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The day when Fulham tried to take over Arsenal – the full story in “Making the Arsenal”
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By Walter Broeckx
One of the questions that is often used by a part of the supporters is : name me one top club that has not sacked its manager after 7 years without a trophy. And then they usually shout: Wenger out!
Now in our 125 years history we had 18 managers and 4 caretaker or otherwise temporary managers. We can ignore the 4 as they were not meant to be the manager but did the job while the search for a new manager was busy or when a manager has died while doing his job as manager. This happened twice at Arsenal in fact with Herbert Chapman and Tom Whittaker.
On average one could say that a manager of Arsenal had a spell at the club of around 7 years. I think Tony can tell you much more about the early days but if you look at the current state of most teams 7 years seems a very long time for any manager to be in charge. Most of them would be glad to be that long in charge at one club. So Wenger is around for some 16 years and trophy less in the last 7. And should go. Because no other top club would allow this.
On this basis one could argue that Arsenal is not a top club. Or doesn’t consider itself a top club. Because otherwise we would have kicked Wenger out well before now – say 3 or 4 years ago. Or even earlier. That is what top clubs should do…… simply because they are top clubs.
Now I think most Gooners will say: Walter, but we are a top club. And I totally agree with that. We are a top club. So why don’t we sack our manager then?
Well the answer is even written down and I think that many of you might even have seen it. Because when I come to the Emirates from my overseas home I have taken the time to visit the Arsenal museum a few times. And in this museum you can see the answer to why we don’t sack Wenger. It is written on the wall. And those words tell the whole story in fact.
WE DO IT OUR WAY, THE ARSENAL WAY.
That’s it. This is the reason why we don’t kick our most successful manager out even after 7 years without a trophy. Now I know we have sacked managers in the past. But half of the managers in the past were not sacked in the middle of the season but we just got a new manager after the contract came to an end or the manager resigned. In the 80s and 90s we had a few problems with managers but in general we did not sack the manager when things didn’t go according to plan as fast as we can.
And those words in the museum: WE DO IT OUR WAY, THE ARSENAL WAY is what we do.
We could be like Manchester City, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, AC Milan, PSG, …. the list can go on and on. And so we could fire the manager after each season without a trophy like those clubs tend to do. At that rate we would have had some 7 managers in the last 7 years. Would this have brought us more success? Who would claim it would have brought us more success? Who could prove we would have had more success if we would have done what each “top club” does and fire the manager when you have a season with no trophy? Nobody can.
But let us imagine that we behaved like Manchester City, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, AC Milan. Let us just for the sake of it imagine that we would behave like them and fire every manager that doesn’t win a trophy every year. We surely would be a top club then because that is what top clubs do. And some top clubs even fire their manager when he has brought them the league title. Ask Real Madrid.
So in this hypothetical assumption we would be the same as those “top clubs”. We would do things not the Arsenal way but the “top club way”.
And this is one of the reasons why I love this Arsenal so much. I just love them because we don’t act like all those clubs mentioned before. If we wanted to be the same as those other clubs then I could easily swap teams and become a supporter of any of the more successful club and go and support them and cheer when they fire their unsuccessful manager each year.
But with not doing this I feel more proud of being a Gooner. Because I can say that the club I support is from a totally different class than all those others. Because we don’t do it like the others; we are unique and special. They can do it the top club way. I want my Arsenal to do it the Arsenal way. I don’t want to even consider being a fan of those other clubs that are interchangeable. If you want to support a successful top club you can support Man City this year and the next year you could support Barcelona and the year after Real Madrid. In fact those clubs are not that different.
But I prefer to support my Arsenal. I support them because they are a unique club in the world of football. I support them because they do things in a different way. We are not just the only top club that is working within its own means and within its own budget. Something the other will have to do also in the near future (if Uefa goes further with the FFP rules). But we do it because we think that is the only sensible way of running a football team: make sure it can survive within its own means. Another example of doing “the Arsenal way”.
