injuries, oil moguls, sheikhs and sugar daddies alike creating unfair financial competition and explicit public tapping up of his best players during a time when he's the most fragile (during a 7 year trophy drought). So he was left with little to offer to players who want instant trophies, swimming pools of money or both.

Even when he could assemble a great team that could compete with United and a financially doped Chelsea, he's had his squad badly hit with injuries.

I still remember the 2007-2008 season as one we would normally have been champions. We had an excellent team we had with Flamini, Fabregas and Hleb in midfield, and we had just sold Henry. Van Persie was one of our main hopes but he spent the whole season injured collecting his paycheck (no complaints about the club's direction by that time, I suppose). But alright, we had an in form Adebayor and had signed Eduardo to be his partner. Eduardo was getting better and better until that almighty cunt from Birmingham assaulted him on the football pitch. By march we were leading the league table and we finished only 4 points behind the champions. If we had our proper attacking options and didn't go through that traumatic incident with Eduardo, I'd like to think we would have had more than those 4 points.

Wenger is now getting rid of the fifth columnist agitators and wantaways, and rebuilding the squad. Let's see the man do his job.

Nobody is perfect and I agree that Wenger's tactics seem too predictable, naive when defending (hopefully Bouldy will sort this) and almost allergic to shooting from outside the box. These things frustrate me too, but all in all he is the best fit to manage Arsenal.

Just for the record, if Wenger decides to call it a day, I'd happily take Moyes to be our manager. I am a great admirer of his work and agree with joeryan says about his work at Everton.

Good post, I agree

The bit at the end as well, if Wenger ever does leave I wouldn't mind seeing him come to us. But to get rid of Wenger and replace him with Moyes (as joeryan wants) that is silly imo.

 

[Rantboy]

Indeed, to sack him would be madness. But we definitely need to right some wrongs, such as the salary policies for instance, as we are about to enter a smoother patch when we finally renegotiate our new sponsorship deals and the stadium debt will no longer be saddling us when it comes to transfer market activity and investment in general.

If you want to shed some more light on the Song departure, just have a look in this link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...a-because-of-his-unprofessional-attitude.html

To me, there's little doubt that is Darren Dein conceding the interview. Having a go at Arsenal and its board and all that! I can't imagine this level of cuntishness coming from anyone else. Daddy's still bitter about no longer being involved with the club. All his talk of "what's going on in there" on the board, this sings the same tunes that come out of Uzmanov's and David Dein's mouths.
Surely we have to be grateful for the work David Dein has done in the past with Arsene Wenger. But now he's out of the board and working from outside with Uzmanov with the sole purpose of conflicting with this current board. His acts are having a negative impact for the club and, for all the good he's done in the past, if he wants to damage the club just to get back into the game, then this means he doesn't love the club as we thought he did. In the end, it's just personal gain, status and politics. Which is sick! Politics are dismantling Arsenal now.

One another note about his claims in this article, it's hard to believe how out of touch with reality these people are. Bloody football agents.
It's almost as if we have to pity Song for earning only £55k a week. One of the worst paid players in the squad. Boohoo.

They were trying to hold the club to ransom without hardly having a bargaining position. With 3 years left to run on his contract they felt outraged that Arsenal wanted to discuss a new contract only after the transfer window! haha! Can you believe this shit?
It's Song's problem if he signed his last contract agreeing to earn this salary until 2015. Whatever happened to honouring you signature??? Honouring contracts? Do they still mean a thing at all?

That's my rant. Sorry about this, but I'm just too disgusted with this football business.

 

[YoungGun_UK]

One of Wenger's biggest mistakes was when he started releasing the 'Invincibles' at the moment they touched 30. Gilberto, Pires, Campbell, Lauren etc should have all remained at worst squad players and the young ones could have used their experience invaluably.

 

[BobbyBox]

One of Wenger's biggest mistakes was when he started releasing the 'Invincibles' at the moment they touched 30. Gilberto, Pires, Campbell, Lauren etc should have all remained at worst squad players and the young ones could have used their experience invaluably.

Yep the over 30 rule thing he had/has (Does he still have it?) was stupid, especially when he wouldn't give Bergkamp more than a years contract but gave Silvestre a 2 year contract. It just made a nonsense of it all.

You can't give on of your legends another 2year contract, but you can give a weird looking Man United reject a two year contract?

Just didn't make sense and it is true, even if they didn't play as much, the youngsters could have learned a lot from them.

Wenger has made lots of mistakes, but he is still the right man for the job.

 

[Rantboy]

I've always hated that policy and such a disrespect to a legend like Dennis Bergkamp. I started supporting Arsenal because of that man!

