north bank gooner wrote:StLGooner wrote:north bank gooner wrote:CrimsonGunner11 wrote:Angelito wrote:jayramfootball wrote:It still pisses me off that we let our team degrade badly for a decade whilst Wenger and the board lied about how the stadium loan meant we could not spend. All the while we let Spurs build and catch us. Now we're chasing them and we're not very close.
We must go back to project youth.
Ironically, Wenger's ideas from 2006-2011 would yield more success today than it did then. That period had stacked sides, world-class sides: Barca, Chelsea, ManU, Bayern, Milan, Inter, Real. Liverpool under Rafa was a different kettle of fish. City were emerging. Dortmund under Klopp was a giant-killer.
Today, there's only one world class team and it's City in comparison (and Real Madrid until last season). Take Messi out from Barca and they're the Spanish Arsenal. Liverpool have a world class front three and a world class defense this season, but a so-so midfield. Same with Juve. Bayern have an aging squad and have lost a bit of their identity.
The way forward isn't as bleak but we need to be smart and strategic, which is where it becomes bleak. We needed Mislintat for that reason. We need to go back to working with young players, playing attacking free-flowing football, and opting for tactical purchases as we did last decade. We have more money now than we did then, however, I'm not sure if we have proper men in positions upstairs to be able to actualize this scheme.
When times change, you get with the program but the people running Arsenal Football Club are always a few years to slow. Bar Real Madrid (possibly PSG and Bayern too), I can see English clubs dominating Europe for many years to come but I'm worried we won't be part of this group because of the club's recent history with making decisions that benefit us on the pitch.
Wrt Wenger, I truly sympathize with him sometimes. When you look at clubs like Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Real Madrid, and Manchester United during Wenger's time compared to now and then you factor in that we were paying off a stadium with no shareholder financing, it's incredible to me how the club didn't capitulate sooner. The one wish I could make for Wenger, if I could, would have been for him to be a better coach during the latter part of his managerial career with us which probably would have made his job much easier and most likely would have ended in the club winning better honors.
Kroenke has been on board for a large part of the time that we have been playing in the new stadium (2007 was his initial investment). It really doesn't boil down to competing with the big boys financially, it's as much the ambition of the owner to put his hand in his pockets to fund transfers, which he has never done.
Kroenke's Mrs is the heiress to the Walmart fortune, she is worth an absolute fortune. If as a family they wanted to invest in the club in a much more proactive manner we would be competing with the Manure's, City, Barca's, RM's of this world trust me.
That's what fucks me off more than anything about our noisy neighbours, they have funded a state of the art stadium and become more competitive in the league and CL than they were 5 years ago. We have gone backwards despite having pretty much paid for our stadium now.
I have no sympathy for Wenger, if he had any integrity about him he would have left years ago admitting he couldn't work under the constraints that have been imposed by the Kroenke regime.
I get the Wenger part, but I think Wenger really thought he was doing what was best for the club. He took all the blame for the lack of ambition from the board and owner and put all that on his shoulders. In hindsight yes, it ended up being part of our current downfall, but I don't blame Wenger for trying to do what I believe he thought was best. He could have been selfish and pointed the fingers elsewhere and also just flat out left the club. Maybe that would have helped us, who knows, but like I said I do believe he was trying to do what he thought was best. Hard to blame him for that.
And I'm not sticking up for him in the sense that I think he still should be manager, I do still believe he needed to go.
But that was the problem with Wenger tbh. He did what HE thought was best for the club and essentially ran everything from coaching right through to transfer dealings.
In a modern day football club, that is an impossible job. When David Dein left the club our transfer strategy apart from being blighted by a lack of funds was bordering on the comical. I mean the Suarez debacle was a perfect example, any half decent offer and we would have got our man. I accept that eventually, Barca would have come calling but we would have made some serious profit on that transfer.
Wenger left the club with a team half full of duds. I mean what was going through his mind when he signed the likes of Chamakh and Sanogo amongst many other shit players.
Sanogo and Chamakh were free transfers. Tbf, they were worth a punt considering the general opinion of the players before they joined us
