Apparently Wenger had a strop after this interview and banned his players from giving any response to the press: [video=youtube;28IBdLJA3Ag]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28IBdLJA3Ag[/video] Not sure why he was so upset by it, to be honest.
He really is starting to act strange. Those strange smiles, where you think - ah, he's joking but then you see he is serious. Long way of saying I agree with HIAG.
The smiles are a nervous reaction to being put in a situation where he's angry, but he can't express it. He wants to maintain control and appear aloof, so he won't say that the questions are stupid or that he's not going to answer them, as doing so would be stupid. He's trying to pretend that he's calm and not flustered, but he ends up looking a bit mental, instead.
Well, he's spent £77m on 2 players and the team have somehow got worse, anyone would be feeling a bit stressed
The thing that would frustrate the hell out of me if I had the misfortune to be a Goon is that everyone could see what the issues with the team were, but they weren't addressed. Wenger even claimed that he was aware of the need to replace Vermaelen in the summer, yet he still didn't do so. Loads of attacking midfielders, loads of wingers, but a lack of a top notch holding midfielder and a striker in the class of Aguero or Costa. Bizarre.
That could be a post match interview from many Arsenal games over the last 9 years. Same old, same old. If no reference is made to the name of the opposing team, the recording could be played again and again without the need for Wenger to be interviewed again.
The thing that would frustrate the hell out of me if I had the fortune to be a Spurs fan is that everyone could see what the issues with the team were, but they weren't addressed. The fans often proclaimed the need to replace Modric/Berbatov/Bale/VdV/King/etc in the summer, yet the powers that be still didn't do so. Loads of central midfielders, loads of wingers, but a lack of a top notch deep lying, creative midfielder and a striker in the class of Aguero or Costa. Bizarre.
I think Whinger knows that AFC aren't good enough for top 4 this season, and that, probably, this season is the last we'll see of him. Shame, because I'd like him to hang around to cripple the Gunners even more. My big worry is that AFC's board will give him the bullet at the end of the season and draft in Koeman. Regular readers of this board will know that Koeman was my first choice of manager (instead of Gaal or Poch), and (inevitably) I was laughed at by most people. Now, I fear, we may have shot our bolt on that score, because I suspect that one of the bigger clubs will come in for him, at the end of this season, with AFC probably leading the charge.
I'm more concerned about the strange balance in our squad, to be honest. Our manager's barely had any time to address it, though. We're not in a financial position to go out and buy direct replacements for the likes of Bale and Modric, either. We can't pay £42m and £140k pw for one player, especially one who plays in a position that we're already strong in. Really? Why? Wasn't it de Boer, anyway?
You're right, we're not and i guess we did attempt to fix the other problems. Ok, the problem is that we're just s**t at replacing players and filling gaps in the squad rather than being unwilling. Its like being a striker. You can be on form with no service or you can be getting great service and missing them all. The end result is no goals. I think what i'm saying is that Spurs and Arsenal are both Soldado
I think that we've just bought good players, but not necessarily the right ones, which has left us with an unbalanced squad and makes the players we've got look worse than they are. Soldado thrives off service, support and width, so we play without any of those things and wonder why he's not doing well. Lamela likes to move into the centre and score goals, so we play with fullbacks that don't overlap (barring Walker) and other players that also like to use the same space (Eriksen, Chadli). Lennon's at his best when running down the line, playing extremely wide and hitting balls across at pace or pulling them back from the byline, so we play him on the left and ask him to cut in. We're not giving the squad enough of a chance to do well, nor are we giving managers enough time to get in the players that they want to play well in their favoured style. Someone comes in, starts the job, changes some of the players and then gets the sack, so the whole process has to start again. Whenever we do seem to be getting somewhere, one of the big money sides picks off our best asset and others leave too, leading to instability and a lack of continuity.
Koeman could easily be another Laudrup or Poch. For me if Wenger steps down at the end of the season, I think the Goons will go for Ancelotti or even try to get Pep.
Spot on. I still don't know what the answer is. Invest in a system i guess like Swansea and Southampton and hope to supplement it with better quality buys due to being a bit bigger.
To be fair PNP Rose likes to get forward and overlap too, but he hardly played last year when Soldado was trying to bed in. Lacking a proper RB at times this season is definitely hurting us too. In theory with everyone back we will have Rose and Walker down the flanks filling in the spaces left by Lamela and Chadli cutting in, which might provide a bit more width with the deep-lying players covering the spaces left. I still think an out and out 4-3-3 with Townsend and Lennon on their correct sides might bring the best out of those two and Soldado, but that formation is never going to happen under Pochettino and it would be difficult to fit the likes of Lamela and Chadli into it anyway, and it would also limit our fullbacks to the more defensive sides of their games which are not their strongest suits in any case. I agree wholeheartedly with your last sentence. I also agree with Spurm - we need a long term vision and style of play to be established. We all talk about 'The Spurs Way' but it seems a fairly loose definition all told, all we really want to see is exciting football, whether that turns out to be Redknapp's style or Pochettino's high energy pressing and rapid counterattacking style. Part of Pochettino's value to Spurs IMO is that he has a clear way he wants to play, and I think that has attracted his employers at the club as they hope he can instil a way of playing the game that will be successful for us, that will outlast his stay at the club, and evolve after he's gone in a similar way as to what has happened at Swansea over the last few years.
Swansea have had success because they brought in a good, young manager in Roberto Martinez and then kept picking similar managers when each one left. They didn't massively change their style of play, so each new boss was reasonably happy with the players that he had and the players knew roughly what they had to do. We go from Redknapp's fairly cavalier 4-4-2 or 4-4-1-1 with width and flair to Villas-Boas' high line defence and the 4-2-3-1. The more basic and straightforward tactics of an old-school English manager, who had a lot of success with it at WHL, to a continental, extremely analytical way of thinking. One manager gave the players freedom and told them to express themselves, while the other gave everyone a very detailed job to do with every angle covered. Neither way is wrong, but it's difficult to go from one to the other and there aren't many players who are happy in both systems.