So if you go to the Emirates on a match day, or on any other day of the week just enter the museum and go and see for yourself those words written in big in the museum. WE DO IT OUR WAY, THE ARSENAL WAY.
And feel the pride inside yourself because we are a unique club in the world. The club will do it like they think it should be done. And we don’t listen to the pundits, the media or whoever thinks he knows better.
Those words are not just written and put there for the fun of it. No it maybe are the most important words in the current history of Arsenal. Maybe they are the credo of what we as Gooners should keep in mind and feel proud about. We are no Man City, Chelsea, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan or AC Milan. Hell no. We are the one and only Arsenal.
And we will do it the Arsenal way. Keep this in mind when you choose to support Arsenal. Things over here are not done like in other clubs. And thank god for that.
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Is this as bad as it gets for Arsenal? Don’t you believe it
Iconic Moments in the history of Arsenal – Number 9: Tom Whittaker wins the league.
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I hope this isn’t true:-
http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Arsenal-will-risk-losing-Robin-Van-Persie-on-a-free-transfer-article867759.html
Guess the thought of my comments are to disturbing for you. Sad but true, and disapointing (sp – it is late at night). You guys definetly know more about The Arsenal history than I do, but are you receptive to the indicators that are obvious to all and sundry regarding the health of our manager and club? Sad but true.
Mahdain,
maybe they got bored in talking to themselves?
sleepinggiant-hear hear
This argument and comparison with other clubs is completely flawed.
Yes those teams mentioned have a reputation of getting rid of managers pretty quickly if results don’t reflect the ambitions of the club but a quick bit of research reveals that none of those clubs mentioned have had anywhere near the type of management turnover you’re suggesting. Yes there have been instances where managers have not lasted more than a year but they’re generally made up with managers who have been in place for between 2-4 years.
Equally, you suggest the Arsenal way is something to be proud of but it’s not exactly clear as to what ‘that way’ is other than it being your excuse for not sacking a manager.
Right now the ‘Arsenal way’ seems to be:
* Sell your best players just as they reach their peak
*Refuse to reinvest that money in quality players but find cheap and unproven alternatives in the hope that you uncover a ‘gem’
* Pay average players vastly inflated salaries to the point where you can’t sell them even if you wanted to
* Consider finishing 4th as an ambition which ultimately reflects poorly on the club, the management and the players who should all be aiming to win the league
* Continue to hope that a once great manager will eat humble pie and change his philosophy of creating a successful youth team and buy some established players who can help win something now and not in 5 years time when they mature
I’m sorry to say that this club, the club I have supported for more than 30 years, is in a complete mess because one man has been given far too much power and has been able to entrench himself into the club to the point where he is unsackable.
Someone pointed out on another blog that no world class manager would want to take on the role of managing Arsenal at the moment because they would be hamstrung by the squad they would inherit – a team made up mostly of average players that can’t be moved on because no one else will pay them the salaries we are paying them, and therefore unable to develop a squad of there own.
This is not the Arsenal way that I grew up with. This is the result of one man getting carried away with no structure around him to make him answerable.
It’s a shambles.
I am guessing most readers of any blog don’t spend their free time doing research. ArXiv is an archive for nominally physics preprints, which means all the kinds of physics and a bunch of other stuff. Some people would never willingly use a reference to an arXiv preprint as a reference in a scientific article. I think you can pick and choose.
There are a number of articles at arXiv which go into trying to predict football scores. Unless you have a really good background in math and statistics, you probably wouldn’t get much out of reading any of them.
Many of these articles point out the difficulty in trying to rank the teams in any league on their football ability. And most people presume the team with the largest ability wins the league every year. One paper I’ve read there, suggests the problem with football, is that not enough goals are scored. And until the rules are changed to get away from scores like 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, there is little that can be done in terms of trying to rank teams.
One of the things all of these articles have to assume, is fair officiating. To try to work with unfair officiating, some mechanism of describing the unfairness is necessary.
