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Merci Arsène

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
Just looking at the scenes yesterday. United and Chelsea both celebrating top 4 like it's a trophy, this is after United spent nearly £150 million then brought in Bruno on top of that btw. Then looking at Sp**s celebrating 6th place.

Wenger was derided by the English media and in turn some of the fans for suggesting that finishing in the top 4 was an achievement, and this was with selling our best players. Lampard getting MOTY shouts for finishing 3rd on 66 points, Wenger finished on 75 points in his penultimate and there was planes being flown calling for his sacking. I don't remember the media ever once giving Wenger any credit whatsoever for finishing in the top 4, even the season after we sold Nasri, Fabregas and we had a terrible start to the season and ended up in 3rd, we were laughed at for acting like it was an achievement. Now you have Gary Neville, the say guy criticising Wenger back in 2012, calling him arrogant is now full of praise for Solskjaer for spending 200 million to get them 3rd. It's absolutely incredible. It just sums up how hated Wenger was by large sections of the media. Then people talk about Lampard losing Hazard. Try losing Henry, Hleb, Flamini, Adebayor, Toure, Fabregas, Nasri, Van Persie all in the space of 5 seasons while STILL getting top 4, still putting in the odd title challenging, still getting to CL and FA Cup semi-finals, still finishing ahead of sides spending more money. And he got absolutely zero credit for it for the most part.

But now all of a sudden the media realise the difficulties of finishing top 4, in a season where in my opinion the quality outwith Liverpool and City is as low as I can remember, all of a sudden top 4 is a remarkable achievement.

It's genuinely disgraceful the double standards. But as Wenger said, history will show what was most difficult to achieve. Maybe people will realise that at least between 2006 and 2014/15 what Wenger did on a consistent basis was quite remarkable. Yes, perhaps we can maybe put some of the blame on Wenger for us not kicking on afterward and not taking advantage of circumstances like in 2016 but the period before that deserves far more credit than it's getting. I don't think many of the journalists or pundits who used to bash him have the humility to admit they were wrong tho so we'll be waiting a while.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
Just looking at the scenes yesterday. United and Chelsea both celebrating top 4 like it's a trophy, this is after United spent nearly £150 million then brought in Bruno on top of that btw. Then looking at Sp**s celebrating 6th place.

Wenger was derided by the English media and in turn some of the fans for suggesting that finishing in the top 4 was an achievement, and this was with selling our best players. Lampard getting MOTY shouts for finishing 3rd on 66 points, Wenger finished on 75 points in his penultimate and there was planes being flown calling for his sacking. I don't remember the media ever once giving Wenger any credit whatsoever for finishing in the top 4, even the season after we sold Nasri, Fabregas and we had a terrible start to the season and ended up in 3rd, we were laughed at for acting like it was an achievement. Now you have Gary Neville, the say guy criticising Wenger back in 2012, calling him arrogant is now full of praise for Solskjaer for spending 200 million to get them 3rd. It's absolutely incredible. It just sums up how hated Wenger was by large sections of the media. Then people talk about Lampard losing Hazard. Try losing Henry, Hleb, Flamini, Adebayor, Toure, Fabregas, Nasri, Van Persie all in the space of 5 seasons while STILL getting top 4, still putting in the odd title challenging, still getting to CL and FA Cup semi-finals, still finishing ahead of sides spending more money. And he got absolutely zero credit for it for the most part.

But now all of a sudden the media realise the difficulties of finishing top 4, in a season where in my opinion the quality outwith Liverpool and City is as low as I can remember, all of a sudden top 4 is a remarkable achievement.

It's genuinely disgraceful the double standards. But as Wenger said, history will show what was most difficult to achieve. Maybe people will realise that at least between 2006 and 2014/15 what Wenger did on a consistent basis was quite remarkable. Yes, perhaps we can maybe put some of the blame on Wenger for us not kicking on afterward and not taking advantage of circumstances like in 2016 but the period beforthat deserves far more credit than it's getting. I don't think many of the journalists or pundits who used to bash him have the humility to admit they were wrong tho so we'll be waiting a while.
Great post. 2015/16 people on here were choking with anger at another top 4 finish. So fans made conditions for him to operate in totally impossible, and even then he only dropped below Klopp by 1 point and won another cup. Unbelievable really.

The trouble is that made the fans even more angry, if that's possible, because they thought they'd finished him off. The rants on youtube were just crazy and all those Wenger Out posters at international events. It made me puke to think that's how we treated a legend.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
The reason why Arsène had to leave was because the fanatics. They were convinced there was some grand conspiracy going on with the club, but it just turns out the club is run really REALLY poorly. Arsène getting us top 4 all those years, and throwing in the odd title challenge along the way, plus winning us FA Cups, is a miracle. The Arsenal fanatics are finding this out now.

