Indeed 2012 was the most ridiculous. Spurs knew that Chelsea had reached the CL final and 4th place was in danger of missing out on the CL if Chelsea beat Bayern, and they were in 3rd with a sizeable lead over Arsenal and Harry done ****ed it up. I felt sorry for Spurs for missing out due to UEFA's silly ruling, but they really should have had 3rd place sewn up weeks before that.
That was the **** up of all **** ups. They even had an almost unplayable Bale playing for them, yet they bottled it in the end. As much as I remember, Arsenal was struggling a fair bit, but we managed to cobble some results together and get 3rd. Let's not forget them p1ssing up all the Bale money on buying 1 Million players, then they wonder why we always finish higher than them.
Given the amount of money available we've been doing better than expected but Arsenal have been very consistent. Everyone else has come outside the top 4 once at least.
You know it's possible to have been a good manager and not be one anymore? He was a very good manager (in the sense that he was better than most of the rest) in 2003/04. He hasn't been a good for a number of years now though (could be that he's worse or that others have overtaken him). Being an encyclopedia of football does not make you a good football manager. I don't care how much Wenger might have the inner ability to do... he simply doesn't actually do it. Therefore he is no good.
A ludicrous assertion. If we had pissed £100m up the wall we'd hardly have been able to finish 5th last year. Of the seven players we signed we made a big loss on one, a small loss on three and two have been good successes with the remaining one being Lamela who seems to be coming good at last. You've had a more expensive, higher paid squad than Spurs in every year under Wenger so its hardly surprising you finish above us.
A more interesting debate is, was he better manager when he was younger, or is he around the same, but the competition has gotten better?
Both. He's gotten worse himself and only has himself to blame because he was good when he was younger which led to his stubbornness and current ineptitude. But there are also a far greater number of tactically intelligent managers nowadays than there were in the early 2000s. All in all, a double whammy of Arsene Wenger being a weak manager in the 2010s.
I do think he's gotten worse. One thing for sure our 1998, 2001 or 2004 teams would destroy our current side. We wouldn't be able to handle that much power and athleticism.
What we did have was a very balanced team of power, skill and athleticism. I think he's become obsessed with diminutive skillful central midfielders that he wants to slot in almost any position. We had specialists but now we have one size fits all type players. But two players that he never replaced, that was instrumental in so much of his success, were Vieira and Henry. The team never really recovered from those loses and it's still unbalanced to this day.
Bayern have what we used to have. A good mix. Lewandowski, Muller, Goetze, Robben, Costa, Vidal, Ribery, Thiago, Alonso, Benatia, Boateng and a great GK in Neuer... There's pace in there, power, devastating finishing, skill, athleticism. Very balanced
