Eight points off Europe, ten off Spurs. A world apart from the title challengers and down in the pit with the mid-table also-rans. Whispers that our players have completely turned their backs on Wenger, and zero promise on the field. Finally we are seeing lots and lots of empty seats in the stadium too - belatedly, but it needs to be done. It's now apparent why some of the players who left recently did so - would you want to be part of this Arsenal team?
I have supported Arsenal for over 20 years since I was a kid. I've seen us win titles, I've seen us go on droughts, and I've seen us lose games I wanted us to win. I have NEVER seen such apathy and stagnation as has been shown this season - the toxic lack of ambition for the last few seasons has finally come home to roost, and the cracks in the organisation - papered over with a few FA Cups - are gaping for the whole world to see. This is the worst Arsenal team since I have supported them, bar none.
Wenger has lost the fans, lost his winning touch, lost the faith of the board and supposedly lost the dressing room. Along with all that, he has lost his legacy as Arsenal's most successful manager - he will be remembered for the last largely-miserable thirteen years.
No other club would have tolerated this weekly horror show and no other job in the world would have provided this level of invulnerability, but surely now this has to be it for Wenger? I feel somewhat sorry for him because I remember the better times and I do not dislike him as a person, but if his situation is of his own doing then I have no sympathy for him. Many are saying he won't be allowed to see his contract out beyond the summer - do you think he'll even make it to then? Does he deserve to?
This season is lost anyway and cannot get any worse, so we might as well start the rebuild now and be ready by the close season. If it were up to me (and I say this with regret), Wenger would not wake up a gainfully employed man tomorrow.
This is the end
posted on 2/3/18
"Graham's last 3 seasons had a UEFA CWC win, an FA Cup and a League Cup. And the club finished 4th in his last league finish. The decline was not nearly as dramatic as you make out, even though there was clear decline from the heady days of lifting the title."
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Are you kidding? We were almost in a relegation battle when he was sacked (a battle that ended with us 6 points above the bloody relegation zone. From a CWC the previous season, to barely surviving and the unravelled mess that was Paul Merson and his own shady dealings, that was fall from grace as steep as they come.
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"The guy won 6 major trophies in 8 years, including 2 entirely unexpected league titles. I don't see how that is less impressive than Wenger's record."
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And Wenger won 7 in his first 8 years. You're going to use the fact that Wenger wasn't awful enough or shady enough to get sacked against him in a head-to-head? I'd get your stance if it was an undeserved Abramovic-esque type sacking (Ancelotti, Mourinho 1st time), but we hadn't been close to a title in 4 seasons, the club was rife with ill-discipline, drugs and addicts and the man had Arsenal football club in a facking relegation battle for crying out loud. On what planet does doing that and getting pushed make you better than Wenger?
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"including 2 entirely unexpected league titles."
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I don't begrudge him those titles, but if we're giving him credit for that, he deserves equal levels of criticism for failing to even put up a challenge in two seasons in which we entered as favourites (91/92 and the first premier league season in which we finished fecking 10th).
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"Saying you don't give a crap about the established Sky 4 ignores important context. There has never been a time in league history as in the past 2 decades when a group of 4/5 clubs consistently finished in the top 4."
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Fair enough, but Wenger was a major part of establishing Arsenal as part of that. Whilst that status quo never existed in the Graham era, he was still leading the third most prestigious and the third richest club at the time, so let's not pretend he was this hugely hamstrung pauper battling upstream.
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"There was nothing "comfortable" about our top 3 in prestige that you claim. Arsenal hadn't won the title since '70/71 when Graham came and their league finishes where 7th, 7th, 6th, 10th and barely 10 years earlier, finished as low as 17th."
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So let me get this straight, Graham is getting credit for turning around a team that 10 years prior (and one or two player similar (David O'Leary I believe) finished 17th, but you're not doing the same for Wenger who took a team that finished 6 points away from relegation 3 years prior to the title in his forst full season?
