With this in mind I’d like to congratulate the team for the defeat of Liverpool yesterday.

Well done lads!!!

it’s a good sensible reason for me. Also Arshavin’s defensive effort has room for improvement to say the least. Just ask some Zenit fans or look at his games for us so far. Remember after Arshavin came on we conceded our second goal. The difference between the FA cup game against Chelsea and the following Liverpool game was the quality of defence of the opposition’s team.

And please move on. It’s tiring having to talk about an event almost a year ago.

And you REALLY think that that’s a good enough reason to drop Arshavin?

But Wenger said he did it to prove to his boys that they can win without him. WTF was that about? You can second-guess Wenger all you want, but I’m taking his comment at face value – Wenger wanted HIS players to show their worth so badly that he was willing to put out a weakened side. That’s unforgivable.

We just don’t know it as our training ground is as closed as Fort Knox. It could be a combination of those things also.

And maybe Wenger and Arshavin had agreed that he would be punished for one of those possible reasons and would not start that game and that they had agreed to not go public on this just to cause no further unrest ?

I don’t know, you don’t know, we don’t know. Your guess is as good as my guess and as long as both keep their lips thight no one will know.
So we can keep talking all over it untill the end of the century we only can guess. Maybe if Wenger writes his memoires, we will find out.

1. Our tactical naivety
2. Our persistence with substandard players (Almunia especially)
3. Our faulty medical department

I feel like I’m talking underwater here. I give three points that an anti-Arsenal fan would give, no one has given a response about these things, and yet there are 50 comments supporting the vision of Arsene Wenger, the saintliness of his devoted fans, and the mindlessness of his detractors. No one’s argued why my objections are unjustified.

Are these things really so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things? I thought addressing these things would be part and parcel of a well-run football club. Or do people really think conceding stupid goals is bad luck and not systemic failure to coach our defence. Do people really think that Almunia isn’t a liability in goal? Do people really think that having 10 players out at a time, for four or five consecutive years, is a sign of good physiological management.

And no one’s explained to me why Wenger dropping Arshavin for the FA Cup semi-final last year was justified. Walter tried… but he didn’t answer it. Finsbury made some veiled allusion to a misquote, but his didn’t answer it. Do things like this just slip the collective consciousness of the Arsene Knows Brigade?

Please go support a different club ’cause you definitely don’t deserve this club.

@chris66
Quit quoting Palin on one hand and then deriding everything he stands for on the other.
You’re all over the place. Daft analogy by the way [football v politics]. If you want to talk football, stick to football. You’ve completely negated the context of the game by comparing it to something so widely off the mark.

I thought you said you gave up on this site long ago? Now you introduce American politics into Arsenal football. What gives anyway? I think To Simon’s point was what? Stop hating the Club you love! Every fact he presents is not disputable but factual… I have a proposition for you write an article that reflects The New Arsenal you would approve of (of course I have no say if it gets approved) let us become You by being critics and let’s see a debate. Again to Simon’s point; it is very easy to blog but it is quite different to actually run an organization like a football club or Arsenal for that matter. If you were honest how much different would it be from how it is currently run or maybe I could be wrong but you do have real actionable legitimate proposals?

diversity of opinions? In which way is your opinion different from 90 percent of the newsnow headlines demanding Arsene’s head, reiterating some old rumours about his way of working? You choose to treat Arsenal like a product, some choose to support our club. That’s it.

And your far right Republican comment clearly shows that you don’t have a clue about free speech. It’s an insult to people who suffered from real censorship and prosecution. This is a football forum ffs. Leave it that way.
If you’re struggling to find the right football analogy look at what happend to clubs like Leeds or Portsmouth and many more.

No one is bigger than the club. I know this and the person who is most aware of this is Arsene Wenger. That’s why he has my unconditional support while he is at our club.

WE SHOULD STOP WRITING ARTICLES THAT BE-LITTLES OUR GREAT CLUB, and start wrinting like champions. you may be contended with fourth or third place, but we are not.

WHICH IS WHY I STILL BELIEVE WE CAN WIN THIS LEAGUE AND THE CHAMPIONS LEAGUE, INSTEAD OF SETTLING FOR FOURTH PLACE

I am at a loss to see how you could possibly have construed my post in the way you did. The whole point was to point out the diversity of opinions out there that have a great deal of validity, rather than the “le god” concept that dominates this board. If I could quote Michael Palin “He’s not a prophet, he’s just very naughty boy”.