Not only a disrespect, but I personally think 30 year can still contribute a lot to football clubs. I suppose he was doing most of these transfers (Henry, Pires, Overmars) to recoup some value on a player that would have an ever degradating price tag.

But granted AW completely misjudged some issues such as our DMF role - he didn't give the armband to Gilberto Silva and let him rot on the bench, while Flamini was being groomed for the position for many years to come. Around the same time, if it wasn't enough, Wenger overlooked an excellent Lass Diarra in order to keep Flamini as his main man as DMF. As a result, Diarra and Gilberto left the club while Flamini, after one good season, demanded 4 times what he was earning before and ended up going to AC Milan instead. We were left with a very raw Alex Song, with whom we had to be so patient, and when he finally comes good, well now here we are!

It's quite disheartening all of this. But Song going is for the best, we don't need anybody acting like a cunt anymore. In addition we extract this cancer called Darren Dein.

 

[BobbyBox]

It just shows how difficult it is with wages and players though, taking into account Song.

Wenger gets slated for putting the likes of Bendtner, Denilson et al on the same wages as Song at the time (Denilson and Bendtner, showed more promise than Song at that time). When they don't do as well as thought, then people say why are we paying them so much?! Then when they get better and do well, people will say, why were we only paying song 55k a week?!

People like to simplify things, but being the manager of a football club, dealing with individual players and the amount of money in the game at the moment, is a ridiculously hard job to do, if you do not have the money of Man City/Chelsea etc.

Yeah and snubbing Gilberto after having the season he had as well and giving the armband to Gallas, was a major cock up. But again it is all good to say in hindsight, but I think if you polled Arsenal supporters and probably the Arsenal team, 99% would have opted for Gilberto as the captain.

Diarra was too big for his boots imo he was good at the time, but his expectations were too much.

 

[Rantboy]

Yeah it's a freaking tight rope

I just think the main problem is to reward mediocrity with bumper contracts, as to what happened with Denilson and Bendtner. Ok, they were more promising than Song, but you shouldn't reward promise. If they become a reality, as in, very important players then the club should be quick to rectify their contract situations.

I still think we should lean a little bit to the other extreme (similar to a "Zidanes and Pavons" policy): instead of having a flat salary policy akin to communism, we should increase the gap between the lowest and highest paid, with a more uneven distribution. It's an ugly wait to say it, I know, but unfortunately it's what we need. After all, footballers are human beings we are dealing with here, and as human beings there will always be discontent or dissatisfaction one way or the other. Communism is an utopia whereas everybody would be happy and have enough. But the above average individuals will be unhappy and they're the ones you want to satisfy the most, since they come with the goods. So basically Arsenal players jumping ship, to an extent, can be compared to Russian scientists jumping across the Berlin wall or something
So unless Arsenal can shut itself tight and become a Northern Korea, I suggest they adapt to what's going around them and accept the failure of this system. We have flat salaries to make the group happy together, but this is clearly not happening. We are actually having the complete opposite of what we wanted: the best players want out and the mediocre ones can't be arsed to leave, being too damn hard to move on, with their tasty salary packages being too good to abandon. Arsenal has become a very dysfunctional workplace. This has to change urgently. Especially now that there's an unprecedented amount of cold hard cash to be made out there.

 

[PIPA23]

age 30 - 34 is for many players the best age...

agree on the Wenger post..i can´t imagine what other coach would be better for Arsenal than him from the coaches avileable...

 

[TheJinxedOne]

age 30 - 34 is for many players the best age...

agree on the Wenger post..i can´t imagine what other coach would be better for Arsenal than him from the coaches avileable...

Guardiola, who better to mange "Barca Lite" than the former Barca boss

 

[Rantboy]

Sahin deal is all done according to the Spanish side. It's only Arsenal that leaves until the last moment to announce, as usual.

Other news elsewhere: Sp*rs signed Adebayor for £5m. Five million quid. City buys him from Arsenal for £25m and sells for £5m. Baaah, what is a £20m loss for Sheikh Mansour's deep pockets?
Meanwhile Arsenal made a profit of over £14m on Song. When Financial Fair Play kicks in (around 2037 AD) City will get theirs!!

PS: Adam Johnson is up for grabs. I expect some smart buys from here till 31st Aug. I expect to see someone bidding for Edinson Cavani (and I wish it was Arsenal)...