I expect you to reply by going on about " had he left in his first 8 years". But he didn't, because he was horrific enough to get sacked after banking the credit. How awful do you have to be to get firred after what Graham had accomplished? I'm not sure how getting sacked for taking bungs, presiding over a relegation scrap and a veritable asylum makes you a hero, but I guess we have different standards.
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"When Graham arrived, he plucked Dixon and Bould from lower-division Stoke, Winterburn from newly promoted Wimbledon and brought in Seaman, building the very same back 5 that gave Wenger his initial success. Compare that to the mess of a legacy Wenger will leave behind."
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I can't believe I'm saying this, but Wenger will be leaving behind a club that has the financial might to compete at the upper end of the transfer spectrum (if not the very top given the investment in the game). We're able to pay ridiculous wages to top players and that's a direct result of a lot of Wenger's work. In theory that should hold a successor in good stead.
Yeah, Graham's back four were superb and a large part of Wenger's early success and a great legacy, but again, Graham had these men and took them to fighting for their premier league lives. It took Arsene Wenger and his acute knowledge of the foregin market to sort the absolute train wreck that Graham;s negligence had left behind. We were in afar worse position than we are now when he left carrying such stalwarts as Glenn Helder, Vince Bartrum and Ian Selley.
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"Again, it is very easy to make a case for Graham. Nothing "emotional" about that. The fact you think it's so set in stone that it is indisputable is exactly my problem."
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Under no measure is a shady bung taker who, in his last three years at the club, played diabolical football and had the team fighting addiction, relegation and each other, arguably better than a manager with far more expansive accomplishments.
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"Graham's bung is irrelevant here. I'm comparing their footballing legacies and ability as managers."
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It absolutely is. While he was taking bungs, his team was falling apart, affecting the on-field product and his ability to control it. Graham was struggling to compete with footballing masterminds like Phil Neal, Gerry Francis and Joe Kinnear. Give me a break; Wenger has been te better Arsenal manager hands down.
posted on 2/3/18
comment by Sheriff John Brown - Wenger Till I Die (U7482)
posted 15 minutes ago
Interestingly, Wenger fortuitously met David Dein while coming to watch Graham (Wenger wasn't some Arsenal fan). He once said of Graham:
“I used to watch Arsenal because I felt I could learn much from how he [Graham] organised his team tactically. I wasn’t the only young European coach to think that way.”
Of course, everyone knew Graham's ability as an defensive organizer, but the most underrated legacy of his era is the financial stability he gave the club. Arsenal were mired in losses, debt and mediocrity when Graham arrived. The club had won 1 league title since 1953 and spent good time in mid-table. Graham built a title-winning squad despite turning a net transfer profit after buying mostly obscure players. The crowds came back to Highbury. By '95, when he left in disgrace, Arsenal were in great financial shape that Wenger would profit from, apart from profiting from Graham's back 5. You can read a decent account here:
https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/what-did-george-graham-ever-do-arsene-wenger-heres-what
It's just surprising to me how underrated Graham's legacy is. I don't know if it is recency bias, Graham's admittedly drab football, or the scandal that ended his Arsenal career which is responsible for this.
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I think George Graham is a great and one of the great British managers; he's basically the reason I'm an Arsenal fan (through signing Ian Wright at a time when I knew nothing of institutions and followed only personalities). I'd never underestimate his legacy and a lot of what I'm saying in this debate is to argue a point, but, as great as his legacy is, it's hurt by getting sacked, by presiding over chaos and a relegation scrap and allowing his focus to stray. He's still an Arsenal great and will forever be an Arsenal legend, but he quite simply is not a better Arsenal manager than Wenger - despite the utter farce that Wenger's reign has become.
posted on 2/3/18
I can't believe I'm saying this, but Wenger will be leaving behind a club that has the financial might to compete at the upper end of the transfer spectrum (if not the very top given the investment in the game). We're able to pay ridiculous wages to top players and that's a direct result of a lot of Wenger's work. In theory that should hold a successor in good stead.
