A wholly unbiased view of Wenger's acheivements ... fabulous. Rationale: Only one team can win our domestic title each season and and only one team can win the Champions League. Wenger has won the former more than once and has finished 'second' in the latter. He has managed to do so without ever having the 'most money' to chuck at it - certainly nothing like the amounts that Man United, Man City, Chelsea, PSG, Real Madrid and Barcelona have had. As such, what he has acheived comes down to good management IMHO. I have no time for any fans who believe that their team has a divine right to win trophies (or indeed to always challenge for them) - no team has that - and football is an ever changing, ever evolving dynamic. This is partly what makes it such a wonderful spectator sport - teams that have dominated our domestic game in my lifetime, Leeds United and Nottingam Forest, are now in the proverbial footballing wildnerness of the Championship - Liverpool are a shadow of the team that were so dominant during the 80s - in Europe the Milan clubs and Juve have fallen from the European pinnacle. That's just footballing evolution; it may come full circle or it might go off in a tangent where a so called lesser club, perhaps from Eastern Europe can join the elite with an ejection of wealth - much like what happened at Chelsea. Back to Wenger - the only manager in my lifetime who has acheived more with 'less' financial backing is, as much as it pains me to say it, Brian Clough - who took on both the domestic leagues and Europe and conquered both on a comparative 'shoe- string' budget ... Got little time for fair weather fans - like the bloke who phoned TalkSport recently to protest, in his East Midlands accent, that he had taken his girlfriend to her first Liverpool game only for him to leave at half-time because they were losing to West Ham ... I've never left a Leicester City game early ... and I have had to watch some crap... but they are MY team ... so my crap so I'm stuck with it ... makes the better times all the sweeter.
I agree with much of this. The Gooners like Arsenal87 who constantly whine about Wenger don't appreciate what he's done for Arsenal. Ironically if it wasn't for Wenger they wouldn't be Arsenal fans! One day he will go and I suspect that the Wengerless Arsenal will struggle to equal the past decade of "failure".
When I was a kid, Burnley, Sheff Weds, Wolves were all big teams. Liverpool were in the second Division! So yes, football evolves, like everything else. What's so different now is the amount of money in the game. Particularly the sort of money brought in by Russian billionaires - Chelsea, and even Arab oil states - City. The rest can't compete with that sort of financial firepower, and it's why I dont see the game evolving in the manner it used to. The relatively level financial playing field is gone. I suppose you could almost trace it back to Jack Walker's Blackburn.
When I was a kid, every team seemed to have "its" player, the one that was always associated with that club. Peter Osgood, for Chelsea, Stan Bowles for QPR, Jack Charlton for Leeds, Derek Parkin for Wolves, George Best for United, etc. You don't see that so much, these days. Whether it was that clubs were more honourable, back in those days, or players earned roughly the same amount of money, so there was less incentive to move elsewhere, or whether its a bit of both, I don't know.
I was just thinking that. I always assumed HIAG was a daft teenager or early 20's tops. But posting the way he does when he is going on 50 is ****ing tragic
I think you're all being a bit generous to HIAG. His postings have got him down as a 12-14 year old age bracket, but it's possible that this could just be his mental age. If he is nearer 50 years old, then Trick is right and it's ****ing tragic the ****e he comes out with. Getting back to Wenger and the piss poor wum attempt that HIAG was stumbling into, Spurs would give their eye teeth to have somebody like Wenger at their club. He's won the league more times than they have in their entire history and has a record decorated with trophies. When Wenger took over at Arsenal, Spurs and Arsenal were on a similar footing, Wenger took Arsenal to glory winning 2 doubles, 3 titles, 6 FA cups and CL football every seasons. Whilst Spurs, 12 managers later have **** all success other than 1 league cup win. Even Wigan have won more.
That's not my view that I'm expressing, there, PIXIE. It's the view of an increasingly vocal contingent (mainly non-Spurs fans, I think, too), who are growing more and more convinced that the time is approaching when Spurs will finish above Arsenal. The gap has grown shorter and remained that way (ie. evidence of a shift in motion), and a time will come when Spurs emerge as the dominant footballing force in North London. That's the view of others. I still remain to be convinced that the shift is happening, now.
I'm enjoying seeing you squirming on this You wrote those words and they have come back to haunt you. (As your comments always do) Now you're trying to fob them off onto somebody else, yet you're the only deluded ****er on here who even mentions it. Who are these 'increasingly vocal contingent ' of fans by the way ?
... I have it on good authority that they are Haribos, and that their numbers decrease with every one that HIAG munches
