Angelito wrote:All this not having the right players is bullshit. Wenger played an attacking brand of football with Song, Arteta, Gervinho, Santos, Benayoun, and a chaotic Ramsey in 11/12.
We beat City, Chelsea, Spurs, and Liverpool that season. And we were a hair's breadth away from pulling off that comeback against Milan—a team that featured superstar Zlatan himself. We topped the UCL group stages that included Marseille and Dortmund.
Arsenal scored 74 goals in the League that season. We haven't scored as many goals since Wenger left although Unai's team came close with 73 goals. Even in the chaos of 17/18, we scored 74 goals—only behind City and Liverpool.
We finished 3rd in the League. That was the worst squad Wenger ever had.
We've scored 6, conceded 4 goals so far. That's not defensive solidarity. Leeds put 3 past Liverpool at Anfield and they sure as heck don't have Auba, Ceballos, Laca, Bellerin, and Pepe.
There are great things to come from Arteta. I'm sure. But the excuses that we don't have the players won't cut it. The players we're linked to aren't game changers like Ozil was when we signed him, or Alexis. The last world class player we signed was Auba and since then, we haven't signed a top class player, let alone a world class superstar.
If every manager needed world class or top-quality players in every position to be successful, they might as well rename themselves as Pep or Zidane. Arbitrarily speaking.
Mikel Arteta has more backing today than Wenger did ten years earlier because we have more money. In the zeal of novelty, let's not forget that Arteta has to deliver this season. His promise land is Mauricio Pochettino, not Jurgen Klopp.
The flip side of that argument is that we couldn't defend and Wenger couldn't organise a solid defence despite having years to build team after team.
The football stopped being as fluid and beautiful. We weren't pulling teams apart like we used to with our passing game. It turned into sterile possession where teams comfortably let us have the ball and just hit us on the counter to win the game. It gradually got worse, the passing got slower and we were soon struggling just to string passes together. Teams that pressed hard could stop us from even progressing passed the half way line. We were heavily dependent on individual brilliance to win us games.
It's a different Premier League now. Days of tika taka possession football isn't as effective. I think we Arsenal fans have gotten so use to that style of attacking football that it's hard to get our minds around a different form of attack. We can't be looking at what Wenger was doing 10 years ago and think that will work today. Heck, it didn't work in 2011/12 and we won nothing. The Premier League is a totally different beast now and we have the worlds best managers all coaching here.