A week or so back Untold published an article which revealed how a tiny group of people had created the doom and gloom movement at Arsenal by undertaking multiple postings from different email addresses.
In that article and others I’ve tried to point out what I think are the complex interrelated issues that need exploration if one is to debate if Wenger is the right or the wrong man for the job.
What is noticeable is that there has not been a single anti-Wenger post that has taken up either of these points in full. Perhaps with the personality disorder group that’s understandable – how do you explain such odd behaviour? But still, with the rest of the debate, one might have hoped for more.
Indeed, the one thing noticeable about catastrophist commentaries throughout is how they deal with just one part of the debate. Indeed many have no debate at all, but are just a statement of personal feelings presented as if they were facts.
So what I thought I’d do here is set out a simple summary of the debate as it seems to me. For simplicity I have broken it down into sub-sections, which interrupts the flow somewhat, but I think it also makes it clearer. These are, in my view, the key points that would need to be answered if one were trying to put forward a serious anti-Wenger argument.
1. The Chelsea / Man C issue
When Abramovich came along the world of football transfers changed, and it became clear that to cope with this pressure Arsenal needed a new strategy. For each player that Arsenal wanted to buy, the response is now, “hold on, we’ll just see how much Man C want to pay.” Indeed we have run here a story which suggests that Man C have on at least one occasion phoned a club and said, “don’t try to buy x – if you do, we will wreck all your purchasing plans”.
Several ways out of this dilemma have been proposed – David Dein and Mr Usmanov have one approach. The current Arsenal board have another. Whatever one proposes in terms of Arsenal moving forward, we need to consider how we will cope with the fact that Chelsea and Man C can buy anyone they want at any time, because there is no price limit, and can and will artificially up prices to stop other clubs taking up new talent.
2. Borrowing to infinity
Man U and Liverpool have sought to take on Chelsea and Man C at their own game but with lesser resources. I believe that this attempt to buy, buy and buy more by Man U and Liverpool played into the hands of those who wanted to buy out the clubs and put them into more debt. No one has successfully entered the transfer market on a large scale in England in recent years and done anything other than force prices up higher and higher, until they reach a level that only Man C and Chelsea can afford. Because of this, trying to buy our way to the title is not a viable option. Because of this neither club is seeming to do much in the transfer market, and Man U in particular is looking at a very old squad.
3. New stadium
I fully supported the new stadium approach from the off, and I love the stadium in every regard. I don’t believe it has restricted our spending power, except that if we started to borrow money to fund the mortgage, the interest level we would pay on that would be astronomic. People might argue that the stadium was not a good idea – but now we are there, I don’t think loss making through huge player purchases is an option, simply because of the reaction of the existing lenders.
But I believe the new stadium was utterly right – now 60,000 people can watch the team, not 38,000 – and that is what I want.
4. Vulnerability of ownership
So far neither the Man C nor the Chelsea ownerships have backed away from their tasks. But there have been many new owners who have failed to show the money they promised. Liverpool were promised a new stadium started in weeks, when the current owners came in. Instead the money was misappropriated. All of Portsmouth’s owners last season promised vast sums. QPR were said to be the richest club in the world, and are on their 8th manager in a couple of years (or something like that!) Birmingham announced that they would spend £40m this summer, and then couldn’t pay their bank fees and were sued. West Ham were backed by a bank – which went bust. Villa brought in a top American owner who seemed to be spending a fortune – only for the accounts to reveal that he was the one making a profit on the interest.
And so on – although bringing in a big investor as owner might promise the money, in the majority of cases it doesn’t deliver, and that leads to chaos. Arsenal have gone for diversity of ownership, which means no rich kid playing with our club. You can argue for that – but in doing so beware of the dangers.
