First time in awhile that yesterday’s loss was just numb to me. Wasn’t mad nor sad, just another poor performance that started from the opening minute. After Everton 2-1 and Waford 1-2 I was hurt, those were crucial losses, they stung not only the players but the fans.
Humorous to hear people their isn’t a better chance to beat Bayern than now. Arsenal have been bad this season, besides Chelsea at home, Basel at home, and maybe 1 or 2 more matches. How is that acceptable over the course of a season? 5 good performances in 6 months? Michael Ballack said the game was won in the tunnel, Bayern clearly motivated, up for it, and KNEW they were going to beat Arsenal. Arsenal just rolled over.
Wasn’t expected a win yesterday but to get trounced 5-1, and like everyone has said, Ospina keeping it from 8-1 or worse, is inexcusable.
Sorry, but I can’t possibly infer from a single emoticon the degree of jest you were inflicting upon me. I rember your mood being rather foul yesterday, just like mine.
Personally, I use that particular smiley without any accompanying words only as strong ridicule for the likes of a4tt or g4e at their worst. Maybe you just meant " well, Cunning, old chum, THAT particular observation didn’t quite cut it, right?" but I can’t know that. My response certainly isn’t meant maliciously, as you should know.
In addition to the first time I replied to that very post (you didn’t reply, despite the notification you might have missed it) I think it’s not much of a leap to think that I was being light hearted rather than using it in the way you might often use it. Especially given that our general interaction couldn’t really be characterised as ridiculing.
I used to think it was down to the players. After all, they’re the ones that turn their back on their boyhood clubs to join Arsenal then say “I’m here to win things”, “I want to play in the Champions League” then they go and play like utter shit with no spirit in the one CL game that actually matters every year and when we’re in with what looks like a realistic shot of a league title.
But it can’t be that Fabregas, Flamini, Hleb, Adebayor, van Persie, Gallas, Toure, Sagna, Clichy, Eboue, Rosicky, Almunia etc. were all bottlers…
…then Vermaelen, Koscielny, Fabianski, Song, Nasri, Arshavin, Walcott, Wilshere were all bottlers…
… then Szczesny, Podolski, Giroud, Cazorla, Arteta, Ramsey, Mertesacker, Gibbs, Monreal, Debuchy were bottlers…
…then Ozil, Sanchez, Iwobi, Xhaka, Ox, Coquelin, Elneny, Mustafi, Cech, Bellerin, Gabriel were all bottlers.
Some of these players are obviously flawed technically but I refuse to believe that 95% of the players we’ve brought through or signed in the last 10 years all just happen to be mentally broken individuals with no pride or desire, and all the ones from the 10 years before that were all men of steel.
Yes, you do get some characters that are mentally above the rest who don’t need motivating or coaching but I’d bet most players are probably in the middle somewhere.
Look at how good players like Costa, Hazard and Matic were for Chelsea but then look at how bad they were last year when they were unhappy and unmotivated. They weren’t suddenly just shit bottlers because they’ve bounced back and shown enough bottle to go and win the title either side of that terrible season (I’m assuming that they won’t fuck this one up ).
The team that wins the league nowadays isn’t just the team with the most grit in it, otherwise we’d have seen some kind of consistent dominance from City or Chelsea over the last few years but they’ve been up and down but at least they’ve been up. Wenger is the last thing that’s blocking us from doing the same.
The board has underinvested for over a decade. Over the last 4 years Chelsea, United, City and Liverpool have all spent more with Spurs spending about the same. Before that our netspend was around zero for a decade. United are the richest club in the world and City, Chelsea and Liverpool’s owners have all put in huge sums of money into their clubs while we’ve made profits year on year while paying off an expensive stadium and stockpiling cash reserves. That is a strategic board decision. Meanwhile all of Kroenke’s sporting franchises have been run into the ground and their fans treated with contempt. I wish I could fast forward 5 seasons after Wenger leaves to see if people like you will blame the manager or board.
