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Senegal's Arsenal Thread 2012/2013 : featuring positive negativity

Retro

By Retro,
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Kawee

Kawee

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I am also another big critic of Wenger. However, I don't usually criticize Wenger for the same reasons the anti-Wenger brigade usually do.

I don't blame him for selling our best players. When the players want to leave, there's not much you can do except make the most out of it. "Good piece of business" was the most we can hope for from each of the sale of our best players, I believe. When Anelka wanted to leave for the bigger Madrid, we had to sell, and we made good business. When Overmars and Petit were lured by Barcelona, we had to sell, and we made good business. When Ronaldo set his heart on Madrid, Man Utd had to sell, and they made good business. No exception even among the fiercest rivalry, such as when Campbell moved to us, or when Figo moved to Madrid.

I never criticize Wenger for lack of will. Some people call Wenger a loser, a defeatist who doesn't care about winning. I don't know where people get this from. I see no evidence of this at all. Every time I see Wenger on the touchline, I see nothing but fire. I think we can accuse Wenger of so many things, but lack of will to win is most definitely not one of them. I think Wenger care just as much, if not more than most of us. This is his career, his life, his legacy.

However, I believe there is much we can blame Wenger.

We can blame Wenger for his poor defensive coaching. Numerous changes to the playing squad, and he still can't get his team to defend properly.

We can blame Wenger for his wage structure. We've been told time and time again that Wenger has full control of the budget, and investing heavily in his youth products was his approach. It has failed. His youth products haven't turned out as good as he hoped, he can't reinvest the money because nobody is willing to pay them as much we do, and it has limited our resources in investing in better players, since they're tied down to the likes of Denilson and Diaby.

We can blame Wenger for poor acquisitions. Park, Chamakh, Gervinho, Squilaci, etc have proven less than cost-effective. This is particularly important to us because we don't have the resources to cope with these waste. We need to make the most of our limited resources, but instead Wenger wasted them on these players.

We can blame Wenger for choosing to rely on players with awful injury-record. Going into the season with 2 youngsters who suffered horrendous injury (Ramsey and Wilshere) one of which was still recovering with no set date, and 2 midfielders with some of the worst injury record (Diaby and Rosicky) have proven to be very risky. At the left-back position, Wenger chose to get rid of Clichy because he wasn't playing well, but he chose to rely on a young prospect also with bad injury record, Gibbs. Clichy and Gibbs are superior to Gibbs and Santos both in terms of ability and reliability simply because Clichy is superior to Santos in both cases. The right decision might have been to promote Gibbs ahead of Clichy, to encourage competition while still retaining the service of Clichy. This is of course assuming that Wenger chose to get rid of Clichy rather than Clichy wanting to leave.

Although I don't think we should give Wenger a hard time for making the most out of all the sales of our players, Wenger has no one to blame but himself for the fact that those players wanting to leave us in the first place. Our lack of success and resources, probably the two biggest reasons players leave us are a direct consequence of Wenger's failures.

Personally, I don't think Wenger is overachieving as some of the Arsene-Know-Best suggest. Wenger is not performing miracles. He's not the only one who can do this job. However, nor is he underachieving as the anti-Wenger would have us believe either. We have resources for top 4, and Wenger has achieved top 4 every single year, but we don't have as much resources as the top 3, and Wenger has failed to compete with them.

In conclusion, we're probably right about where we should be. We have top 4 resources, but not enough to be competing against for the titles, and that's exactly where we are.

If we want to compete for titles, which I think everyone do, and some still expect us to do, then we need a manager who can punch above his weight. We need a manager who can bring more out of our resources than Wenger can, by improving our players, improving our team's organization, culture, and habits, and improve our transfer dealings. Who that is, I don't know. However, I'm quite certain Wenger is not that man. Wenger, as things stand, can only make us perform as well as our resources suggest we should, and that is top 4, and good cup runs.

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for long post. :o

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SJ234

SJ234

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I agree with lots of what you put but I do feel that to an extent miracles are being performed on the back of the problems he helped to create such as wage policy amongst others. I do feel the youth products thing was forced upon him but he was very keen to do it as clearly it was something he always wanted to do. On the Clichy thing I believe that course of action would have led to him wanting to leave and anyway it was clear that Clichy was going nowhere in terms of performance and needed a new start. What I have an issue with is that he didn't sign a better lb and there were some available such as Santon and Enrique.

Wenger is doing an acceptable job. In terms of net transfer spend he is very disadvantaged resources but in terms of wages he is to an extent which he caused anyway

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Suggy33

Suggy33

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Off to my second game of the season tomorrow \o/

First time I've done 2 games in a season since we had Flamini I think :o. Uni sucks the life out of my bank account. Hopefully should get a similar game to the Southampton one :D

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