Wenger: Trust me in this summer's transfer market

[Klaus Daimler]

Don't entirely agree with this as it sort of smacks of a defeatist cop out = injuries f*cked us over so why bother.

It's more about not putting an unproportionate amount of blame on the manager for things that are out of his hands. When you've got seven or eight starters out injured at the same time it will obviously affect the performances of the remaining few as well. It's unreasonable to assume anything else. The key to success has always been to get as much as possible out of the starting players.

 

[Accomplished]

As I've said before, and most people here know, even with our injuries this season, we would be at least 8 points ahead of where we are now if we'd had a reasonably solid keeper. That's the minimum....

 

[Klaus Daimler]

Definitely. But United could point to Berbatov and say the same thing. It is what it is because it played out this way. Changing the circumstances with a theoretical "what if" scenario is precisely what people usually mean with having the benefit of Hindsight. Our poor keepers probably wrecked a good portion of this campaign on their own, but Almunia was nowhere near this bad when we went into the season.

 

[irishgunnerz]

Ah yes Accomplished - but you could also play devil's advocate and take out six four points for the games where Manny saved a penalty etc etc

The season was not lost from weakness in one area alone.

It has been, injuries aside, lost because we concede too many poor goals due to poor defensive organisation, my pet hate. Inadequate keeping options certainly played their part but as bad - and even worse in my eyes is how we defend as a team.

As a keeper I can see lots of things wrong with our keepers, lack of mental strength, lack of communication, poor positional sense at times etc but I can tell you I'd be mightily pissed off if I was in goal behind a defence so prone to silly mistakes and poor tracking. Individually we have excellent defenders. As a defensive unit they are average. That's what worries me...if/when we get (if you'll pardon the pun) an accomplished keeper, those weaknesses will still be there.

We simply gift the opposition too many chances in dangerous areas, either through switching off, tracking the ball rather than the man, reacting slowly to rebounds etc

Having Manny/Flappy as a scapegoat for every goal we concede has plastered over an equally dangerous weakness. While they certainly were our weakest individuals this season, and urgently need replacing, our defensive play as a whole has been distinctly average

 

[Accomplished]

I guess, but Almunia had already shown he wasn't up to the task by january. Wenger could have signed someone as a stopgap solution and we'd be a fair few points better off, surely? I'm not normally one to do "what ifs" but I just see the goals we've conceded in the last 8 games and I think a good portion of them caused us to lose points because our keepers weren't good enough....not even close...

 

[Mastadon]

Yet how much of the defensive frailty of the defenders is down to the lack of confidence everyone has in the keeper? How can the defenders concentrate on defending when they know there is a clown behind them who will probably try his best to sabotage their best efforts? I remember an article with Brian Clough on why he signed Peter Shilton for what was a massive fee at the time and he remarked on the extra confidence it gave to the defense to know that they could rely on the keeper if things went badly. Clearly our defenders don`t have that..

 

[irishgunnerz]

You could play easily play Devils Advocate though and say - well what confidence can a keeper have if his defenders are error prone - as ours are.

Changing the keeper is a not a magic cure-all...it's a good start, but that remains all it is, a start

 

[otfgoon]

I guess, but Almunia had already shown he wasn't up to the task by january. Wenger could have signed someone as a stopgap solution and we'd be a fair few points better off, surely? I'm not normally one to do "what ifs" but I just see the goals we've conceded in the last 8 games and I think a good portion of them caused us to lose points because our keepers weren't good enough....not even close...

A stopgap solution? It's not like there are tons of quality keepers our there who don't make errors waiting to be signed for a few months.

Any keeper who is free to be a stopgap solution is likely to be crap himself.

 

[sabret00the]

As long as I don't think about this throughout the summer, I can enjoy my World Cup.

 

[law90026]

I think it's fair to say that our keepers have cost us more points via their errors compared to what they might have saved us. The West Ham game aside, how many times did our keepers really save our hides?

There's a lot of faith riding on Fabianski if Wenger refuses to buy ... and the real fear is that we're going to come up short again next year because of this.

 

[Mastadon]

Changing goalkeepers is the single most important thing to do bar none. We have the worst keeper of any of the top 10 teams and have no business challenging for the title until that changes.

 

[sabret00the]

If Wenger was serious about Fabianski, he should've thrown him into the deep end earlier in the year and persisted with him.

 

[progman07]

Don't entirely agree with this as it sort of smacks of a defeatist cop out = injuries f*cked us over so why bother.

It's more about not putting an unproportionate amount of blame on the manager for things that are out of his hands. When you've got seven or eight starters out injured at the same time it will obviously affect the performances of the remaining few as well. It's unreasonable to assume anything else. The key to success has always been to get as much as possible out of the starting players.

Injuries have been the excuse in the last 3-4 seasons, and I would bet anything on that it will be an excuse next season as well. We have young players (from Djourou to Theo...), crocked players (Rosicky, Eduardo), old players (Silvestre, Campbell). We have a little bit of everything, we are only missing mid-aged players at their prime...

If we are going to give up and call it a day because of injuries, we don't even have to bother about next season, because we WILL have injuries to key players in 2010-11 as well.

 

[Burnwinter]

Changing the circumstances with a theoretical "what if" scenario is precisely what people usually mean with having the benefit of Hindsight.

If van Persie and Bendtner's coincident injuries and Almunia and Fabianski's continued poor performances post-January have been two of our biggest issues, both could reasonably have been either planned for in advance or mitigated mid-season.

Prediction, not hindsight.

And with the benefit of (ever more) experience, we can definitely anticipate the likelihood of both factors affecting us again next season if we rely on Robin or either of Almunia and Fabianski.

 

[Burnwinter]

If Wenger was serious about Fabianski, he should've thrown him into the deep end earlier in the year and persisted with him.

Yes.

And if he really has thought all along that Fabianski would be suitable #1 material by next season (as we might fear based on recent comments), then Fabianski's tenure should simply have been brought forward when Almunia's form dropped.

I'd say Wenger actually planned to leave Almunia as #1 this season, next season and probably one or two more while waiting for Szczesny to come on. If that's true I sincerely hope that he hasn't illogically transferred his support to dodgy Lukasz.

I felt Wenger mismanaged the keeper issue last year and should have persisted with each decision he made longer.

To compare it to the way Wenger sometimes treats knocks to key players, he rushed Almunia back from his psychological "injuries" too early. Almunia then put himself on the line in the media (declaring his problems were over etc.) at which point he was set up to fluff his lines under pressure again.

 

[patrick42uk]

Keeper is a side issue. It has become fashionable all of a sudden it seems. Yes Almunia is a plank but even with Buffon our defence will continue to be overworked because we have a midfield incapable of protecting it. I cannot take Wenger seriously if he chooses to do nothing about the midfield.

 

[Gurgen]

That is true but with Buffon in there we'd have won the league, despite our other problems and injuries. That for me is indisputable.

 

[AshburtonGhost]

Wenger has no right to expect anyone to trust him regarding transfers IMO.

 

[sabret00the]

What can Wenger do though Patrick? He's developed a trend of listening to the fans. All this Song and Diaby chants means that he's not going to replace them and thus we have to suffer. We're always going to leave our defence exposed, though in a perfect world, we'd have a great defensive midfielder to ease the burden on the defence. Song isn't that, so unless we replace Song in the first team, we're stuck and we're not going to do that because the fans love Song as much as Wenger.

 

[patrick42uk]

Wenger wont do it not because he listens to the fans but because those guys are his personal projects and he wont accept failure.