I just don't understand why he keeps starting. It's so logical.. I am not against the guy but he has been utterly useless this season. Cannot pick a pass and cannot defend, his confidence is in shreds. Why does someone else not get the nod? I can guarantee you Ramsey will start next week.
Come on, asking for a man to be fired for picking a crap player is ridiculous. Imagine if it happened, each team would have a different manager every week. Chelsea would have replaced RDM by now, as he keeps picking Bosingwa and Kalou, the entire Liverpool squad is a joke, so Kenny would have gone, Pardew would have been sacked for playing Ameobi etc. If you want to call for Wenger's head, there's plenty of better reasons out there.
PLease understand the point being made. Its not this one incident of picking a player that would be the reason to sack Wenger - its the persistent favouritism of players simply not good enough, and if this time it costs us a CL place there could be no forgiving it.
Like my post says though, there are better reasons to call for Wenger to be fired, such as him being stubborn, tactically weak, egotistical etc.
Yep agree - but you have to admit if Ramsey started and we lost a goal that took us out of the CL because he just gave up chasing again (as he did vs Norwich in the single most blatant act of laziness i have ever seen from an Arsenal player), you too would be furious.
Yes i would be furious, i've already stated that a rotting corpse is better than ramsey atm. But you can't sack Wenger for playing Ramsey, it's up to the manager who he picks, not us.
I feel Wenger sometimes invests too much hype into young players, and then is almost obliged to play them, to prove to everyone he was right to believe in them... Then this rubs off to others and next thing you know a pubescent with a couple of club appearances is called into the England squad, and another is appointed captain of Wales while he hasn't fully recovered from a massive injury. I cut Wenger a lot of slack but his persistence with Ramsey and Walcott even when they are on terrible form is something I will never understand.
This should be the team. We all know ramsey will play and we will therefore find it very hard to win though dont we
Worried about our team for this game. Coming back the way we did took a lot of mental energy and strength and many of the players are looking jaded. Missing Sagna and Arteta is big deal. Hope the lads can gather themselves for one last game. Feel sorry for them. They have given their all this season and the fans are booing them. Don't care if you think they aren't good enough, they have given their all and don't deserve to be booed. In fact, the worse you think the players are, the louder you should cheer them, because the better you should think their performances are relative to their talent!
Congrats ajameshowe this is dead on. AOC must play in place of Gervinho who has done absolutely nothing this season! At least we know he will try.
How very worrying - I agree with TT. I even re-read it and still agree. I'll go and lie down for a bit.
I almost do too - shocking. Players should always be cheered on at the stadium no matter what. I will disagree with the point on character though - we showed exceptionally weak character on the day (or heart if you want to call it that). Nothing at all in the first half , then got going, then collapsed again under the pressure of being 3-2 up. We react then fold under circumstance like no other team I have seen.
If he picks the wrong guy each time then I think his tactics must be sorely suspect. However I believe for Arsegun, the matter of picking Ramsey was last in a long line of failures by Arsene which is why quite frankly, I too am tired of the man being there. Even if I wiped the slate clean for the majority of the past seven years, these past fourteen months from March last year have shown him up as not the man to take our club into a winning position in any competition. We may progress in a given contest but the long term outlook in any is most unfavourable. He has picked and built a side that is lacking in character, mental strength and which simply at a time which should be their finest hour simply cannot when when it matters. Not usually anyway but the lack of spirit to see through a task defies belief.
We'll all cheer I'm sure my friend but when it stops, we need to start pulling the trigger on some careers which are not going anywhere and which get us nowhere.
Persistent bad decisions is one thing, but repeating the same bad decision over and over is another. Like you or someone else mentioned, Wenger has this faith in players, and ends up playing them far more than he should. Denilson, Bendtner, Almunia and others I can't remember are all examples. Ramsey is swiftly becoming another example, although with him it is a temporary loss of form, not a lack of talent. The same faith is at play though.
The only thing I would say is that every year is a new year and players change completely depending on those around them and the tactics they are asked to play. Some of our players are still very young to have their careers written off. Always difficult to know why a team "clicks". I think one of the problems we have found with our youth plan is that it is very difficult to transition "late developers" into the team. Players like Fabregas and Wilshere can go from the youth setup directly to the first team, but not every player in the team can be a superstar (If they were, we couldn't afford their wages). For the other 15 players in the squad, they are never going to be able to push an experienced pro out of the team. How to get players the experience without losing their loyalty is a massive problem. Bendtner and Vela are (arguably) better backup strikers than Chamach and Park now, but transitioning them from the youth team to the senior squad has been too problematic. Somehow we need to find a way to keep them happy with a squad position, and keep the fans from getting too down on these guys while they are developing. We have fans unhappy with paying these two 50K/week, but they can earn this elsewhere, as a first choice strike for a non-top 4 team. It really is a problem that we can't seem to hold onto this kind of squad player, or that the fans can't realize that they are important to our success. Just raising the issue that if every signing was a massive success and turned into a superstar, we would have to sell half of them because we couldn't pay them all 150K/week. Nice problem to have but still...
Players like Chamakh and Bendtner are not and never will be important to our success. I disagree that it is hard to spot real superstars at a young age. Players like Wilshere and Fabregas were always going to make it. Players like Bendtner never were and never will - at least not at a club with ambitions to win the league. I do think young players can fail to fulfill their potential, but I have rarely seen an average youngster become a superstar. It happens but it is rare. Our strategy at the moment is like putting all our chips on all 37 positions on a roulette wheel. You might get one winner regularly but you pay heavily for a lot of dross.
I think your metaphor of putting chips on every position quite a good one. Not sure I agree that it is such a bad thing as a business strategy (you reduce the chance of failure to zero [pun intended]), even if it is a terrible idea as a gambling strategy (you can never win). The key question (of course) is whether it is a good football strategy.
