If ANYONE tries to stick up for Wenger after this defeat then they are truly deluded. Ref was terrible but there are bigger problems. #AFC
— Total Football (@Total__Football) August 17, 2013
Not interested in hearing about the ref. Think the manager is done. There it is. — Arse2Mouse (@arse2mouse) August 17, 2013
How to make Elephant Toothpaste: Ingredients: Soda bottle, hydrogen peroxide, water, 2 drops of cyanide, 40% alcohol, one scoop of Arteta’s hair gel.
Testing, testing…
Add 2 more drops of cyanide.
And another.
And another… Well, you should get the point by now. And, before I go on, please, all those who support Arsenal’s management based on theories and not face facing facts should give me a break here and allow me to vent; you’ll make terrible lawyers.
People that say “support the club no matter what!” need to bore off. You can support but still disagree. Ever been in a relationship? — B Larsen | Arsenal (@BLarsenAFC1886) August 15, 2013
Arsenal’s Prevalent Issues
1. Ivan the Terrible spoke to a gathering of hopeful, eager and expectant Arsenal supporters. He had this meeting I suppose with the consent and backing of the Board/management.
In that meeting, he claimed (I say this because, we are not privy to Arsenal’s bank statement at the moment) we had money to spend and that Arsenal could pay £200k a week salaries. This seemed to therefore infer that we could pay Suarez, Higuain, Fellaini, Gustavo, Villa, Benteke…although these players might not be the top quality players Arsene’s looking for.
2. We have a squad thinned out by injury and the shifting out of ‘dead-wood’, lots of dead-wood. This squad is supposed to start the season and contend for a Champions League spot with less than a few days to go in the transfer window.
3. The other day, we were treated to a press conference where Arsene said he understands the frustration of the fans and that it was not his fault that we had not been active in the transfer window. His argument was that we needed to buy based on quality and not quantity.
We look more for quality than for numbers. The first request is to have the quality to play for Arsenal Football Club, after the number comes in. Yes, we would like two or three players if possible but we will not compromise on the quality of the players.
4. After the defeat at home to Aston Villa, we sit at 18th on the EPL Table.
Facts and Arguments
Point 1: Ivan I believe cannot hold a press conference of that calibre and make such claims (albeit without us seeing Arsenal’s bank statement) without the backing of Arsenal management; this includes Arsene dearest.
It can also be inferred that, we had this claimed amount of money before or just after the 2012/13 season ended. Add to that the extra money available from the sale and release of some players.
Also, taking a statement from the conference where Ivan said we could pay £200k salaries, this seems to infer that we could at that point afford to pay Aubumeyang, Fellaini, Gustavo, Jovetic, Rooney, Higuain, Bender, Suarez…who else, some help here please?
Conclusion: It is either we’ve been conned by the Arsenal management see here:
1) There are sufficient funds available to the manager.’ – Edelman, September 2005.
2) If Arsene came to us and said he wanted to spend £40m on a player we could do that.’ – Edelman, Sept 2007.
3) ‘We remain firmly committed to substantial investment in the playing squad.’ – Chairman Peter Hill-Wood, Sept 2008.
4) In January and in the summer there will be significant funds available to bolster the team.’ – Gazidis, Sept 2011.
‘All the money we make is available to the manager.’ – Gazidis, May 2012.
5) ‘It’s all about giving us the capability to go to the manager and say “here is the money for you to compete”.’ – Gazidis, June 2013
OR there is in fact no money aka we are Still Broke OR someone somewhere is REFUSING to spend.
Point 2: To this I plead guilty, I complained of all the players thinning out our coffers while contributing little or nothing to the team.
Right now, I wish they were here.
I’m sure they’re bowled over laughing. (Insert Gerv, Judas-is-RVP…)
Sometimes, it’s good to be careful what you wish for.
Sometimes.
Our first team has been plagued with the ‘ghosts of injures past’ and it seems like with every game played, we get one player shot down, like literally. Starting the season with almost 10 players short of the maximum required is past scientific testing Arsene dearest, it’s suicidal!
How thin does the squad have to get Mr Wenger — steve the gooner (@steve_rodgers86) August 17, 2013
I don’t really get it. Why has he for the past 2-3 years waited till the end of the transfer window to get players? Is this a tactic he has developed in his transfer window lab experiments?
