What needs to be changed?

James Lock wrote:The problem is that players' careers can't wait for things to progress and develop at the rate that the manager is wanting. That's what's led to the continual revolving door and the constant excuses regarding transition seasons. I don't blame any of the players for leaving the club to want to find success, and some of them have fallen short. I won't blame RvP either as I suspect he's going to be the next name out of the door this summer, leading to ANOTHER transition season.
The manager has to understand the reasoning for all of this. As has previously been suggested, the players individually apparently have the talent, yet while they produce for their respective countries, they don't for Arsenal... this isn't down to luck. It's simply the system we're adopting. Big example: Chamakh. Here he's shocking. Yet wind the clock back and put him in a side who get forward quickly and get aggressive crosses into the box, he's deadly. I suspect the same would be true for Walcott as I don't believe where he's playing is ANYWHERE near where he should be. Mertesacker too... is it a surprise that a big defender with little acceleration doesn't look good when chasing balls over the top as he's been told to play a high defensive line??
All these questions and more lead to the same conclusion... the players are constantly changing, yet over the last 7 years we're still coming to the same result... what else is there left to change but the man who makes those decisions?

I agree. It has been amazing how the team has remained competitive, up the top of the premier league, despite all the player changes. Kudos to Wenger.

Regarding Chamahk, the guy can't shoot. Unbelievable for a striker. He has been a poor signing. But I would rather a poor free signing than a poor multi million pound signing. We can probably still sell him and make a few million.

Regarding Mertersacker, there have only been a few occaisions were his pace has been caught out. And this has happened throughout his career. Not just at Arsenal. I think, for a first season, he has been good. I have my doubts too, but I hope he will turn out well, at least as a 3rd choice CB.

Jonathan Prendergast wrote:

Alex Hadjicharalampous wrote:''Second, your assertion that the performance of the players is all Wenger's fault is perfectly reasonable - if I was missing a few lobes of my brain.''

I don't recall making any assertion like that. Of course, it's not all his fault, but the majority of the blame has to fall on his shoulders. And maybe you should think about why ALL these players are suddenly terrible and/or out of form. Maybe they just can't get motivated by Wenger anymore. I don't see how anything you've just said contradicts my post to be honest. It just makes it seem as if Wenger lost the dressing room.

Blaming and excusing blame is only a small part of the debate. If you don't consider all the circumstances and reasons, poor decisions can be made that we will regret.

I agree. Just because I didn't post a full analysis of every aspect doesn't mean I haven't considered them.

Alex Hadjicharalampous wrote:

Jonathan Prendergast wrote:

Alex Hadjicharalampous wrote:''Second, your assertion that the performance of the players is all Wenger's fault is perfectly reasonable - if I was missing a few lobes of my brain.''

I don't recall making any assertion like that. Of course, it's not all his fault, but the majority of the blame has to fall on his shoulders. And maybe you should think about why ALL these players are suddenly terrible and/or out of form. Maybe they just can't get motivated by Wenger anymore. I don't see how anything you've just said contradicts my post to be honest. It just makes it seem as if Wenger lost the dressing room.

Blaming and excusing blame is only a small part of the debate. If you don't consider all the circumstances and reasons, poor decisions can be made that we will regret.

I agree. Just because I didn't post a full analysis of every aspect doesn't mean I haven't considered them.

Fair enough.

James Lock wrote:
All these questions and more lead to the same conclusion... the players are constantly changing, yet over the last 7 years we're still coming to the same result... what else is there left to change but the man who makes those decisions?

