Hill-Wood defends Wenger

Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood has come out defending manager Arsène Wenger, saying that the fans should continue trusting in the most successful manager in the club's history.

The Frenchman was involved in a heated exchange with Arsenal shareholders after being criticised for his team selection and tactics. Wenger rose to the defence of certain members of the team, after players like Emmanuel Adebayor and Mikael Silvestre were literally labelled as useless.

Mr Hill-Wood said: "Frankly, some of the questions were quite disgraceful.

"We, and he, kindly agreed to have this meeting and whether we have another one is a moot point.

"There you have the most successful manager in our history and two or three of the shareholders made the most negative and somewhat hostile and sarcastic comments, which I think were completely out of order.

"I was very upset by the questions, I have to say.

"Arsène was very diplomatic and honest in his answers and deserves great credit for that but I wouldn't have been anything like as polite if they had asked me."

User Comments

Katuramu Absolom (Uganda)

Posted on 21 May, 2009 at 07:27 AM - Reply

Very sorry if mr Wenger was mishandled by some Board members. But for us fans, that is beyond us and we do not have to know what happens in some of those administrative board meetings. How ever constructive criticism on poor performance is normal. So in away Arsenal fans and Board members are right to criticize mr Wenger on some of those weaknesses, such as poor team selection in some cases, not playing some players in most suitable positions, poor scoring tactics and not penalizing some of careless players.
Some of us are convinced that Arsenal is as strong as the other three top clubs in UK. Most of those boys are good, all you need is to reorganize the team and bring in just two or three players in areas of weakness such as goal keeping, defence and stricking line and also to cater for injuries which are very common with our players. If it was not because Arsenal has a relatively small squad and injuries are so common, there would be no need of bringing new players as long as you address those weaknesses. On the issue of some useless players in Arsenal, some of us strongly disagree with that. Some one looks useless if he is played in a wrong position, if put in a right position he will play well. Take an example of Adebayor, this guy is a good header, he holds the ball well and makes passes to others and he is physical enough, but he is slow! and not good at target, This means he can be more useful if you play him behind a striker like Eduord who is very fast and very good at target. We should also realize that Some of us fans make negative comments but mr Wenger as a leader should expect that. That is normal in leadership. Mr Wenger is a manager we should respect because of his economic policy of self sustainability and his vision of developing young talents. This does not mean that we shall not comment on his weaknesses. Let him get positives out of our comments and strengthen the team.
Finally all of us fans, management and the Board, let us contribute positively and with effect from next season we start winning trophies.

ekopimo maurice

Posted on 20 May, 2009 at 09:33 AM - Reply

i think its time to go for the big boys.

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