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We're not gonna agree on much of the other points, so this is the one I chose to tackle. Wenger's contribution to our financial status is easily the most overrated part of his legacy. The way people talk about it at times, it's almost like he was the sole or even the main driver of the vision. Spurs are doing the same thing and no one would claim it is because of Pochettino. The reality is Arsenal were sleeping giants for decades. Arsenal happens to be the biggest club in London, the biggest city in Europe and one of the world's great financial capitals. There was massive potential to exploit this which was hindered by the capacity of Highbury. We are in great financial situation, but so are all the other original Sky 4, and now City, and imminently Tottenham too.
You've spoken about the massive league position yoyoing under Graham compared to Wenger, but as I've said, except you were a Liverpool in the era (that lot finished either 1st or 2nd an astonishing 18 times in 19 years between '72 and '91) the rest of the division saw very unstable results. Fergie with Man U finished 11th, 2nd, 11th, 13th, 6th before he won his first title in '93 despite being the top spender of the era. You're making a very unfair comparison of that era with the Sky 4 era. I do not regard Wenger's top 4 consistency as a basis of his superiority to Graham. Peculiar circumstances have allowed a few clubs to consolidate their dominance over others in this era and that is what Wenger profited from. That is appropriate context when talking about Graham taking us to the bottom half of the table.
posted on 2/3/18
Well said and written chaps, informative and insider knowledge there but by fck the length and depth of those posts is surely beyond most drunken readers? 🤔 😂 😂
posted on 2/3/18
"Wenger's contribution to our financial status is easily the most overrated part of his legacy."
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I actually agree that his contribution is overstated, however, he has been a major contributor. Sure, he's benefitted from extraneous variables, but the fact is, he's been the one driving the ship and driving the ship with the tightest purse strings in that time. I'm by no means saying what he did is astounding (I think he underachieved on the field), but the fact remains, despite the underachievement, he did do a good job in that time.The reality of Arsenal being sleeping giants and a great location were all true during Graham's time in charge too.
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"I do not regard Wenger's top 4 consistency as a basis of his superiority to Graham."
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And neither do I, but it's a certainly a contributing factor. Not only did Wenger outperform him in his first 8 years (three league titles and no finish below 2nd for a club that hadn't finished in the top 2 for the 7 years before he came and were in a relegation battle 2 years before his arrival), he also wasn't deservedly sacked for woefulness. As poor as the 2nd half of Wenger's tenure has been (in relative terms), and as many embarrassments as he'd presided over, he's never even come close to what Graham oversaw in 94.
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"Peculiar circumstances have allowed a few clubs to consolidate their dominance over others in this era and that is what Wenger profited from. That is appropriate context when talking about Graham taking us to the bottom half of the table."
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I strongly disagree. It was very much his own doing. His tactics became antiquated, his recruitment bizarre and his focus non-existant. That he allowed this to happen to a club he professes to love, is a complete disgrace and rightly used against him.
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On an unrelated side note:
"Liverpool in the era (that lot finished either 1st or 2nd an astonishing 18 times in 19 years between '72 and '91)"
And the season they didn't finish top 2 (they finished 5th in 81) they went on to conquer Europe. Utterly phenomenal stretch of sustained success that.
posted on 2/3/18
On an unrelated side note:
"Liverpool in the era (that lot finished either 1st or 2nd an astonishing 18 times in 19 years between '72 and '91)"
And the season they didn't finish top 2 (they finished 5th in 81) they went on to conquer Europe. Utterly phenomenal stretch of sustained success that.
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Agreed. Never happening again for them though.
Think I'm gonna go to sleep......
posted on 2/3/18
Very probably isn't happening again for anyone, to be fair!
I should really get my head down too. Adios, my man.
posted on 2/3/18
Didn't Liverpool finished 7th or 8th few seasons back?
posted on 2/3/18
despite being the top spender of the era.
.....
SAF netspend from 1986 to 1998 was £4m.
posted on 2/3/18
This is where Wenger leaves and you 'll wish he hasn't in 3 years time.
Believe it or not there were United fans wbo thought Fergie was dome for 2 or 3 seasons before retirement.