In the first year we missed CL football we were 3 points off 3rd place. The next year when Arsène was a lame duck manager and the club weren't supporting him properly, and the players completely gave up on him, we finished with 63 points. And our xG map says we were unlucky not to finish at about 70 points that year. These are herculean efforts by Arsène. Those teams were terrible, much worse than our team now. We've invested massively and will finish with 50 some odd points lmao. Arsène was the face of the club tho so he took all the blame, and as a the upstanding gentleman he is, never pointed the finger because he really could have. Meanwhile Gazidis, Almstadt and co are absolutely inept and incompetent behind the scenes.

Gazidis brought along StatDNA which gave us the following signings. Mustafi - 35m, Xhaka - 35m, Gabriel - 10m, Lacazette - 50m. Look at all that wasted money smdh.

So TLDR: Wenger = good, Gazidis = bad.
Hope he stops being the good guy for once and tells all in his autobiography.
 
Arsenal's xG differential the past 5 seasons.

15/16 - +39.67
16/17 - +16.51
17/18 - + 23.52
18/19 - +7.5
19/20 - (-6.3)

I'm honestly so mad at the dumb **** Arsenal fanatics who chased Wenger out of the club. Look at the results Wenger was getting with a far ****tier team with less investment lmao. We miss CL for the first time in 20 years and the fanatics lose their **** and go mental. Meanwhile sides like lolpool and Chelsea spent time further down the table than we ever did and united has in that time frame as well. But yeh it was all Wenger's fault...

Sad thing is I think we we had probably figured out the right formula which was to hire a top scout in Sven and let Arsène just be a coach. Sven brought us Guendo who Arsène was doing wonders with for cheap, Auba that big time striker we always needed. Too bad our internal power struggles within the club are more important to the ppl that run it than the results on the pitch.
 
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Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
Arsenal's xG differential the past 5 seasons.

15/16 - +39.67
16/17 - +16.51
17/18 - + 23.52
18/19 - +7.5
19/20 - (-6.3)

I'm honestly so mad at the dumb **** Arsenal fanatics who chased Wenger out of the club. Look at the results Wenger was getting with a far ****tier team with less investment lmao. We miss CL for the first time in 20 years and the fanatics lose their **** and go mental. Meanwhile sudes like lolpool and Chelsea spent time further down the table than we ever did and united has in that time frame as well. But yeh it was all Wenger's fault...

Sad thing is I think we we had probably figured out the right formula which was to hire a top scout in Sven and let Arsène just be a coach. Sven brought us Guendo who Arsène was doing wonders with for cheap, Auba that big time striker we always needed. Too bad our internal power struggles within the club are more important to the ppl that run it than the results on the pitch.
Says what some of us knew. Arsène was always over performing for his spend. The guy got even got top 4 with people like Squillaci at the back.

Fans didn't care about money though, it's was all about bragging rights. You didn't challenge City or United but got reasonably close, the fans got super angry and start saying if only he'd played X and W instead of Y and Z, the ****.

Now of course we're so far away from City, no one is angry. They're 25 points ahead of us, there's no expectations any longer. Suddenly everybody knows we can't compete with the money unless we have a Coutinho to sell or we're bought out by Usmanov. Funny that, everybody's just hoping we can get top 4 :lol::lol::lol:
 

Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
EeC8eBRXgAAbo0s


@Makingtrax
 
What a Wenger hater would do here is say, 'well we spent big and had almost the same net spend as lolpool after that time period'. However what ppl don't account for is that all that money spent prior was on investments in assets that a lot of these clubs cashed in on later. It's like buying a property and sitting on it and then flipping it for a bigger property. We were always saving and never were making all those investments in our club.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
What a Wenger hater would do here is say, 'well we spent big and had almost the same net spend as lolpool after that time period'. However what ppl don't account for is that all that money spent prior was on investments in assets that a lot of these clubs cashed in on later. It's like buying a property and sitting on it and then flipping it for a bigger property. We were always saving and never were making all those investments in our club.
Sure. And what people don't understand is how long it takes to build a squad, many players stay 7/8 years before they leave, like Hazard at Chelsea or Kos for us. Net spend is only useful if you compare it over a long period. Wenger always outperformed his spend apart from his last year when people forced him out with their anger.

Even after 2013/4 we were playing catch up with the cost of the squad.