5. New regulations
At the same time as all the issues about where the money comes from and the need to make a profit, we have the issue of the forthcoming Uefa regs and the new 25 players issue in the EPL. I know that many writers have said “It won’t happen” or “the big clubs will find a way around it.” Maybe, but that is hardly a strategy for the future. It is a bit like saying, “Royal Bank of Scotland won’t go bust.” It did. Or perhaps “we won’t pay over the VAT on the takings – HMRC won’t notice.” Not really the best way to secure the future of the club.
6. Players – avaialbility, price, wages
There is always much talk about players being bought, but the fact is, identifying a player who is available, and then securing him at a price we can afford, and at a salary we can afford is different – and all that assumes the club want to sell him. It must be remembered that England is an unattractive location for players in financial terms, because of the tax situation. This may of course change as Spain teeters on the brink of total financial collapse, but thus far this has been the case. Arsenal’s response has been to secure players on long term contracts and to invest in salaries to compensate a little for the tax situation.
We can’t assume that every player wants to come here, nor that they will want to stay. So a list of players to replace those not liked is not a good idea.
7. Need for a new approach – Worldwide scouting
Wenger decided that the way to approach the situation at first (before Chelsea morphed into the KGB) was through worldwide scouting. It was stunningly successful – although sometimes we had to wait a while for players to develop. For every Vieira who came along and was dominant from day one, there was a Pires who took a year to settle in.
But the revolution of Worldwide Scouting took us to the top.
However it then ceased to be so powerful simply because, as Wenger himself has said, you can find half a dozen English scouts at each second division match in France these days. Ten years ago there weren’t any at any of the first division clubs.
Also, our attempt to own a second club (Breveren in Belgium) has been stopped by Uefa, so another useful supply of talent has gone.
I suspect most of the clubs watching French football don’t know what on earth they are looking for, but still they are muddying the water and putting up the price.
Worldwide Scouting is still a viable option, but its power has diminished as others have caught up.
8. Second approach – Youth Project
So, after a year or two, Wenger revitalised the youth section of the club and started the youth project. It might be amusing to read that the youth project has failed, if it weren’t for the fact that some people say it every week and others start to believe it.
The youth project is the follow up to World Wide Scouting, and started about seven years ago with the first crop of 11 and 12 year olds who started work at the Academy in the New Approach. These youngsters have been kept together, and they and their immediate successors have won three trophies in the last two years. If you want to read about them, the review of next year’s squad has quite a few details there.
So the youth project is just now coming to fruition, and we will be seeing more and more of these players come through. If the production line is being followed year on year (and it is hard to get information – and we must respect the fact that we are talking about children here) then our dependency on world wide scouting and big name signings will become a thing of the past.
Certainly the achievement of this year’s and last year’s under 18s outstrips anything that has ever been done before in any Academy club in England.
9. Putting it together
Worldwide scouting, plus the youth project, with occasional forays into the transfer market are a solution to the problems caused by the arrival of unlimited money at two clubs, the forthcoming regulations, the imbalance of taxes, and the predatory power of clubs supported by banks and big industry in southern Europe (which I’ve not gone into here, but we’ve talked about in recent articles and commentaries).
Like it or not the new stadium has given us a need for financial caution and a lack of borrowing (you try telling a mortgage company that you will pay for the mortgage by borrowing the monthly repayments elsewhere), and these give us the solution.
10. Conclusion
I find it hard to think what else could be done other than to put ourselves in the hands of a rich oligarch – which doesn’t appeal to me as it would be dangerous and I have some moral scruples about such matters.
One thing that strikes me is that not only are the anti-Wenger posts not arguments which combine answers to this range of complex factors they are also repetitive personal points of view. Indeed reading back through the posts on this site during the past few months, I think it is fair to say that we have read all these arguments a dozen or more times each. After all, how many times do we need to read the point of view that there are five members of the first team who are not up to it, and should be sold at once and replaced by top players? I think we’ve got the hang of that one, and noted the fact that never is it linked to any economic realities.