 

[beachryan]

Other news elsewhere: Sp*rs signed Adebayor for £5m. Five million quid. City buys him from Arsenal for £25m and sells for £5m. Baaah, what is a £20m loss for Sheikh Mansour's deep pockets?
Meanwhile Arsenal made a profit of over £14m on Song. When Financial Fair Play kicks in (around 2037 AD) City will get theirs!!

That really is my point about the whole argument of 'City spent X, yes, but United bought Rooney and Ferdinand!' It's the way City can buy Ade, Bellamy, Santa Cruz for massive money, and then just go, eh, we'll give em away.

Also rumour is that City are paying > 50% of Adebayors wages over the next 2 seasons...

 

[Rantboy]

That really is my point about the whole argument of 'City spent X, yes, but United bought Rooney and Ferdinand!' It's the way City can buy Ade, Bellamy, Santa Cruz for massive money, and then just go, eh, we'll give em away.

Also rumour is that City are paying > 50% of Adebayors wages over the next 2 seasons...

They were already paying half his wages last season during his loan spell. I wouldn't be shocked if they kept him in their payroll for 2 years more. They won't miss the money!

They're like the Robin Hoods of the league, spreading wealth everywhere!

 

[BobbyBox]

Spurs have done really well out of it! I wonder why no other teams were after him?....I know he is a dick, but other than that

 

[bebo]

Nuri is a loan and No option to buy, it`s a rental at €2.8m Good Lord that `s a lot.

 

[bebo]

Spanish-Rumors of Wenger preparing a €15m bid for Navas ? I wonder if Theo is heading out! I wouldn`t mind though 26 , contracted to 2015 (€35m buy-out) .
I might be getting ahead of myself. Also, more rumors is there is a buy opt of €14m for Nuri....I think Mod must of signed.

 

[BobbyBox]

I see Santos has been a naughty boy, I wonder what happened? seems to be conflicting reports?

Hopefully it all gets sorted, why can we just not have a any problems with our defenders, they are mostly all fit and he has to be a dick

 

[Rantboy]

I see Santos has been a naughty boy, I wonder what happened? seems to be conflicting reports?

Hopefully it all gets sorted, why can we just not have a any problems with our defenders, they are mostly all fit and he has to be a dick

You mean with the police thing? I read that he got arrested for dangerous driving 1 day before our season debut and got bailed to return to the police in mid-September.

The Sun understands there has been a spectacular 130MPH chase. and that he could face up to 2 years in jail.
Arseblog understands there was a wasp inside his car

Anyway, I think this jail talk is rubbish. He was probably late for training (adding to the fact he must be a terrible driver still struggling to adjust to driving on the opposite side in the UK).
He would probably get a 6 month driving ban and 6 points in his licence. No Premier League team took 6 points in one weekend, eh!

 

[Anasie10]

Spanish-Rumors of Wenger preparing a €15m bid for Navas ? I wonder if Theo is heading out! I wouldn`t mind though 26 , contracted to 2015 (€35m buy-out) .
I might be getting ahead of myself. Also, more rumors is there is a buy opt of €14m for Nuri....I think Mod must of signed.

I think Navas is better than Walcott in term of consistency but for sure Walcott is more explosive.
Could be a smart move from Arsenal

 

[YoungGun_UK]

Isn't Navas homesick, I remember he had to miss out on International tournaments early days but seems to be able to do them now. don't expect him to leave Seville anytime soon permanently.

 

[bebo]

I think Navas is better than Walcott in term of consistency but for sure Walcott is more explosive.
Could be a smart move from Arsenal

I agree, only concern is his ability to shake his homesick bit. Im sure Cazorla can make him feel welcome and all. It might be a big ask though Reyes innit

 

[TheJinxedOne]

You mean with the police thing? I read that he got arrested for dangerous driving 1 day before our season debut and got bailed to return to the police in mid-September.

The Sun understands there has been a spectacular 130MPH chase. and that he could face up to 2 years in jail.
Arseblog understands there was a wasp inside his car

Anyway, I think this jail talk is rubbish. He was probably late for training (adding to the fact he must be a terrible driver still struggling to adjust to driving on the opposite side in the UK).
He would probably get a 6 month driving ban and 6 points in his licence. No Premier League team took 6 points in one weekend, eh!

Actually if they can prove there was a wasp on his car then he can get of all together, because the fear of being stung could mean he isn't in control of his actions and therefore the dangerous driving isn't his fault it's a precedent which law must follow!

Mind you, 6 points top of the table!

 

[bebo]

Sounds like his defense already bailed him out then. rvp was locked up for 3 days for allegedly raping then released. That took some doing being on the weekend and all. Santos is daft...pull over and get out ffs.