I agree with everything you've stated.
And would add that some teams stop playing for the manager, they tune him out. Might be what is happening at Chelsea right now.
Others ,like the Arse, might be incapable of playing how the manager wants on a sustained basis.
With the departures of Cesc and Nasri the quality of the rest of the squad has been revealed to be inadequate for the style and formation Wenger wants to play. We didn't have the quality even before they left.
Arteta is solid but not very creative and Song has regressed as of late, Ramsey is tired and not ready in general.
Right now we are playing Parlour, Edu and Grimandi and are pissed off that they aren't Henry,Vieira, Pires etc. The quality is just not there. Yet with a few tweaks in tactics, strategy, formation, we could make use of the good qualities that players like Chamakh, Walcott, even Arshavin do have.
Like Hisham points out in a previous post, most of this squad is comprised of capped players from many different nat'l squads. SO how come they're shit when they play for the Arse? How come we play like crap?
I just can't see Wenger being the one who turns this around.

Jonathan Prendergast wrote:

Great post. And to add:
- some are saying 'Fabregas was always going to leave'. at some point yes. but he had signed a very long term contract. so it is unfair to say that Wenger should have known, and not expected him to stay for a couple more seasons. remember the cunts at barcelona brought it on by being absolute pricks

Couldn't we see it coming at the end of the 2009-10 season? That's when the serious rumours started, the first bids. He could have left then but he stayed another year. Then it all started again with few months to go of last season. Maybe Cesc suggested to Wenger otherwise and that's what caused Wenger to keep him throughout the off season, but still, we all knew he was leaving this last summer from very early on when Barcelona made their first bid. Yet we waited until the season started to sell him, for a discount price. And that left no real time to find an adequate replacement(s). All these things are preventable. From the manager and/or upstairs. We allowed them to bully us and disrupt our summer when we should have stood firm on the price and the selling price. And we should have known he was leaving and to have players ready to come in. Arteta with minutes to go of the window, how is that planned?

I feel for Wenger on him and Nasri, he truly put his trust and faith in them and they left before he felt they should. That is disappointing. But again why wait until right the end of the window to sell? Nasri himself said, "Arsene wanted me to stay but I made my decision to leave in June." It was total mismanagement. Maybe the board told him to sell whilst he wanted to keep Nasri? We don't know, but the fact is, the team is Wenger's domain and he handled it poorly.

This summer was such a failure from top to bottom, it's hardly a surprise our season has turned out how it has.

Anyone know how denilson is getting on out on loan?! Why dont we just recall him.....cant be any worse than the rest of them lol

chris eades wrote:Anyone know how denilson is getting on out on loan?! Why dont we just recall him.....cant be any worse than the rest of them lol

In some strange way it's right what your saying....drop diaby altogether and bring him back atleast it's a fit player...

chris eades wrote:Anyone know how denilson is getting on out on loan?! Why dont we just recall him.....cant be any worse than the rest of them lol

By what I've heard he's been pretty darn terrible.

Sami Rockfeller wrote:

chris eades wrote:Anyone know how denilson is getting on out on loan?! Why dont we just recall him.....cant be any worse than the rest of them lol

By what I've heard he's been pretty darn terrible.

Really? Anywhere to catch up on a progress report?

chris eades wrote:Anyone know how denilson is getting on out on loan?! Why dont we just recall him.....cant be any worse than the rest of them lol

Have we really gotten to the point where we're asking for Denilson back?

Hisham El Mawan wrote:

Alex Hadjicharalampous wrote:

Hisham El Mawan wrote:

MarkoMaksimovic wrote:Van Roy, did you see AW today? Whenever our players did something silly or a pass backwards led to Sunderland pressure the camera went to AW and he was up in his technical area barking shit to the players... Big difference to the Milan game. Whether the players follow his orders is a different story. You don't know what he tells the team in the locker room. Maybe he's swearing them off or gearing them on, and telling them to get forward and when they go out they get put under pressure and don't look forward... As fans we can only estimate and guess, none of us (unless AW is your grandad, or someone close to you works directly with the club) know what happens and how our tactics look.

Imagine if Man City went on a losing run. Mancini is doing the exact same thing that he was doing when they took the league by storm. But the team keeps losing. Mancini begins yelling his ass off and swearing at them at halftime talks and team meetings. But they continue to lose. Mancini begins switching up the starting lineup, and starting less experienced players, hoping that something will change. He tells them before one game that if their performance isn't up to par, then he's selling and replacing them. Man City once again loses. Now tell me, who is to blame for all the losses?