We have also read the endless, “I hope I am wrong but…” and the wild predictions (everyone’s leaving) or simplistic statements (he hasn’t won anything, so he’s clearly no good) or even more simplistic statements (you want to know why Wenger is no good? I’ll tell you – he plays Denilson)
My view is that we’ve heard this debate so often there’s really no point hearing it again, and so I am changing my editorial stance a little, by saying that anyone who posts simplistic anti-Wenger views about Arsenal which we have heard numerous times before, will be cut. Not because I disagree with them but simply because they are too boring. Indeed boring statements don’t become less boring the more we hear them.
21st century football at the highest level is a complex business, and if we are to debate it properly we need to embrace that complexity in our commentaries. In my own small way I try to do that, and I am delighted by the way my fellow contributors both to articles and commentaries take aboard this idea.
My fear is that readers who enjoy and value the complex analysis will be put off by the childish “Wenger clearly doesn’t have a winning mentality” argument, and I am hoping that this minor change in policy will encourage everyone to join in with this site, and embrace the complex issues we try to debate. It would, I think, be desperately sad, if we let those who believe in simple monothematic solutions take over, and force the real debate out.
But, as before, I am very willing to post anything that represents a coherent anti-Wenger argument which is not mono-thematic. If it takes in the points that I have outlined above, or in some other way constructs a firm theoretical base for the argument, or can put together a coherent argument as to why this analysis is wrong (rather than just making simple points that anyone can see that Wenger won’t buy, so he is stubborn, so he should go) then I think we can all benefit from seeing it and debating it. If you want to write such a piece email it to me as a word document at Tony.Attwood@aisa.org
Tony Attwood
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Next Season: a set of articles about the squad, the transfers, and who is moving up from the reserves – not to mention a definitive analysis of how the 25 player system works.
For an outsider(Indian) like me, who has adopted Arsenal as my club from the day that i started watching football, its fascinating to read the blogs and the comments. I feel the same pain, anguish and anger that many fellow bloggers have expressed here. As has been told to me in another blog, iam not a qualifies ‘FAN’ to comment on AFC, as i don’t pay the money to watch them in Emirates. I am also not a FAN who knows enough about AFC’s history to comment. I have also not seen Arsenal in pre-wenger era. But i do have the following questions/apprehensions in my mind and wonder whether Wenger has been provided too much power?
1. No successful run business is run according to the Whims and fancies of an individual. Wenger has way too much power in the club. he is almost the single point of failure in the system.
2. Does AFC have a succession plan for the most important area of a Football club, i.e. the First team manager?
3. Is the board stable enough or will it wilt under the cold war between again an US and Russia?
4. When the new stadium was built, there was talk about bigger pitch tiring the opposition out whit our passing football. I ask where is a pure winger in our team who can deliver crosses. Our fullbacks are shit in crossing, while our wingers keep cutting in.
5. We had the best defensive record in the season when we reached CL final. Who were the defenders, yes the same maligned Senderos, Toure, Cygan etc? How did they form that partnership, who coached them. yes Martin Keown who was the famed back four. So why is wenger hesitant to get a Keown or an Adams to assist him in drilling defense.
Can somebody answer me. Iam not for or against Wenger, but can the club be transparent and convey to their fans the answers to many of such questions.
Bendtner came in in the business end of the season and scored 8 goals in 11, plus at least 5 assists.
Name 3 strikers in the league who did better than that.
If we’d signed Wayne Rooney in January and he’d come in and done that, we’d not hear the end of it.+
Someone looking at that, plus his fantastic international scoring record, & international awards, and saying he’s “not there yet” is just a troll with no interest in a genuine discussion of the issue.
Ole,
unfortunately for Denilson and Wenger, games are not won on the stat sheets, hence the payrise and an extension is unjustified, we have let go of players with twice the heart, ability and impact…
besides, look behind bare figures, it’s silly otherwise…
and oh, a troll, now that is mature – change the record dude, it’s boring…
SUGA3,
Stats tell us what happened in a game.
Like the scoreline. For example we know England scored 3 and Mexico only one tonight.
