How Arsene Wenger let that one slip by is one of the season's great mysteries Mr H? But then again, possibly not if you look at the players he buys or even the ones he doesn't buy. By that I mean that Arsene rarely buys the players we need. Did we need to splash out between 12-5m for Oxlade-Chamberlain and have him sitting on the bench? I think that money would have been better invested in Scott Parker or Christopher Samba. We needed another MF and CB and if you recall, he was almost not going to get the latter until Vermaelen picked up his injury. I really don't know what is in Arsene's strategy these days.
You want my honest take on all this? Wenger put his trust in Fab and Nasri (and others, such as Adebayor and Clichy), and he has been badly let down. The only thing I would accuse him of is naivety, which is strange, because I had always considered him as one of the most switched-on managers in the game. You cannot have the heart ripped out of a team and not expect there to be serious repercussions. Whether the fault lies with Wenger (and a failure on his part to properly man-manage his burgeoning young squad), or with the board (for having failed to let Wenger have the money he needs to get the players he needs), perhaps we'll never know. For my own part, I would find it very difficult to put the blame wholly on Wenger's shoulders.
I agree with Jayram. Arsene once again took risks based on nothing but a hope and had come to have too much belief in his own powers of persuasion. He should have planned for this but he didn't. Just like his pitch strategy, there is a lack of a Plan B.
I think wenger tried to do the same thing with nasri that he did with Ashley Cole, where he got him to sign a new contract but has a verbal agreement that he would sell him the following season, and I think that is why the nasri situation kept dragging on, wenger was convinced that he could get him to stay one more season, and sign a contract, therefore protecting the clubs investment without having to let him go for nothing, but nasri wasn't playing ball. Fabregas was slightly different, we couldn't sell him if a club doesn't make an offer and barca were determined to screw us, and were deliberately making lots of noise about him without making an offer (apparently they only made one small offer before august). I still don't know who we could have gotten to replace those two players given our wage structure, mata was on 120k a week at Valencia and we could only offer 90k max, that's the reason we never got him, same goes for kaka. The only real option would have been to do what wenger knows best and by some unknowns from the continent, I think we tried to get that marvin guy from france who is suppose to be a good creative player, could you imagine the moaning our fans would have done if we got another unknown from France lol. I'm not giving up just yet, everyone including our own fans said we were finished when we sold overmars and petit, we didn't do great that season but the few seasons after that were the greatest in the clubs history, so don't all go sticking your heads in the oven just yet lol
I might be comforted and encouraged by your optimism and faith Mr E but for the fact that our woeful form since March has continued and there seems no end to this symphony of sorrowful psalms. Right now, every team in the EPL must consider they can beat us so each of them will have heightened confidence when we meet them on the pitch. Arsene and the stupid board have made every game so much harder because of past and continuing failures. There are times I feel like sacking the lot of them.