Blaming the manager is the easy way out. He can come up with the best game plan in the world, but if the players aren't up to it, nothing will work. And if this is the case, then they need to go, not him.

But we've already blamed everyone other than the manager for years now. We keep changing personnel and yet the same problems remain. Besides, he signed these players, he trained them, ultimately if they don't perform then he is responsible for that. It's not the first time we've seen a performance like this one.

First off, we've been blaming the manager and only the manager for years now. I don't remember us blaming anyone else for a bad season. Second, your assertion that the performance of the players is all Wenger's fault is perfectly reasonable - if I was missing a few lobes of my brain. Look at the names we have on our roster: Szczesny, Fabianski, Sagna, Djourou, Squillaci, Mertesacker, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Andre Santos, Wilshere, Diaby, Ramsey, Song, Park, Chamakh, van Persie, Walcott, Gervinho, Arshavin. These players all have caps on their countries' national teams, and a good number of them are established starters on those teams. They are good players. However, it's quite obvious that they're not at their best together. But how is Wenger supposed to know that? Sorry if I wasn't aware that someone gave him a shopping list of players and said, "If you sign these guys, you'll win the league for sure!" Squillaci was spoken highly of when we signed him. Park Chu Young has been scoring like crazy for South Korea lately. Chamakh was Bordeaux's best player alongside Gourcuff and was a free agent as well. Walcott was the next big thing when Wenger brought him over from Southampton. Gervinho had just won the French league with Lille of all teams. Arshavin took Euro '08 by storm and was easily one of the best players in the tournament. These players were all good when they were signed. We all know what happened after that. Squillaci, Chamakh, and Arshavin quickly became nothing short of disappointing. Walcott and Gervinho had their ups and downs, but most Arsenal fans are such picky bastards they've been made out to be complete and utter failures.
But let's be honest with ourselves for a minute. At the beginning of this season, we lost Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri, two very good players who were supposed to be with us for a very long time. But they moved on to "bigger and better things", if you will. People were expecting us to be a mid-table team and crash out of the Champions League, and MAYBE do decently in the Carling and FA Cups. And things seemed to be going in that direction, until we picked up a good run of form. And all of a sudden, we raised our expectations. We probably shouldn't have done that. Because now we're in worse form than before, and things don't look too good. In fact, the best we can hope for is a top four finish, maybe top three if Tottenham slip up. This was never going to be the fairytale season people quickly assumed it would be. We were just supposed to get by until the summer, when we could quietly rebuild.

well there can be two ways of looking at your point regarding arsene signing top international players and they turning out to be shit for us.
can't it be our management's fault that all these players turned shit as soon as they started playing under wenger.wrong players being played in wrong positions and not played to their strengths.i have always believed that arsene is not at all good in man management.
and i really hate one more habit of arsenal fans.they will always compare their situations to the worst team and will try to feel good about themselves.saying we didnt waste our money like liverpool in transfer window and are still ahead of them doesn't make anything better.
why dont we compare ourselves to spurs who in last couple of years i believe had awesome transfer windows and by spending comparable amount of money in transfers to us have improved in leaps and bounds.

Mario Leontiou wrote:

Jonathan Prendergast wrote:

Great post. And to add:
- some are saying 'Fabregas was always going to leave'. at some point yes. but he had signed a very long term contract. so it is unfair to say that Wenger should have known, and not expected him to stay for a couple more seasons. remember the cunts at barcelona brought it on by being absolute pricks

Couldn't we see it coming at the end of the 2009-10 season? That's when the serious rumours started, the first bids. He could have left then but he stayed another year. Then it all started again with few months to go of last season. Maybe Cesc suggested to Wenger otherwise and that's what caused Wenger to keep him throughout the off season, but still, we all knew he was leaving this last summer from very early on when Barcelona made their first bid. Yet we waited until the season started to sell him, for a discount price. And that left no real time to find an adequate replacement(s). All these things are preventable. From the manager and/or upstairs. We allowed them to bully us and disrupt our summer when we should have stood firm on the price and the selling price. And we should have known he was leaving and to have players ready to come in. Arteta with minutes to go of the window, how is that planned?