Who knows you might actually fool yourself into thinking mexico won.
and a word on Bendy – yes, he did as much as he could this season, but it hardly did made his first touch any better and did not improve his pace and finishing either…
yes, he is an intelligent player, but to say he is a finished article (as opposed to ‘not there yet’) is just laughable…
and you have the audacity to call me clueless, now that is rich…
Ole,
what are you trying to achieve by resorting to personal attacks? you think it makes your point stronger? think again…
Mexico pissed all over England in the first half and 3:1 scoreline flatters the latter big time…
SUGA3,
Bendtner is already an elite striker. Whatever article he’s going to finish up being, he’s already a pretty decent one. Well worthy of the shirt.
Ole,
RvP is an elite striker, so is Drogba or Rooney, but calling NB ‘elite’ at this point in time is just a bit far fetched…
yes, I agree, he has done well this season, all things considered, but he still has a lot to learn IMO…
My definition of elite is maybe less restrictive but more meaningful. Restricting the application of the label to Drogba, RVP & Rooney is meaningless since there are 1000 to 10000 strikers playing in the top flight across Europe.
Ole,
I reckon he has the potential to be considered one of the best in the game, but at this point he is much better suited to be impact player – his ego works wonders when he has a point to prove
examples? Denilson and Fabianski, just to name two – did they deserve to be given contract extensions and a payrises? it only makes it harder to sell them…
I think you are being unduly harsh. Denilson is a very good player, and re the other Fab, one or two cock ups at the start of your career doesn’t make you a loser. Tony Adams proved that.
tactics: we always play the gung-ho attacking football and got punished for being unable to shut the shop more than once…
we were also punished by an awful referee at WHU
substitutions are usually late in the game as well as predictable, so are the lineups – we don’t have enough players AW would trust to play them, Vela is the prime example of that – he is a full international and does some insane stuff for Mexico, why not for us?
all Wenger does on the touchline is flap his arms around and moan to the 4th official instead of countering ‘physicality and defensive tactics’ in some way – you don’t see him barking orders if things go tits up…
But things did go tits up big time, and we still came out smiling, against Barcelona first leg, and that team who went 2-0 up in 5 minutes…….why do you always see the glass half empty?
our players (AA, NB, again, just to name two) openly criticise our medical and fitness team: AA prefers to be treated by Zenit’s medics…
maybe they are prettier
The whole size debate is a complete red herring btw.
Apart from the fact Arsenal are not particularly small, except in the imagination of Fleet Street, since when was size so important?
Its not frikkin basketball.
Most the hard men have been small anyway, dennis Wise, Billy Bremner, Chopper Harris, the list goes on.
Its just a diversionary tactic used by the media. 10 years ago Arsenal were pschos with appalling discipline, and now we are southern softies..there’s always a stick to beat Arsenal with.
- Half our squad is no good
- We are tactically naive to the point that it’s an argument in favor of replacing the manager
- We had tons of injuries and our best striker missed more than half of the season (others are no good or not quite there)
- We don’t have enforcers
- We can’t defend
- We don’t spend
In contrast
- Spuds have excellent international quality strikers!
- They have a brilliant goalkeeper!
- They can defend
- They have enforcers
- They have spent roughly 150 mil in the last 3 years
- They have the manager of the year!
Simple question is, How did we finish above them in the league?
The obvious answer is, we won’t next year!! (now where have I heard that one before)
(You can replace Spuds with Citeh or Liverfool with minor changes)
SUGA3,
The striking thing about your blog and your posts on Le Groan is that you have no faith whasoever. Games are lost before they happen, every young player is not worth it, every manager is better than Arsene etc.
Not to say that the truth is in between but honesly mate what grates about your way is that you don’t learn. You’re on track on Le Groan for a relentless slating of Song last season and given how he blossomed one would think that you’d be more cautious by now with young players but no, you just switched target and start again. You end up sounding like a broken record.