One of the bonuses of typically having scores so low, that it is difficult to predict which teams have the better ability, is that people who like to gamble might have a chance to do better, because it is necessarily hard to predict outcomes if you can’t rank ability. This may also be a reason why people involved in gambling or teams, might try to “fix” games or aspects of games, as statistically, all the teams are too similar.
I read and study math, statistics and other stuff in my free time. I doubt I could translate any of these physics papers into something most of UA would understand. If nothing else, I tend to brain dump too much.
What I would like to see with all these people that know better than Wenger, or the board, is to see comments of the form:
I was manager of XYZ team from time1 to time2 and because my
preformance was better than Wenger’s over the last N years, I feel I can realistically show why Wenger is wrong. Or, some similar statement for owning a team, being a CEO of a team and so on.
But no, what we get are a never ending stream of “experts”, who spend all their free time doing “arm curls” with a beer bottle in their hand. Really, their advice is useless. It isn’t necessarily good, bad or anything else. Just useless.
If I need to fix my truck, asking people walking by on the street what I should do is not a good policy. Sure, someone might come along who knows just what I need to do. But the expectation is that all replies are worthless.
Someone spending X currency per year to (supposedly) support Arsenal is also meaningless. If that amount of money is petty cash to you, and you don’t attend games, don’t know who the players are, know who most of the injured players are, know anything about the youth system, your value to Arsenal is 0. If you want to support any football team, the first thing you need to learn are the laws of the game. Arsenal playing in England, you need to recognize that way more physical contact happens than the laws allow for. If some referee wanted to come into any EPL game, and rule strictly by the laws, I suspect in most games the referee could have either or both teams down to less than 8 players by the end of the game. No bias needed, there is that much illegal contact in the English game.
But, I hope everybody has a good day.
What a refreshingly pleasant article.
cheers
@Gord:
I really do enjoy your analysis in these comments. And thank you for that ArXiv link. I don’t understand a word of it right now, but I needed something like that to work backwards from. We’ll see if I can figure it out as time goes on.
Thanks again.
-Anne
@Anne
Sorry. Autism has problems and gifts. I haven’t been an Arsenal fan long compared to most, I easily understand why the performance hasn’t been of liking to most. But, short of trying to teach all this math and statistics I know to others, I seldom have an answer that is useful to anyone.
If you need help with something like at arXiv, I will try to help. At the moment, I am still trying to digest UA referee reviews.
@Gord:
Comments like the one you left above tend to make me determined to understand math and physics as well, just so that I can relate to you on an intellectual level. And coming from me, that truly is the highest compliment that I could possibly give you.
Along those lines, is the difference between “Autism” and “genius” anything more than just a matter of semantics?
The reason Arsenal won’t get rid of Wenger is because he saves them money by buying over the hill players on the last day of each transfer window. I know he keeps saying he wants this player & that player but in fact he knows he doesn’t want to spend too much money, because the Board want to keep making a profit. I think Arsenal should now be called a profit making organisation rather than a once great football club, and until the “owner Kroenke” and I use that word loosely & the board realise this as they only seem interested in making money & lining their own pockets rather than spending it on good strong players that might actually start helping us win trophies. A new manager would want sufficient funds to get rid of the many useless players we currently have & bringing in strong good players & not afraid to spend more than a few £m on them. So until the Board wake up & realise that Wenger needs to be got rid of & a new manager installed I am afraid Arsenal will not win any trophies for the foreseeable future.
i would like to think that the Arsenal way has gotten us a lot more respect than most of the other “top clubs” around…
chelsea with Avram Grant and Ancelotti
man city with Hughes
real madrid with del bosque
no class…
Cheering article Walter.
Gord I enjoyed your intervention, especially the bit about arm curls.
This morning I enjoyed seeing that our reserves won 5 – 0. That over the hill premier league cast off Yossi Benayoun played a brilliant match and Andrei Arshavin scored two goals. The team manager said it was good for the young players to play with the senior ones, and good for the senior players to get 90 minutes under their belts.