The bottom line is that most fans don't really understand the role of money in football, or how odds work. Can't count the number of posters who @ me when a richer team gets beat in a one off game by a cheaper team. Squad cost eh? We might have beaten City but they have 81 points and we only have 56. :lol:
 

Bloodbather

Established Member

Country: Turkey
I have deep admiration for Wenger, I became an Arsenal fan because of his brand of football, and I just think of him highly as a person with his combination of competitiveness with good sportsmanship and creative open-mindedness with discipline. However, to hold Wenger, a manager overseeing the club's football affairs and not a head coach, entirely blameless for the managerial blunders from 2015 onwards is faulty historical revisionism. I find it very hard to believe that he was simply force-fed the signings of Xhaka, Mustafi, Gabriel and Lacazette amounting to 120 million. He also couldn't win Alexis over when he showed dissatisfaction with the club's direction. On the coaching side, Wenger continued to do good things but the last few years of his era were a failure from a managerial standpoint - which is what caused the unrest among the fanbase. There was a lot of unjust disrespect that failed to take into account just how much of a success for most of his time at Arsenal, but such is life - you get the hotheaded fanatics along with the level-headed critics. To me, Wenger himself should've groomed his successor and stepped down when the time was right without the fans needing to call for his resignation clearly.

I also don't buy that our failures after Wenger's departure constitute a sound argument that he shouldn't have left. We failed to make the right moves and hire the right people after Wenger's departure. Raul Sanllehi hasn't done a good job, and Unai Emery was clearly a bad hire from the beginning, having disappointed at PSG. We followed a period of bad management with a period of even worse management.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
However, to hold Wenger, a manager overseeing the club's football affairs and not a head coach, entirely blameless for the managerial blunders from 2015 onwards is faulty historical revisionism.
You're absolutely right. The pressure from entitled fans bored with top 4 and FA Cups, became enormous after the 2015/16 season. The rants on social media became unbearable and the protests, boycotts and planes tipped the club over edge. Wenger started to change his tactics and tinker with systems, there was panic buying of Xhaka, Perez, Mustafi, Kolasinac, Lacazette . . apart from Kola, all of whom were over priced and have taken the club backwards. The club has been a mess ever since.

You start a campaign to take down a club performing above their investment you've got to live with the consequences . . and here we are mid table. Wenger was just a person after all, and if you criticise any person enough they'll go to pieces no matter how much they're paid or what experience they have. That's part of being human.
 
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Tir Na Nog

Changes Opinion Every 5 Minutes

Country: Ireland
"I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art.”

...right to the end, the man always wanted to play football, the way football should be played...


...Merci Arsène.

Interesting that the thumbnail is the Atletico game because I just came across.


This is pretty incredible, every outfield player created at least 1 opportunity. :eek: 5 each for Laca and Özil, 3 each for Xhaka and Danny. But everyone else at least created one opportunity. Now think about how much we're lacking in creativity nowadays. Even at our worst under Wenger we still had the ability to carve open the best of teams even if by the end our defence (like in this game) would usually let us down when it really mattered.

It doesn't say a lot just interesting how in little over 2 years we've changed so much.
 

Riou

In The Winchester, Waiting For This To Blow Over

Country: Northern Ireland

Player:Gabriel
Interesting that the thumbnail is the Atletico game because I just came across.


This is pretty incredible, every outfield player created at least 1 opportunity. :eek: 5 each for Laca and Özil, 3 each for Xhaka and Danny. But everyone else at least created one opportunity. Now think about how much we're lacking in creativity nowadays. Even at our worst under Wenger we still had the ability to carve open the best of teams even if by the end our defence (like in this game) would usually let us down when it really mattered.

It doesn't say a lot just interesting how in little over 2 years we've changed so much.

The reason I put up that season specifically was...after seeing how unhappy people were in our "Squad Analysis 20/21" thread, it got me thinking about the last time Arsenal had a squad I really could relate to...and it was kinda this season.

You look at the players we had over that one year...Sanchez, Özil, Cazorla, Wilshere, Ramsey, Coquelin, Giroud, Welbeck, Koscielny, Mertescaker, Monreal, Iwobi, Walcott, etc...that's a lot of people that went from zero to hero, and back again and back again...but with all those ups and downs I had with each of these players, for close to a decade with some of them, you spend years growing as a person with them, you end up really caring about them.

Sure at this point some were past their best, always injured or were soon to leave us for rivals...but I don't know, I still have a lot of good things to say about that group, miss having that feeling about an Arsenal team...they weren't perfect, but they made me proud to call myself an Arsenal fan.

And this being Arsène's last year, the emotions were at an all time high too...I took for granted how he always played quality football, though it became inconsistent at the end, the desire was always there from the great man...1996-2018, both for the good times and the bad times, was a great period to support Arsenal.
 

UpTheGunnerz

Vrei sa pleci dar una una iei

Player:Elneny
Amazing man and human being, has all the qualities and attributes that constitute a great person in my book, and someone that i strive to act like.


Might have to stop trolling to fully achieve this, though
 
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