I tried commenting a bit on your blog but I gave up in the end because of that.
dude, it’s not about some blind faith and hope, it’s about being realistic – now tell me, when was I wrong with my posts? quotes, please…
and we both know that you are exaggerating – I, for one want Wenger to adjust in the first place, not leave…
and by the way: I was always the one to defend Song as I rate him and always did…
sounding like a broken record? it’s funny you say that, so do AW apologists, trying to defend what is getting more and more indefensible…
Desi,
stop bigging up them Spudz
and oh, you can check what I said at the beginning of the season (the threads are there for everyone to see) – the title would be a matter between us and Chavs and that Pool would drop out of the top four – the only thing is that I underestimated the Ol’ Alchy and thought Citeh would take Pool’s place…
I was of the opinion that we would miss out on title by some small margin if we didn’t strengthen in the summer…
weren’t we supposed to have the ‘easiest run in’? what happened?
I’ll take your word on Song as I have other things to keep me busy than checking your writings from the beginning of time
Anyway what I’m saying is that the truth lies in between the blind faith (here) and the constant dooming (Le Groan).
And OK I’m exaggerating but not too much… What’s so indefensible? Finishing 3rd with a shot at the title, a clear progression from last season despite twice as many injuries as our competitors?
Every post there is always someone who comes and tries to make all feel as crap as they are. As miserable and negative as they are. Why? thats just crazy go to where you can find kindred spirits and you can all bitch together.
Why try to pass your pessimism on to others, that does nothing for arsenal fc if all the fans are depressed.
Suga you have the right to be negative, seriously, not here
“He’s got yellow boots on”
goonerwife,
I am not being negative, I am just lucky enough to be blessed with a sense of realism, unlike some…
miserable? me? you will find it hard to find a person who is as un-miserable as I am
it is not moaning and bitching, it is just a cold analysis, something which Our Glorious Leader seems incapable of recently – I wrote a blog on Arsenal (too busy these days, but hey), you will not find any inaccuracies there, read game previews, they were usually spot on selection and tactics wise – I am just a layman and if I have AW figured out, so does every professional football manager, it’s that simple…
Tony does not seem to mind me being here as I can put my point across well enough and back it up, unless you happen to believe that the Earth is flat, you will see where I am coming from…
besides, if my ‘pessimism’ was not substantiated, you would just laugh it off – if everything is as rosy as some on here try to insist, why bother with an unreasonable dissenting voice?
all I am saying is that we could and should do better – not strengthening last summer was a gamble, not adding in the winter was a suicide – nothing would make me happier than being proven wrong, but I somehow did not hold my breath…
our first XI is a set of world beaters (well, maybe bar GK, unless it’s Szczesny), but the bench leaves a lot to be desired, hence unless we add to the squad (3 players minimum) and get shot of the dross nothing will change – I will still support Arse and go to the games as often as I possibly can, but I can see what you fail to see – the damage done to the image of the club and brand value (no success, selling club, etc.) is nothing short of professional negligence and last time I checked it was a sackable offence whatever your job is…
again: I don’t want AW sacked, I want him to adjust…
Nice try Tony.
Good to see the intelligent response to your posting.
I learn more here than anywhere else, mostly from your writing, and *some* of the regular contributors. A few months ago, the “signal-to-noise” ratio in the comments was pretty high — informative, funny, clever, colourful. So, I’m really rooting for your change in editorial philosophy. But I’ve gotta say it looks to me like you’ve given yourself a Sisyphean task.
Let us help you with your challenge: how about giving us an “old-style” idiot filter, like we used to have on BBSes, when bandwidth cost serious coin? Then we could apply our own personal idiot filter, and not have to scroll thru ridiculous rants, one after another (that never change from one month to another).
Or perhaps you could institute a voting or other reputation management system, so the inanities don’t hijack and drown out the useful discussion.
for anyone else still reading, I leave you with this (from http://kb.iu.edu/data/afhc.html):
What is a troll?
In email discussion lists, online forums, and Usenet newsgroups, a troll is not a grumpy monster that lives beneath a bridge accosting passers-by, but rather a provocative posting intended to produce a large volume of frivolous responses. The term can also refer to someone making such a posting (“a troll”) or to the action (“trolling”, “to troll”).