I am happy to go head to head with you about economics and politics any day of the week, but my post was to try and show that there is a wider range of options than support Wenger or piss off. At some stage he will leave and I can guarantee you that I will still support Arsenal – will you?

you doomers crack me up. This is an internet discussion board ffs. If you’re too sensitive don’t read, don’t write. Some of us choose to support our club in difficult times but you seem to take this as a personal insult. If you think customer is too offensive a term don’t behave like one. No one forces you into buying tickets or watching Arsenal. Your understanding of love needs to be reassessed because it’s not only about demanding instant success, it’s not one-dimensional.
But being an Arsenal supporter I can assure you you won’t get any death threats for having an opposing opinion or will be sent to go to war. So leave the anologies to someone who knows a little bit about politics and economics, and to those who actually sufferd from censorship and prosecution. Because otherwise you make yourself look quite ignorant in front of 170,000 readers.

It seems to me that if you support Arsenal Football Club first and fore-mostly rather than blind allegiance to the “supreme leader” then you are treated in much the same way as a RINO – only we call them a D&G merchant or customer.

Hard as it may be for those who only see the world through one dimension, but there is a view somewhere between the contrived “Football 3.0″ perspective and the “Bankrupt the club” one. In short this is that we as a club now have the potential to become on of the truly great world clubs, no doubt down to the efforts of Arsene Wenger (but let’s be clear lots of others deserve praise too, such as David Dein and Ken Friar in particular). The question is are we going to be able to make that step up?

What so often happens in any business is that the people who take a company to the brink of success are not the ones capable of taking it to its full potential – it is often a different skill set. The perfectly valid question for any Arsenal fan to be asking right now is “are the people who are running things capable of taking advantage of the opportunities that are in front of us now?” In my opinion the jury is out but I respect others who think otherwise. It is a healthy debate.

It seems however that many see the debate through the perspective of:

- “We shouldn’t expect anything better”
- “There is no other way than the way we are currently doing things” (There is always another way the question is do we know how to do it”)
- Nobody else could do the job that the current people do. – This is in some ways the most interesting point. Occasionally it is true (Steve Jobs at Apple for example), but there are other coaches of tremendous skill in the world whose skill set may (repeat I say “may”) be better suited to taking a financially sound club, running it within the means it operates within (especially with competitors struggling) and still produce a fine product and attract the best talent. Rijkaard and Hidiink come to mind.

From my personal perspective I feel that it should be the role of the Football Manager to drive the team to its maximum potential using every resource along available to him. It is the role of the board and in particular the CEO to ensure the financial longevity and sustainability of the business model. A natural tension should exist between them, it is healthy.

Over the last 6 years for Arsene Wenger it seems that the lines between the two have become somewhat blurred, probably due to his own intellectual capacities (which are much greater than most football managers) and the vacuum that existed between the departure of Dein and the arrival of Gazidis. It is vital that he gets back to his core skill set of producing dazzlingly exciting and winning teams as he has done in the past. Right now it does not really feel to me that we are really getting there as many of the problems are areas that this coach has proven in the past that he can fix (physicality of the side relative to their competitors, defensive organization, squad depth) but is not doing now, even with resources behind him.

I reject the label of D&G or customer because I ask this question of the club I love. If Wenger can get back to what he is one of the best in the world at (being a football coach) then long may he continue. If he continues to be a coach/CFO hybrid then I feel that at some stage the most loyal thing to do is put someone in the coaching role who sees their role as only doing that. Given the age of Wenger and the complete absence of any real talent being groomed within the club to ultimately succeed him, even those who justify everything that is going on within the club on business/economic grounds must see the validity in that.

It appeared here once before under the hopeful avatar of ‘Barbados’?

Not a fan of CLR James’ writing on sport, I presume.
I am.

‘Beyond The Boundary.’
A classic.
Highly recommended.

There is a library named after that great West Indian, in Dalston, not far from the home of The Arsenal.

Just keep on with it. You can make Arsenal better; can’t you?

Told you he was a Kraut.