Of course, the answer will be it doesn’t matter because they were playing Norwich reserves.
It still cheered me up. And I think it does matter.
@Tony
February 21, 2012 at 5:46 pm
Of course u do! I was referring to this particular article. Some logic, stats and arguments would have improved this article.
The stats that untold shows is usually regarding ref preview and ref review. Not about importance of wenger.
So don’t hide behind lame excuses like u gave.
Article is mind numbing and written at the most uninspiring moment.
AKB!
Despite the negative’s there is alot of positives with the current management team (corporate as well) and only a small amount of tweaking is required to make arsenal fundamentally competitive in competing for the EPL.
I have full faith that the transfer issues will be resolved in the immediate close season
I am and will always be an Arsenal supporter. My first live game was when Billy Wright was manager. I like exiting players and football. This season has mostly been boring. Sideways, backwards, no penetration. I feel sorry for our strikers. By the time they receive a pass the opposition has 10 men back and they have no space.
Arsene Wenger has chosen to play this way and chosen not to add to the squad. He alone needs to change the way we are playing or buy the players that will allow him to do so, or?
Well Ken, your memory and mine of the Bruce Rioch year, not to mention the final Wright year must be utterly different.
Critic – if the article is so awful, can I ask why you bothered to read it?
@ tony
How can i or anyone tell the difference between awful or brilliant without actually reading it? Since i read it and gave my time to it, i felt obliged to to comment on it’s quality. And i stand by my comment.
Tony,
I’m not saying the football under Wright or Rioch was extiting,
my reference was to indicate how long I have been a supporter.
The early years of Wenger when we had the blend of the George Graham defense and Wengers attacking additions were great years.
I just don’t like watching keep ball in the opposition half with no penetration.
We sacked Don Howe and treated that man who did a great deal to modernize AFC rather shabbily – even trying to sign Venables behind his back .
Wenger’s still with us because he made loads of money for the previous shareholders and Kroneke thought he would do so for him.
What the fuck has Kroneke got to do with the Arsenal way ?
Let’s see if Wenger is around next season if we miss out on the CL and have suffered a run of more poor results.
I don’t know where I said it was the Kroenke way? In fact as far as I know the words ‘we do it our way, the Arsenal way’ are written from the opening days of the museum. In 2006 I think it was. So long before Kroenke became our main share holder.
@pat
One of the various terms I’ve picked up over the years for drinking beer.
@anne
Autism is a huge spectrum of stuff. I don’t think that anybody really has a handle on the whole thing, but Baron-Cohen (I think he’s at Oxford) seems to have some good papers. I don’t bother reading much of the popular stuff, my vocabulary is good enough for most scientific articles.
Some people are so affected by Autism, they would never be able to live alone, let alone hold down a job. Supposedly these people have a very low IQ, which would preclude genius being applied. I’ve taken a few IQ tests, and there are some sections where I score 0. Other sections I get most or all. Lots of people can imagine a scene or image, I don’t. But I can sort of feel equations. The “space” I feel them in, is not Cartesian, these feelings are more like how mathematicians talk about topology (for example, a donut and a coffee cup are basically the same thing, topologically speaking).
But, genius or not, I think it is true that Autistic people think differently. Hence, we are more than likely not in the same box as everyone else is (thinking outside the box). Our box might overlap other people’s boxes, it might not.
WRT the camera thing. We are somewhat dependent on the TV cameras for Walter and his reviewers to do their thing. Other people bring up situations where some image or video that probably originated in the media is central to an argument. If people at games used their smartphones to take pictures at opportune times, that would potentially be an independent source of images. And it might be possible to build accurate 3D models of the field based on a good distribution of points of view. I know the TV shows make it look like it is all there and works, but real life might be not that advanced yet. Somebody else that is a camera nut might know.