The content of a troll posting generally falls into one of several categories. It may consist of an apparently foolish contradiction of common knowledge, a deliberately offensive insult to the readers of a newsgroup or mailing list, or a broad request for trivial follow-up postings. The result of such postings is frequently a flood of angry responses. In some cases, the follow-up messages posted in response to a troll can constitute a large fraction of the contents of a newsgroup or mailing list for as long as several weeks. These messages are transmitted around the world to thousands of computers, wasting network resources and costing money for people who pay to download email or receive Usenet news. Troll threads also frustrate people who are trying to carry on substantive discussions.
People post such messages to get attention, to disrupt discussion, and to make trouble. The best response to a troll is no response. If you post a follow-up message, you are contributing to the resulting clamor and most likely delighting the troller. Before posting a response, consider the following questions:
* Have responses already been posted by others?
* Will my post add any information that others are not likely to be aware of already?
* Is the issue resolvable, or will discussion turn into name-calling?
* Should I send private email instead of posting publicly?
* Will I later regret the contents of what I am posting?
Please deal with trolls constructively, and do not participate in trolling. You will help make mailing lists and online forums much more enjoyable venues for discussion.
This is document afhc in domain all.
Last modified on April 08, 2010.
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If it looks and acts like a troll, it probably is. Try googling (and I do mean google) with this, BEFORE YOU POST A REPLY:
suspectedtroll site:blog.emiratesstadium.info
and draw your own conclusions.
people like suga3 are not supposed to be on this blog.Please Tony CUT HIM OFF.IN WENGER WE TRUST
to be honest, I don’t give a shit if anyone of you lot calls me names – try putting your point forward, knock down my argument, it’s not hard…
Tony does well to allow dispute on here – some of you would love nothing more than for people like myself not to have voice so that you could wax lyrical and agree with one another even though all you can muster is ‘in Wenger we trust’ – fortunately, we don’t live in a totalitarian society…
Comment from Tony
Suga 3: If I may add a note to explain what is going on.
This site is set up as a site for people who are pro-Wenger. To me there’s nothing wrong with that. Just as there are many many sites that are anti-Wenger, so I thought it a good idea for there to be one that is pro-Wenger.
Over time we have debated at great length the issues surrounding Wenger, with those who are against Wenger, and then two things happened.
First, we found that a lot of emails were purporting to be from different anti-Wenger people, and they turned out to be the same person under different names. We, the pro-Wengerians, had been tricked and had wasted a lot of time trying to answer what we thought was a crowd, but was actually one person.
Second, when we were debating with real people we found we were debating the same issues again and again and putting forward the same arguments again and again.
In essence these arguments are that the issue is incredibly complex and involves numerous matters, and cannot be debated on the grounds of (and here of course I paraphrase) “Wenger is a prat because he plays Almunia in goal”. For those who disagree and think that we can have a debate like that, so be it, but that’s that. They’ve said their bit, and I’ve said mine. The debate can’t really proceed.
So, to try and stop what is supposed to be a site debating Wenger’s incredibly complex approach to football becoming a simplistic debate, I (and it was just me as the guy who set up the site, and who devotes hours each day to keeping it running) decided to set up some ground rules.
You will find them at
http://blog.emiratesstadium.info/want-to-comment-please-read-this/
or via the home page. My thought is this. I live in a rural county, and sometimes people put on village parties on the village green. Villagers, the morris men and others turn up and partake of the food and drink. There’s no charge, and no one is turned away. But if someone turned up from another village and started criticising the food, the drink, the dress, the morris men’s music and dance, and so on that would be dreadful. Better that they either go away, or before saying a word, they get a clear vision of what is going on, why it is going on and what the “house rules” are. And then they abide by them.
I don’t offer you wine and sandwiches, but I do hope you can be respectful of our house rules.
Tony Attwood