It’s simple maths, from the mid 90s to early 00s we were big spenders. After that we weren’t. The quality hasn’t been the same throughout the team. We’ve had occasionally elite players but also plenty of dross.
In terms of character we’ve actually been pretty good by scoring plenty of late goals. But the quality of football has been very poor by Arsenal standards. We simply aren’t a very good football team right now.
I know it’s the Premier League and all the money bla bla, but I have a hard time calling 100m and more spent on players in a season to not be big spending.
There’s more to character than scoring late goals. What about the non-existant first half performances that have become a feature of our games for at least 3 seasons? Or the collective bad performances when it matters? Or being content with embarassing score lines?
It’s not just to do with the quality of players. We didn’t go down 3-0 to Bournemouth because they were a team of better players. Every season we tend to go on a run of title winning form for 8-10 games so we’ve got the capacity to put in some consistent performances but there’s a mental blockade on this team and I don’t know why.
Except it’s not simple maths. We spend an absolute fortune on wages. More than most other clubs by a large degree and thats been the case for quite some time now. Much like stats focusing entirely on net spend is simply not looking at the full picture.
The season before we spent almost nothing and in previous seasons we sold more than we bought.
We might have bought Ozil and Sanchez but realistically even mid table teams buy a 30-40m players, as for Xhaka and Mustafa, they were decent buys but they should have been bought several seasons before.
We needed a DM for ages, and even had Flaming playing there, so it was a disgrace Wenger waited that long to get Xhaka.
Our transfer policy is that of a team with little ambition and that view is reinforced by the fact we are still waiting for a replacement for RVP.
Isn’t that more to not being organised enough as a unit? And teams get upset by smaller teams all the time. We’re just not a very good team or collection of individuals right now so we’ll get upset more by smaller teams and thrashed by top teams if we play openly against them. We also play absolutely dire football without Cazorla. Our technical level has dropped levels since we had Fabregas, Rosicky, Arshavin, Hleb, Wilshere, RVP and Nasri and used to play ‘Wengerball’.
We don’t spend as much as United, City or Chelsea though so they’ll always outbid us on wages, like when we tried to sign Mkhitaryan in the summer and United gazumped us.
I think my point still stands that we’re hardly not spending. Özil was expensive at the time, in the season we bought Alexis we also bought Chambers, Welbeck, Debuchy and added Gabriel in the winter. Last season not an awful lot with Cech and ElNeny but this season again a good chunk of money on Xhaka, Mustafi and Perez. We’re maybe not doing as much as the Manchester Clubs but we’re still spending big money with the difference that we’re hardly making anything anymore on player sales.
I think my point still stands that we’re hardly not spending. Özil was expensive at the time, in the season we bought Alexis we also bought Chambers, Welbeck, Debuchy and added Gabriel in the winter. Last season not an awful lot with Cech and ElNeny but this season again a good chunk of money on Xhaka, Mustafi and Perez. We’re maybe not doing as much as the Manchester Clubs but we’re still spending big money with the difference that we’re hardly making anything anymore on player sales.
[/quote]It’s true that we did buy players, but the players we bought were for positions that had been neglected for far too long and were players we were desperate for.
We are a top European club yet our spending is that of a mid table team.
We always seem to look for, as Wenger says, “value in the market,” or a player that, " meets with our valuation," rather than going the bit extra to get what we need, rather than what is the bare minimum.
Let’s face it, Xhaka, Mustafa and Perez are decent, but they are not game changers.
These are players that we should be buying, not players that are going to win us trophies.
It’s no good Wenger and Gazidis bragging that we can afford any player and then buying under whelming ones.
Apart from Ozil and Sanchez what other top quality players have we bought?
We only bought those two, not because we needed them, but because they were at a price Wenger said, “that was too good to turn down.”
To me, that’s not much of a transfer policy, and it’s one of the main reasons we are in the mess we’re in.
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