We have 9 players with contracts ending next year, another 8 with contracts ending in 2019 (As Arseblogger says). The squad is unbalanced with a lot of dead wood and best players looking to leave. There is something going on behind the curtains ( see Mustafi case), that we are not aware of. The situation with the squad is truly awful. How did we come to that? My only explanation (I do not know if it is the right one) is that Wenger actually seriously planned to leave this summer. Somewhere in the Summer 2016 he decided to finish his AFC carreer for good and not to extend his contract. So he did not care much about what will happen afterwards. More than that, the more problems his successor has with the squad the better Wenger looks in comparison. Remember he said in Feb -March: "You will know soon" ? But we did not, because all of a sudden he reconsidered, and the reason was that negative atmosphere created by the fans in the Spring. His departure would have not looked dignified enough, it would look as if he was pushed out of the club the fans. Obviously it was not the way for him to go. Wenger wanted to show that he could leave on his own terms. He wanted to show who was the boss. Now when he won, when he has the scared Board firmly in his pocket and proved that he can do whatever pleases him, he is thoroughly enjoying life at the Emirates. He can start selling CBs when we need them, can sell WS even though the Pole was probably our best goalkeeper. He can play two left backs as CB, and then say "You know what I am not convinced ha ha", he can shuffle our defence line, put Bellerin on the left and Monreal in the middle just to give Ox the start at RB, he can drop Lacazette against Pool, he can sub players just because he wants it, he can state that he needed Walcott to cross to Giroud (what???) etc. etc. - simply because he knows he will get away with murder. And he is thoroughly enjoying it. It is like "Ok, practically I have already gone, but lets stay for a while and have some real fun". Neverthelrss now he has to deal with the problems he left for his succesor. This is the only theory that in my view explains al this mess.
It is true that we are in a bit of a mess. A lot of things don't add up. If we look in a bad state this summer, imagine next one when we lose chamberlain Sanchez and ozil on free transfers and then have absolutely no money to replace them.
Everything adds up perfectly. A **** manager + allowing that **** manager to be the manager of football team = football team is ****
Sell Sanchez now. Realistically with him or without him, a Wenger managed arsenal is not going to get top 4 so he's unlikely to really help us do anything this season. So get £50m for him now and then ban Wenger from wasting anymore of our money until he leaves and the funds can be given to someone competent to rebuild. Just write off the next two years as a blip in our history and try to get things back on track in summer transfer window 2019 with some young potential players who'd come to a Europa league team and then build from the base up slowly.
If you call having 27 shots and 1 clear penalty turned down 'lucky', then sure, but I'm fairly sure where we are in the league right now is indicative enough of just how poor an outfit we are. You lot aren't that much better, mind.
Procrastination, stubbornness and a board who won't push, chastise or even demand success from him. Slow to sign players, slow to sell players, slow to make tactical changes, slow to sign players to new contracts.
I don't think there is any real chaos, well not much more than there usually is. I suppose we get these kind of scorelines over the season but we seem to bounce back. We aren't really going to challenge for the title this season due to our first team and tactical deficiencies but we do have a chance in the cups. It'll be a long season lads so starting with Wenger Out so soon will make things more unbearable.
Handball leading up to a goal and an offside goal means you were lucky. 27 shots means a big fat ZERO. Getting the goals by default does matter because it shows your true form. 27 shots going wide or over or saved by the keeper is merely a statistic and unless those shots are converted into goals they are meaningless. Now, just because my team isn't much good doesn't mean I can't tell the truth about your team and therefore your comeback is, again, meaningless.
The offside was marginal and could have gone either way, nigh on impossible to expect the officials to see it in real time and in those situations, the advantage goes to the attacker anyway. 27 shots isn't a meaningless statistic because it gives you an indication of who dominated and who peppered the opposition goal. If you had an ounce of objectivity, you would see that we deserved to win that based on our performance and the incidents you cite happen in virtually every game. You win some, you lose them. That's the way it goes. You still need to defend properly even if a decision in a lead up to a goal does go against you. All I see you post about is how lucky all the other top 6 sides are and how unlucky Spurs are. Like there's some huge conspiracy against your team. Such a victim mentality. Just give it a rest. Your incessant moaning is tiresome.
We were ****ing **** today. But I expect the team to significantly improve. Hopefully this utter **** stain of a result will force Wenger to do some business before the transfer window shuts.
I have NEVER said there's a conspiracy as I do NOT believe there is one. Now, you can have 90% of a match but unless you get that ball in that net it's ALL a waste of time. If in the 10% the other team scores then it does matter, they've done the business. Dominate away but what's the use if you don't score? NOW your true form is being shown after the LUCK against Leicester. Good luck runs out before good form Brunel.
There are parallels between Arsenal and another club who after winning the CL in 2007 disappeared from sight until recently. Perhaps Arsenal are doing what AC Milan have done for a decade.
Why? Based on what? Personnel will make zero difference. It never has and never will... Well for two more years anyway.
The only possible saving grace is that if we finish midtable (which looks likely at this point), he may be forced to leave after one year. I hate it when we lose matches, but if it means getting rid of Wenger faster then, in the long-term, it could be the best possible option for us. Because there's no chance of him stepping down. I will take the short-term pain if it leads to long-term gain.
I'm not exaggerating when I say this. Right now, Pulis could do a better job with these players than Wenger. Now that doesn't mean I want Pulis, far from it in fact, but it is a damning indictment of just how bad Wenger's management of his squad has been.
Also staggering that even at the start of this season there will still some who think there are very few who'd be an upgrade on Wenger.
As a life-long (and it seems very long at the moment!) Arsenal supporter, this is the lowest I have felt in terms of season expectations. I didn't get to the game or watch it on tv but had to suffer the over-enthusiastic condemnation of our inept performance by that most intelligent of football pundits, Robbie Savage. As a fan I was embarrassed by what I was hearing. Whilst the message was that Liverpool were superb, it was also that we were appalling. One comment of his struck home when he described Wenger and Bould as just sitting there doing nothing when they should have, at least, been seen to be standing up and bollocking the team. I have remained a Wenger supporter for longer than a lot of others that contribute to this board but I have to admit that I thought his time was up when we won the FA Cup last year and was disappointed when he signed a new contract. He has obviously lost the dressing room and seems to have lost the coaching staff as well, and it is poisonous. There can be no credible explanation for benching Lacazzette, but we shouldn't have been surprised as he does something like this every year. One question for those who watched the game. The radio commentator described an incident where Ramsey appeared to turn his back on the play to remonstrate to the bench about what was going-on on the field. Was that true and do you think that was why he was subbed? (ok - two questions..)
