If only Arsenal had scored that penalty

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Even George Graham's record for Arsenal is superior to Wenger's in my opinion. He's underrated because he wasn't the most stylish of managers, but to win 2 league titles and build one of the finest defenses in English football history (a foundation on which Wenger's early success was founded - unlike Wenger that wrecked the team for his successors) and win our most recent European trophy is a damn fine achievement. And he did all this in an era where we didn't establish ourselves as part of an elite "Sky 4" that piggy backed off CL money to dominate the rest of the league.

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comment by Ace (U18814)
posted 11 minutes ago
comment by Samir - Bottlers FC (U2630)
posted 1 hour, 30 minutes ago
Ace,

But if you read about him, he changed the fitness regimes, was tactically astute, wasn’t afraid to innovate, had a good scouting network and was the first to utilise physios and masseuses regularly in football at that time.

Sure it was a completely different time period but he has a legacy and is held in high regard for a reason.

I agree with you about Wenger, but that still doesn’t mean Chapman wasn’t arguably our greatest ever manager for what he achieved from where we were.
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I have no doubt from what I’ve read previously that he was a visionary for his time. I just feel Wenger gets a hard time from Arsenal fans even now when you consider what he achieved and what he did for the club.
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Why wouldn't he get a "hard time" with the poisonous legacy he left behind? He was a deluded, self-absorbed, narcissistic twaat that squandered all the good will he had (good will that meant only he could basically sack himself), refusing to acknowledge his time was up and the game had passed him by, and left a mess behind.

The greatest tragedy of his legacy is his successor stands little chance to make anything of what Wenger left behind, and we have no money to turn things around because under Wenger, we racked up a £200m+ wage bill on useless players and spent huge money on clowns like Mustafi and Xhaka.

So the hard time he gets from Arsenal fans is entirely justified.

comment by Ace (U18814)
posted 15 seconds ago
comment by Sheriff John Brown - Wenger Till I Die (U7482)
posted 33 seconds ago
Even George Graham's record for Arsenal is superior to Wenger's in my opinion. He's underrated because he wasn't the most stylish of managers, but to win 2 league titles and build one of the finest defenses in English football history (a foundation on which Wenger's early success was founded - unlike Wenger that wrecked the team for his successors) and win our most recent European trophy is a damn fine achievement. And he did all this in an era where we didn't establish ourselves as part of an elite "Sky 4" that piggy backed off CL money to dominate the rest of the league.
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GG was a good manager. Pretty scathing and dismissive of Wenger in your comments though. I wonder if you were so dismissive of what he was doing in the moment the Invincibles - a team he built himself - were lifting the PL trophy? Or has the acrimony of his latter years coloured your opinions?
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You can't live off those achievements forever. Of course I didn't have the same feelings around the time of the Invincibles. But stagnation and decline over a period of a decade-and-half is more than enough for people's views to evolve. We hung on to Wenger for far too long thinking he was like Ferguson, but there's only one Ferguson. If you somehow won the CL this season and then under Poch, spent the next decade-and-half slipping to a 'Ropey league team, your views on Poch would certainly change.

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comment by Ace (U18814)
posted 36 seconds ago
comment by Sheriff John Brown - Wenger Till I Die (U7482)
posted 1 minute ago
comment by Ace (U18814)
posted 15 seconds ago
comment by Sheriff John Brown - Wenger Till I Die (U7482)
posted 33 seconds ago
Even George Graham's record for Arsenal is superior to Wenger's in my opinion. He's underrated because he wasn't the most stylish of managers, but to win 2 league titles and build one of the finest defenses in English football history (a foundation on which Wenger's early success was founded - unlike Wenger that wrecked the team for his successors) and win our most recent European trophy is a damn fine achievement. And he did all this in an era where we didn't establish ourselves as part of an elite "Sky 4" that piggy backed off CL money to dominate the rest of the league.
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GG was a good manager. Pretty scathing and dismissive of Wenger in your comments though. I wonder if you were so dismissive of what he was doing in the moment the Invincibles - a team he built himself - were lifting the PL trophy? Or has the acrimony of his latter years coloured your opinions?
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You can't live off those achievements forever. Of course I didn't have the same feelings around the time of the Invincibles. But stagnation and decline over a period of a decade-and-half is more than enough for people's views to evolve. We hung on to Wenger for far too long thinking he was like Ferguson, but there's only one Ferguson. If you somehow won the CL this season and then under Poch, spent the next decade-and-half slipping to a 'Ropey league team, your views on Poch would certainly change.
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Of course they would, that’s not what I’m saying.

I understand the dislike of him by the end. What I’m saying is, because of that dislike is earlier achievements seem to get discredited.

You yourself have just said he won his first title off the back of GG’s defence then milked the CL money gravy train to keep Arsenal at the top. I think that’s incredibly harsh on Wenger, who was a vibrant and revolutionary coach in his first 8 years or so at Arsenal. He revitalised the careers of those players that had been with Graham, and brought quality foreign additions for a pittance. His teams played superb football. He put the Invincibles team together entirely, arguably Arsenal’s best ever side. I get the acrimony toward him at the end, he stayed on a good five years too long and let standards slip, but that still shouldn’t detract from his earlier achievements.
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His legacy has to be judged factoring the totality of his time at the club and not just the fair weather period. I'm not dismissing his early achievement. My comments about Graham's defense weren't meant to denigrate Wenger. Sure, Wenger met an underperforming side, but it was a side of great potential, including a back 5 that had won the title before under Graham (goodluck to any manager trying to win anything of consequence with any 5 of the players in the dross squad that Wenger left behind). David Dein was also another huge figure at the club that was instrumental to Wenger's success bringing in the likes of Bergkamp, Viera, Petit, Overmars and Anelka to complement Graham's back 5 and win Wenger's first double.

I was making relative statements comparing Wenger to Graham and the conditions around each's success, not robbing Wenger of credit for his own accomplishments. I've just always found it weird that people say Wenger is our greatest ever manager, and they often say it like it's indisputable. Had Wenger left in 2008 or so, maybe. But he eroded his own legacy for like a full decade after his prime. So I think it's very disputable that he's our greatest ever manager.

I also genuinely believe that if you gave George Graham as many crack at Europe as Wenger had, he'd have done better than our mediocre European record under Wenger. Even teams like Leeds and Chelsea (before Roman) got to the latter stages of the CL before Arsenal managed it under Wenger. He never quite had the tactical nous that the top European managers had.

"He never quite had the tactical nous that the top European managers had."

Kind way of putting it. 1 final in 21 (?) attempts with some of the teams we had is outrageously bad.