A Question

Maybe the team is being overtrained when at this time of the season, you shouldn't have to do a lot of training, just playing games and general tactical play. Arsenal have been known as a team that picks up hamstring injuries and maybe the training is responsible for the drop in form. Could be.

Its not so easy. My beef with Wenger is the lack of his scouting. How on earth did he buy the likes of Podlski and Giroud? Where is the power, pace ethos that we used to rely on when buying players?
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Although I do understand what you're getting at, I think the real question is this - if Wenger signs players that don't conform to his preferred player type, why does he then try to hammer square pegs into round holes?

I know we had an argument over Giroud the other day, Jenius, and I'm hoping we don't get into that again - but if you sign a player like Giroud, who isn't especially quick, and who plays with an old-fashioned approach to centre-forward movement, you need to adapt your style of play to accommodate him (assuming you consider him first choice, which Wenger clearly does). You can't, however, expect him to play like Arsenal forwards of the recent past. He can't be expected to be multi-functional and rotate with other forwards, because that's not within his skill set.

"comment by Penguin - We're gonna win the FA Cup...right...? (U13630)
posted 34 minutes ago
You saw that twitter image that linked anything against Wenger to people playing football manager?Pathetic."
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Nope. Not seen anything like that.

"Considering we've needed a DM, a striker etc for ages, I don't see the major squad congestion you're thinking of if we'd signed in January. Especially when we have a lot of departures this summer anyway."
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Yep, and if you signed those players, which I agree we need - will it make a blind bit of difference to us being 4th/5th? Nope, probably not - we may have only lost 1-0 to Chelsea? And now you've blown a £30m-£60m hole in your budget for the year for no gain.

"And taking of 'over valuing in January' I guarantee the AKBs excuse this summer will be "World Cup inflates prices"."
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I have no idea - both sides of the childish WOB/AKB thing tend to have ill thought out, paper thin arguments.

Henry's Cat

You think signing in January wouldn't make a difference?

Not only have we seen evidence of this in the prem on numerous occasions, ranging from modern examples like Hull getting a pair of strikers to help keep them up, to an older example of us in 04 signing Reyes to give the team that little boost it needed, but even if they don't come in and make that immediate impact, at least you've got them for six months and they settle in so they're even better in 14/15!

The collective nervous breakdown has to be down to wenger.

comment by Penguin - We're gonna win the FA Cup...right...? (U13630)
posted 31 seconds ago
Henry's Cat

You think signing in January wouldn't make a difference?

Not only have we seen evidence of this in the prem on numerous occasions, ranging from modern examples like Hull getting a pair of strikers to help keep them up, to an older example of us in 04 signing Reyes to give the team that little boost it needed, but even if they don't come in and make that immediate impact, at least you've got them for six months and they settle in so they're even better in 14/15!
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The Ozil signing, and the subsequent impact he had, confirmed what I've been saying for years - Wenger only looks at signings from a technical perspective. He doesn't consider what impact a new signing has on his players as humans.

Thomas Eisfeld, for all we know, may be a fantastic prospect. But when he joined Arsenal, would he have had any impact on the club at all? Would the likes of van Persie, Wilshere et al have been optimistic? It's doubtful. Now imagine the boost we would have seen throughout the squad had Wenger signed Gotze, who had been linked to Arsenal repeatedly that window.

KPPR - Exactly. Psychological boost is often overlooked. Ozil gave us that too.

you need to adapt your style of play to accommodate him
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And whats style would that be? In my opinion the closest I have seen of who I think Giroud is comparable to is Lee Chapman. And so how do you build a team around a player who will never score you 20+ premiership goals? (and I know Lee scored loads for Leeds) It makes it even worse that he has two players, Arteta and Mertseacker who can only really play counter attack football. To play counter attack successfully you need a very pacey forward who can break from deep or play like crouch in holding the ball up when isolated.

That leads me to one of Wenger most glaring faults. He is too close to the dressing room. We were linked to Huntelaar and David Villa, 3 months after we signed Giroud so Wenger obviously recognised Giroud wasn't fitting the style that he wanted to play. Approaches for Higuain/Suarez/Benzema obviously only confirmed this. Why is it taking so long for Wenger to take a decision?

This is where I feel Wenger badly misses a Dein type figure on the board who can give him an alternate view and as a shareholder can also to take the pressure of Wenger when getting rid. It is obvious Wenger doesn't like confrontation. His silly press conference last year pretty much told the world that. No one has the balls at board level to 'help' Wenger in being the bad cop. The anaemic response to Giroud breaking one of the most important club rules pretty much said it all.

That leads me to one of Wenger most glaring faults. He is too close to the dressing room.
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There's a lot of evidence to back this up.

The multiple contracts offered to Diaby, for one, which tells you that he just wants to be 'Uncle Arsene' and doesn't want to deprive some of these players of a career at Arsenal.

I've always felt Wenger is a 'nice bloke', probably in a job where that's not a requirement. I suspect at a smaller club he wouldn't get away with it, but it's almost certainly why we end up carrying so much dead wood for so long.