 

[lazyForken]

Isn't Navas homesick, I remember he had to miss out on International tournaments early days but seems to be able to do them now. don't expect him to leave Seville anytime soon permanently.

this!


Navas cannot be leaving Sevilla! We need a guy that can fit in well and quickly... and with that kind of illness I doubt he can , or will move from Sevilla.

 

[Rantboy]

Actually if they can prove there was a wasp on his car then he can get of all together, because the fear of being stung could mean he isn't in control of his actions and therefore the dangerous driving isn't his fault it's a precedent which law must follow!

Mind you, 6 points top of the table!

He could say the wasp went inside his shorts!
Or maybe he could say he doesn't understand the difference between Miles and Kilometers per hour. Believe me that can be a tricky one

Sounds like his defense already bailed him out then. rvp was locked up for 3 days for allegedly raping then released. That took some doing being on the weekend and all. Santos is daft...pull over and get out ffs.

Ouch, you know what they do to rapists in prison. It must have been hard to sit him on the bench after that one

 

[Benni]

Wenger is the right man for the job.

Wenger is the reason why Arsenal havent won trophy for 7 years.

He now classes profit and finishing in CL as a 'trophy'...

Big changes needed at Arsenal if you want to compete with the best again IMO.

 

[AK.Rabona]

The only other way Arsenal could possible 'compete with the best again' is if they were bought out by billionaires and followed the path of PSG and etc.

Finishing in CL is not a trophy, but it's not only about success but also how you obtain.

For me, Finishing 3rd or 4th with Wenger's tactics is way more of an accomplishment than winning the League in the manner of Man City.

 

[BobbyBox]

Wenger is the reason why Arsenal havent won trophy for 7 years.

He now classes profit and finishing in CL as a 'trophy'...

Big changes needed at Arsenal if you want to compete with the best again IMO.

He doesn't class them as trophies, but he rightly points out that for a football team finishing in the top 4 and reaching the champions league is much more beneficial for the club than winning the League cup or FA Cup, it's sad but true. Ask Liverpool what they would prefer the league cup or to be in the Champions league? Ask Chelsea if they would prefer the FA Cup or the Champions league? (Luckily enough they won it last year to be in it this year, but it could have been a reality for them).

With our budget (after building our stadium and the recession) and still achieving to be in the top 4 and getting out of the group stages is a big accomplishment. It shouldn't be our aim of course, we should aim to win (and I am sure Wenger does, Can you believe he is content at not winning and being criticised all of the time?).

The accomplishment can be highlighted by Liverpools demise and also Spurs only getting in for a season and then not being able to do it again. Even though they were supposed to have a much better team than us. I think this is our 16 season in a row, being in the Champs league?

So to look at it in your way is very simplistic and thankfully (now anyway), a lot of Arsenal fans are beginning to realise this.

Our huge accomplishment is still being up there with the big boys, that means qualifying for the Champs league, getting out of the group stages etc and investing in a stadium that will finance this club for decades to come.

Now we are seeing the money and Wenger is spending it and on quality and experienced players. It is a new chapter for Arsenal, I really think so after getting rid of Van Persie and Song, I do see it as a new chapter.

Wenger has made mistakes, now with us being able to spend, with a stronger squad I want to see what we can do. If in two seasons we are not competing for honours properly, then I will ask for him to leave.

 

[Benni]

But Arsenal are huge club only third to Liverpool and Man Utd in worldwide appeal.

But they not winning anything for a very long time.

The fans pay the most for a season ticket in the league I have read? I am not 100% on this so please correct me if I am wrong.

The supporters deserve better. Silverware is more important than anything in football.

 

[beachryan]

But Arsenal are huge club only third to Liverpool and Man Utd in worldwide appeal.

But they not winning anything for a very long time.

The fans pay the most for a season ticket in the league I have read? I am not 100% on this so please correct me if I am wrong.

The supporters deserve better. Silverware is more important than anything in football.

The only way to win a trophy is to beat the other teams. The only way to beat the other teams is to be better than them.

Arsenal cannot win the league with City as they are. Personally I think they have the potential to finish above all other teams if injuries and luck go their way, but City's squad is so much better than Arsenal's in every area, they will not win that.

Similarly the CL is probably out of their league.

They could and should try to win the FA Cup and Carling Cup though. But those are cup competitions - anything can happen. Portsmouth won a few seasons ago when every thing went their way.

Arsene has created a team that is competitive with teams that outspend Arsenal. And when the sugar daddy's get bored of losing money, and other clubs simply can't afford to do so, Arsenal will still be standing there, ready to be the best club in the prem. (Alongside United of course ;0)