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Stubbornness: Wenger’s Albatross!
By Toyin | December 4, 2009
In all my years of watching football, I have never seen a manger so respected, adored and infinitely excusable as Arsene Wenger. He enjoys unparalleled confidence from his board and majority of fans as well. It’s a standard and acceptable quote at the Emirates that ‘Arsene Knows’. Such is the influence of the man that actually brought Arsenal into both European and global front burner.
While one may not be really happy with current happenings at the Emirates, the truth of the matter is that the man actually deserves the respect and cooperation he’s been getting so far. However, the reality of trophy less adventures of the past four years going five should sound the alarm bells in the minds of any serious fan of the Club. The last silverware won by the club was in May 2005 when they defeated Manchester United in a lackluster performance through penalty kicks. Since then, Arsenal deteriorated from being league contenders to Champions League football strugglers.
Within this period and immediately after the Invincible Season that ended in 2004, a stream of quality players left the club in droves without adequate or better replacement made by Wenger. From Edu to Pires, Parlour,Jens Lehman, Viera, Cole, Reyes, Henry, Gilberto, Flamini, Hleb, Diara, Toure, Adebayor; all good players left without quality replacements made. And while those that came in through the ranks did a decent job, the result is that Arsenal fell from being a top contender to also runs!
For all the players that left, Arsene only bought Diaby, Eboue, Rosicky, Walcott, Gallas, Lassana Diara (who left almost immediately), Sagna, Eduardo, Nasir, Andrei Arshavin and Vermaelen. Most of these players except for the trio of Rosicky, Gallas and Arshavin were unproven and unknown quantities; they could neither inspire confidence nor win matches! Other players came through the B team except for Cesc Fabregas fail to make any significant impact in the status of the team.
Therefore, the club became synonymous with youth and accompanying mistakes in high pressure matches too numerous to mention here. They flatter to deceive and a team that one could averagely describe as a top team in England became the laughing stock of analysts and pundits under Wenger’s Youth Policy. The Prof’s stinginess is legendary! He baulks at the prices attached to great players only to go for average ones that would never deliver the same results.
When compared to others within the league, Arsenal bought fewer players. The few brought in are mostly average, injury prone and inspire no confidence. Yet, the man believes that his team can win the league and CL!
The recent results from the Premiership points to the fact that for Arsenal, it’s going to be another long season. The team has played only four top oppositions and lost three of those matches. Never mind the slogan of Wenger that his team dominated the matches; what matters is the result! Against Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, Arsenal became exposed and could not pick up even a point in those matches. Injuries or not, a good team must always dig deep to get required points even when playing poorly. There’s no reward in football for keeping possession; scoring goals and probably keeping clean sheets win matches!
The last result against Manchester City in the Carling Cup should be the clearest indication to Wenger that the world has left him behind. No right thinking manager would continue doing the same thing and expect a different result. Yet, this seems to be Wenger’s attitude and it is not only annoying but also disappointing. A critical criteria for measuring the success or otherwise of his policy is the result obtained against top teams; anything short of this is self-delusion!
Wenger should take a deep look his current model and policy. Simply said, it is not working. If care is not taken, Arsenal will continue to drop under Arsene and the reality will be the exodus of the few quality players at his disposal to other clubs. No player is categorized as a great until major trophies are won. This truth,’ am sure is not lost on the likes of Cesc, Arshavin, Van Persie, Gallas and Song.
Excuses have dried up for Wenger. He must at least admit to the failure of his much-cherished project. Four years is enough to test a model and one should be humble enough to admit mistakes and turn around in the right direction. For records purposes, Arsenal would not be renowned for the value of its share or what the club is worth in financial terms. It will secure its place in history by the numbers and quality of trophies in its cabinet!
Topics: Biz Football, Crazy Fans, Premiership, Success Pills, The Gaffer |
December 7th, 2009 at 11:02 am
You have said it all. And i do not see AW changing his policy, as he will arrogantly see this as admitting to failure. Despite not winning the carling cup for over 13years of his sojourn in Engand, he stubbornly refuses to play a strong side to at least bring some trophy to the empty Emirates cabinet, he seems to be loosing the plot just about now. Jose Mourhino came to england and within 3 years won every available trophy in England two times over and even did the premiership ‘back to back’ which AW has never achieved. His lame excuse of exposing his youthful side in the competition is completely wrong as there are many youth competitions these young boys compete in week in week out, there is the reserve league, the Under 21s, the Academy league, the under 19s and the under 9s and every football club has players in each of this competition. Didier Drogba’s son is infact the captain of Chelsea’s under 9 team.
I am not an Arsenal fan but it hurts me that a fellow London club (Chelsea FC being my favourite club) is not really pulling its weight in challenging the others to honours especially the northern teams, i see the league as (Chelsea+Arsenal) vs (Man Utd+Liverpool). It is unbelievable that AW will let go the whole group of the 2005 unbeaten success within such a short period and not replace them with experience and quality, he rather settles for small sized, inexperienced and fragile players who seem to be made of glass as they break down with injuries week in week out. Annoyingly you see all these ’sacked’ players doing well in the clubs they left for, for instance Gilberto is captain of the Brazillian national team and doing well for his club, Lassana Diarra has a permanent jersey in Real Madrid despite the array of stars in the team and this midfield position is Arsenal’s major weakness, i don’t know how you can let go Diarra and Gilberto for a Diaby and Denilson.
Agreed that the Arsenal team have great individual skills, but they do not have the confidence to translate this to winning trophies, moreover they claim these boys are still very young, but i disagree because we have been calling them young for about 5 seasons now, when will they become ripe oooo?. The funny part of the whole AW policy is that, serious minded teams will come up and buy up some of these potentially good lads and take them away to win trophies, then AW will go get another $150,000 worth 15 years old, build him for 2-3yrs and when maturity beckons, he sells them to the serious minded teams and the cycle goes on. I see Arsenal loosing another set of these players this January window or summer, e.g Senderos, Armand Traore,Fabianski and probably Gallas and Fabregas solely out of frustration of not winning trophies. I have a die hard Arsenal fan friend who will never stop supporting the club, but cuts a frustrated figure after every transfer window closes and the usual inactivity of AW in the window passes by….he frequently guts out…’is Arsenal owned by AW’s father why can’t he just buy good players?’. He is anxiously waiting for Stan Kroeke to completely take over the club and boot out AW for a more serious trophy winning coach.
I will rest my case at this point and hopefully wish Arsenal rises up to the occassion next season and let us(THE LONDON CLUBS) challenge United and Liverpool for honours……..COMON CHELSEA!!!!
December 8th, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Wenger in an incurable optimist that’s set on a path of no end! I hope realises that things are no longer the way they used to be in the EPL and make necessary changes before he reverses of all the good work of the past!
December 8th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
ArseneWenger? No comments!