I was dismayed to see on the BBC site today,
> A defining derby
> Lee Dixon and Emmanuel Petit on why Sunday’s north London derby is
> the most important of Arsene Wenger’s 16-year Arsenal reign
All this article is doing (by its title), is baiting all the “Wenger Out” people. Lawro in his predictions has a tie, his guest (who is not a football person) is predicting a Tottenham win (2-0).
And then on the Arsenal.com site, we see from Djourou: ‘We must prove we are the kings of London’.
I really wish the players would not get sucked into this “need” to show that they are going to win the next game in the press. There is probably some big positive feedback loop involved in this process, and more often than not you end up psyching yourself out of the game. Think “Walking Tall”, walk softly and carry a big stick. Keep your mouth shut before the game, prepare properly, go out and win the game. No pregame bravado needed.
But, the cat is out of the bag, and so now we are left to see what happens. Oh well. I wish them the best of luck, and that includes the luck of having fair officiating.
Gord,
Yes I agree with you about that Djourou headline. I also think we just should shut up before a game. or saying something neutral as we will try to do our best. That is all they need to do for me in fact.
Adding to much pressure on yourself can have a bad influence on some players. Some players need it, others not.
But the last thing you need is to raise expectations too much by talking too much.
@walter
Thank you.
It seems entirely too easy for anyone to talk themselves out of a game. All I ever dealt with was local games, which were never in the news. Which keeps the self-hyping out of the game. But, amateur football in Canada (where this self-hype doesn’t happen publicly) isn’t what the UK (and the EPL) sees.
I am hoping as much as a person can hope, but my hopes have nothing to do with how the players chosen by Arsene Wenger perform on the day. And at the end of the day; if Arsenal loses or ties, I suspect all we are going to see is an endless of Wenger Out articles. All from idiots that haven’t a clue on how to manage a team.
Given that there is is growing evidence (that the FA or PGMOL) won’t accept about bias in officiating, all I can hope for is a fair game on the weekend. And if this fixture which allows for bias to be presented, does present bias, hopefully at some point we will have the data to FORCE the FA to administer football as it should be.
And going back to Bing Crosby, “Good Night Gracie”.
@Gord, Its allowing the refs to interpret the laws of the game that is a problem. I once stated that the Epl refs do not have a vision of how they see the game being played due to the inconsistency in their decision making. The rules over the years have been tinkered with to move our ball game in a more attacking direction (ie the back pass rule or the latest interpretation of the off side rule) this is the biggest hint to the refs to clamp down on time wasting, tactical fouling and over aggresive defending. But they don’t seem to ba able to think for themselves so how on Earth can they interpret something they have no vision of.
August transfer market: one player in and TWELVE players out – including Van Persie. Didn’t Wenger do well with his “reinforcements”? No wonder Walcottt, like Van Persie, doubts the commitment of the club, and the ability of the one-time decent manager, to reestablish the Gunners as a force to be reccond with. As an “outsider” that admires Arsenal, I see a worrying parallel when I here Weger on the TV. It seems that, like Sunderland under “Bruce the excuse”, this fine old club is only in the premiership to make up the numbers!
Stop using Bayern Munich as an example of an “interchangeable” club if you have no valid arguments to prove your points. Bayern Munich is one of the best run sports clubs in the world. They have gone trophy-less 2 seasons in a row now and Heynckess is still in charge. Van Gaal was fired not because of he didn’t bring trophies (which he did), but rather because the players lost faith in his tactics and leadership skills.
what a great read…all I hear is sack him, sack him…Ad all I can say is your all forgetting what football and following your club is all about. I have been going since 1980 and have learnt that Arsenal really is a different class than anyone else and always will be. I don’t want the club to be in debt like the others and when Wenger still has much more to give and learn himself we should support the man and the club through the good and tough times. It’s what loving your club is all about…it’s easy to call yourself a fan, but it’s being a fan of the club and its foundations that’s what is the most important thing and Wenger gives 100% and what more can you ask…the players need to give more..not the boss!!…ask yourself a question….would you follow arsenal if they were a mid table team…got your answer then you know if your a real arsenal fan!!!