Re Wilshere. Arsenal fans were excited about him, there's no denying that. Haven't read all the comments, but anybody who's saying that they never rated him are lying. He was rightly lauded at becoming the next big thing early his his career, but injuries have got the better of him and he just hasn't kicked on. I'd also like to mention RVP. Because whilst Wenger might have persevered for too long with Diaby, he was right to keep the faith with RVP, because there were many on here who were slating Wenger for keeping a crocked RVP and saying that he should get rid and free up the wages. Eventually RVP came good, the big mistake Wenger and Arsenal made then was selling him to Utd. That was and still is unforgivable.
Are you having a laugh, RVP came good? He only played for us for 1 and a half seasons before he ****ed off to Man U and won them the PL. That is a really bad example mate.
If you hadn't sold him it would have been 2 and a half seasons and you may have been in with a shout of the title
We've been close on a few occasions but failed to maintain consistency throughout a whole season. Something that plagues Wenger's latter teams.
Nah always thought he was overrated. Guy has no brain. He likes dribbling with it too much (a good skill) which is always his first option when it really should he his last option.
The problem with suffering a string of niggling injuries is that it plays havoc with the learning curve in a player's career. These young players continue to develop their game from the days they first kick a football to the point at which they can be consider "seasoned" pros. Every player will develop at a different rate (depending on their intelligence) and it isn't too much of a stretch of the imagination to assume that the thickest players take the longest time to develop. We'll never know for sure whether or not Wilshere would have developed into the kind of player that most of us feted him as becoming, because I think the injuries have stunted his potential growth. I do think that Wilshere and Bendtner share the same level of intelligence, I don't think Wilshere is as arrogant as Bendtner. Being both thick and arrogant is the worst combination in any enterprise, not just football. A thick player (like Ross Barkley) who has enough talent will eventually get there, and an arrogant player (like Andros Townsend) with enough intelligence will eventually work out for himself why it is he keeps getting knocked back, but a thick and arrogant player (like Bendtner) has no chance no matter how much talent he has. I wouldn't say that Wilshere is an arrogant player which is why I think he had a chance of developing into a top player but for the niggling injuries.
I agree with this but I also think it's used for marketing too. How many shirt sales did they do for Wilshere? I bet they made a killing. But a foreigner who had compatible talent/skill as Wilshere would be considerably harder to market. I know it's cynical but i think we did it with one eye for making money.
Rooney is a perfect case for that, as was Beckham before him. Reckon Alli will go the same way. If he was playing for United he's already be the pin-up boy for Sky Sports.
Alli is a quality footballer but i hope he doesn't go the same way as the others and fade after a few years.
I hate to have to admit this but I think he's at the best club for that. God help him if he goes to United! Also I am not sure that moving abroad is going to be the best thing for him at this stage of his career although that is where he will surely be headed eventually. He'd probably do okay at Chelsea but no way would Levy sell to them (or to United for that matter).
I can't see that happening. English players rarely venture outside, but it would be something that i'd like to see happening. I think it's the language barrier, culture or the unavailability of baked beans that frightens them...
I'm serious. RVP came good after years of injuries. The fact that we sold him to Utd is a different issue altogether.
According to RVP he changed his training patterns himself which enabled him to prolong his career. But you can hardly say it was worth keeping him for that long surely? It's only ended up hurting us keeping injury prone players when we could have replaced them with actual playing ones. I strongly believe that we could have won at least one PL title if Wenger was a little more ruthless and got the players he needed for a whole season.
We kept him for six years before he had two good ones with us. He then had three years at United, only the first of which was anything to write home about. So what ratio of 'seasons of putting up with mediocrity and injuries':'seasons of quality' do you tolerate? If he'd have stayed with us for the entire 11 years of his prem career and had three good seasons (which he did end up having in total) would you have said that justified putting up with the other eight years of mediocrity? Where do you draw the line?
Isn't that exactly whats happened with Wenger though? 3 good seasons and then the rest is mediocre, just that Wengers good years came at the beginning of his time at Arsenal, not the end.