I feel for Wenger on him and Nasri, he truly put his trust and faith in them and they left before he felt they should. That is disappointing. But again why wait until right the end of the window to sell? Nasri himself said, "Arsene wanted me to stay but I made my decision to leave in June." It was total mismanagement. Maybe the board told him to sell whilst he wanted to keep Nasri? We don't know, but the fact is, the team is Wenger's domain and he handled it poorly.

This summer was such a failure from top to bottom, it's hardly a surprise our season has turned out how it has.

I think you are disregarding a lot of the finer detail of the Nasri and Fabregas sagas.

Nasri

At the end of last season, Nasri's agent started speaking to both United and City. Nasri was keen on United. Ferguson got pissed off with Nasri's agent, who was demanding a 3m pound payment direct to the agent, and told them to get stuffed. Just leaving City. So no longer a competitive situation, slowing the whole thing down. City were the only club willing to pay the huge transfer fee considering only 12 months were left. The bid stalled, due to the huge agent payment being demanded. Even to a point were Nasri begged to play against Liverpool to keep him in the shop front window in case City pulled out. Finally, City agreed to a deal, including 25m pounds to Arsenal or so, 3m pounds to the agent, and a salary to Nasri somewhere near 180k pounds per week.

I don't think you can blame Wenger for leaving the sale of Nasri so late, and the saga carrying on for so long. It was all Nasri and his greedy agent.

Fabregas

I believe at the end of the 2009/10 season, under intense pressure from Barcelona players, Fabregas told Wenger that one day he wants to go to Barcelona, but out of respect for the club and Wenger, he will never demand a move, and it will be Arsenal's decision when the move occurs, especially considering the long contract. I think Fabregas held the same position in the early stages of the winter transfer window at the end of 2010/11.

I think a key part of the whole saga was Wenger's shopping in the transfer market. Juan Mata may have been proposed as a replacement for Fabregas, or a key signing that would give Fabregas confidence of the club's ambitions. Maybe if he signed such a player, Fabregas would be keen for 1 more year to see if we could win something, considering how close we were until Feb/March the previous season. Remeber after Cesc left he said many times that he has a huge regret of never winning something with Arsenal? I think if we got Mata or someone similar, he would have stayed 1 more season to give it a crack.

Chelsea offered Mata a much bigger wage package, and got the player. I think this failure to sign Mata or any other similar player was the catalyst for to move. Wenger held out despite pressure from Barca, the players, and maybe even a little from Cesc, and tried to wait to sign another player. Didn't happen, and Cesc left.

Alternatively, maybe Wenger told Cesc that he will let him leave if he can find a replacement. As this fell through, Cesc left anyway. But Wenger held out to see if could either sign a replacement or keep Cesc, which became unfeasible due to the lack of success in the transfer market.

Conclusion

So I don't think Wenger can get the blame for this, in terms of the timing of the pre-season transfers. It was a matter of circumstance, bad luck with Cesc, and Nasri and his agent being cunts. If anything, Wenger pulled an incredible rabbit out of the hat to sign 5 players on the final day of the transfer window, that overall we are quite happy with.

The only blame for Wenger is that if he had got a couple of deals over the line previously, like Alonso or Reina, by being prepared to up offers by a few extra million, then maybe all of this could have been avoided.

Why, Jonathan, did we sign nobody BEFORE selling these two key players? (Oh, wait, I think we had Gervinho before we sold....)

It's not as if our squad didn't need some serious strengthening anyway...and may have had the added bonus of convincing one or both of them to stay on as well. Instead, we plumped for a bunch of makeweights at the last minute.