In the summer of 2008 Arsenal lost Gilberto Silva, Mathieu Flamini and Lassana Diarra; Wenger responded not by signing a replacement, but by placing his faith in Denilson. Last season he loaned out Marouane Chamakh in January to leave Olivier Giroud as his only genuine centre-forward. Yahoo
Does he pass up players on purpose? Llornte, Huntellar, Higuain, Jovetic, Cavani, Gustavo? Is there some secret pleasure he derives from panic buys of players nobody really wants? Park Chu-Young, Santos, albeit Poldi, Per have made good?
Arsene Wenger had/has a bit of an advantage compared to any manager in the EPL. He knew what the squad was lacking and the exact areas needing strength before the 2nd half of the 2012/13 EPL season; only an unintelligent manager wouldn’t.
He didn’t sell any key player this season. He has unprecedented experience and the claimed £80m in ze bank. He also had job security.
Most fans say the job security might be ze problemo.
New managers like Jose, Manuel and Moyes had barely 3 months to bed in and buy; he had a year at least to peg the players needed to give the team some bite and chase them for all he’s worth.
Conclusion: Arsene is either a stubborn mad scientist who’ll keep experimenting until it works or explodes in all our faces OR he’s fighting an invisible battle with someone or a group of people we don’t know about in order to prove a point.
@DisFeMIseF I don’t hate him, far from it; I just want to grab by d collar&shake him hard, like u’ll do to a loved one who’s losing it. — Mister Spruce (@MisterSpruce1) August 17, 2013
Point 3 When confronted with the question of fan frustration, Wenger said:
I understand every frustration, you have so many frustrated people, but what is important is the quality of what you do on the pitch, so let’s not create a crisis from nothing.
Well, there’s a crisis now.We barely have 4 fit defenders.
Maybe Higuain, Gustavo, Llorente, Huntellar, Fellaini, Jovetic and Aubumeyang aren’t top, top quality;Falcao on loan anyone? I am but a disgruntled fan and he is a manager with over 25yrs experience, Arsene knows best.
We have good players at the club but we have no game changers at the moment. Admitted, it’s not right to build a team around one player but we need a Bergkamp, an Henry and a Viera.
Conclusion: Wenger either thinks us stupid enough not to know a top-top player OR he has taken a rather unconvincing line of argument and has lost the plot.
Point 4: We sit at 18th on the EPL Table when teams like Crystal Palace, Citeh, Chelsea, Hull and Sp*ds have not kicked a ball.
After the game, Wenger attacked the ‘spirit of the ref’. You blame the incompetent ref of course! Shambolic refereeing!Sadly, the annoyingly incompetent ref deserves 79.999% of the blame here and within that percentile, Wenger takes 50% making it 40-40.
The players take the rest. Kobani explains and I agree with him to an extent that, Wenger’s sending the wrong message to the players; the players stopped playing the game after the first goal came. He says:
I think the players were more interested in hearing the ref give those decisions and didn’t play to the whistle sometimes. The players got wound-up because Villa got physical and the ref let challenges slide so they kept looking to the ref to rescue them instead of playing their football. Now, Wenger blames the ref and won’t say how Kosc ran out of defence allowing Agbonlahor to beat him easily while exposing Woj, or how Santi lost the ball on Benteke’s 2nd penalty… Kobani Ton
Watching the pen again have to ask questions of Kos. Went full vermaelen. Raced out to challenge for no reason. Then bailed out of challenge — YankeeGunner (@YankeeGunner) August 17, 2013
Conclusion: Many players played out of position against Villa because we were thin as a squad, the players themselves were denied the morale boost new players bring to the team, even more was the knowledge of how threadbare the squad was, is.
If the Villa match doesn’t get Arsene to make a solid move in the market at least to bulk up the team, then I’m afraid nothing will.
Moving forward, I’ll ask a favour of every Gunner, please support the players as this present predicament is no fault of theirs, at least not 100%. Try not to boo them when they play, the people we should be dissecting are the management, no one else.
Feel desperately for the players. They’ve been given nothing today from the ref, and nothing all summer from their manager. Abysmal. #afc — Matt Littlechild (@mattlittlechild) August 17, 2013
You can check out Hugh Wizzy’s incredibly emotional video here. A note of warning though, you might want to force-feed the Board some cyanide after watching.
