Wenger: the red myths descend

[IslingtonBornandbred]

People wanting rid of Kroenke remember that it wasn't he that decided it was quite Ok to be the ONLY team in the top 5 european Leagues NOT to buy an outfield player a few seasons ago. The problems with Kroenke should be that he gives Arséne too much slack & being satisfied with a cash-cow of a football club rather than a winning one. Kroenke has ponied up the money when he's needed to imo.

People will disagree but had Wenger had more pressure to win from above and truly cared about the risk of losing his job he wouldn't be so nonchalant in the transfer market. He says he wants to compete and win the league but his actions prove otherwise. Since Dein left, he's been able to be a one man machine and he's been in total control of everything. Nobody can use squad cost or transfer budgets as an argument if the money has been available to spend and Wenger's chosen not to.

Wenger's never ever been in a rush to do anything. Pep came in, saw what he needed and what he wanted and dealt with it in the summer because maybe he doesn't think he's going to be at City forever. You get the feeling with Wenger's he's always building something, always looking long term but at the end of the day time always catches him up. Ask Henry, RVP, Alexis...they all wanted to go for the same reason, they can't wait around forever for him to strengthen the squad.

Wenger was a legend. Now he's just there, doing average or slightly better than OK if you count the three cup wins, and I always feel he's been quite happy to play and be the "financially restricted one" because it means he doesn't have pressure to win a league he can't win anymore. Everyone knows it's over now. Thanks for the memories, thanks for the FA Cups, but you've made mistakes and that's fine you're human but it's time to go. I don't know what he's doing here anymore apart from being "just here", there's no direction, there's no project, there's nothing. Even more so if Özil/Alexis leave, he should just go. Win the FA Cup, Europa League or finish 6th, just go out with your head held high and everyone can say thank you.

I held onto backing and supporting Wenger for a long time probably until 2016 but you can only defend the man for so long until you see the same mistakes happening. Now I'm in the "I'm fed up and bored of you Wenger camp" it's even more boring and I'm going to try my best not to post or get involved in discussions about Mr Wenger because it just drains the life out of me.

 

[Jury]

People wanting rid of Kroenke remember that it wasn't he that decided it was quite Ok to be the ONLY team in the top 5 european Leagues NOT to buy an outfield player a few seasons ago. The problems with Kroenke should be that he gives Arséne too much slack & being satisfied with a cash-cow of a football club rather than a winning one. Kroenke has ponied up the money when he's needed to imo.

Not a popular opinion on this board, and not even one that's consistent with wanting Wenger gone, as much as some may like to make the connection. It's just a painful fact. Painful, for me, because I detest the man. But as you say, he's done all that one should expect. He's done his bit as an owner.

 

[Jury]

Wenger's never ever been in a rush to do anything. Pep came in, saw what he needed and what he wanted and dealt with it in the summer because maybe he doesn't think he's going to be at City forever. You get the feeling with Wenger's he's always building something, always looking long term but at the end of the day time always catches him up. Ask Henry, RVP, Alexis...they all wanted to go for the same reason, they can't wait around forever for him to strengthen the squad.

He's a survivor. He knew rushing anything probably meant rushing himself out of a job.

 

[IslingtonBornandbred]

He's a survivor. He knew rushing anything probably meant rushing himself out of a job.

If Sheikh Veryrichmansour took us over in 2016 and said "here you go old chap, here's 250 million, go out and spend it, I insist, no I know you don't need it, yes I know you have trust in the team spirit, but take it please, it's a gift, go out and sign who you want, I'll even give you an extra 100 million for wages, just win the league" it would literally be the worst day of his life.

It's a very convenient and fortunate position he's been in the past 10 years.

 

[Toast]

 

[IslingtonBornandbred]

Stats, Stats and more stats mate. You can find stats and twist things to show what you want depending on your viewpoint. It's football. It's played on the pitch, on grass with a round ball.

I've seen posts on here or in general saying "what a player, he covered the most ground today", and then I saw a post about Messi in the Clasico, Messi only covered 7km or something and someone was quoted in Spanish saying "players running 12km, how bad must some of them be? Messi destroyed Real in the Bernabeu only covering 7km".

Our defense, our defenders and our defensive structure has been a major weakness. No stats will prove otherwise. You can play absolutely shockingly, your defense can be all over the place, Per can be running about with his willy hanging about all game trying to volley the ball with it but still draw the game 1-1. Goals for/against don't show that.

 

[redanddread]

On Wed I observed at least 4 occasions where Chelsea took a quick free kick or corner and our players were not alive to the situation (facing the wrong way, having a chat, not "tuned in" to the danger)

I remember seeing Eboue do exactly the same thing many years ago, facing the wrong way at a throw-in which lead to the oppositions equalizer.

Were just not hungry/sharp/disciplined enough on the defensive front.

After a while a player will reflect the defensive ideologies of his manager.....I'm not sure how you represent this with a stat.

There was a similar situation between The Ox & rambo this season just before our opponent on the day (whom I can't remember) scored a goal. Maybe someone can find the clip. Arsène's teams have for a long time been far some switched on...

 

[redanddread]

I came here 3 seasons ago and have argued that Wenger has always outperformed his squad cost, which climbed to 4th in 2016/17 for the first time in years. His average finishing position is 2.8. No doubt it puts his achievements into context.

Posters argued he was poor against top clubs, even though results are roughly equal for losses, wins and draws, in all comps, home and away for the last 5 years. Which is good considering three of those teams can outspend him.

But it's still generally accepted that Wenger is a poor defensive manager. Everybody sees the mistakes on the field, right?

Here are the goals against just for the last 5 years, up to Sept 2017.
Chelsea 184
Man U 187
Man C 189
Arsenal 194
Sp**s 211
Liverpool 233

Wenger's average finishing position for goals against is 3.4

Here are the clean sheets.
Man C 76
Arsenal 75
Chelsea 74
Man U 72
Liverpool 63
Sp**s 62

Wenger's average position for clean sheets is 2.8

Conclusion: As a defensive manager Wenger is still better than his spend, and much better than people give him credit for.

There is evidence that this season,and last, that his defensive record is dropping. He was 6th last season with 44 goals against, and it's looking like the same this season. Kos is aging, Mustafi hasn't reached his peak yet, Per is retiring and Chambers/Holding have clearly not reached the level that Wenger and Stat DNA had hoped . . . you can see by his reluctance to play them. Cech has also been eclipsed by the other goalkeepers in these teams. A major rebuilding job is needed there.

Looking at goals for over the last 5 years
Man C 402
Liverpool 365
Chelsea 363
Arsenal 353
Sp**s 334
Man U 315

Wenger's average attacking position is 3.6

To me this shows that Wenger is very balanced in his attacking and defensive strategies, in fact his defensive stats are slightly better, whatever people think they see on the pitch.

Few managers can outperform their spend for so long, Wenger is unusual in that respect. Pochettino is performing well above his spend at the moment but it's only been a couple of seasons . . can he hold onto his players?

History shows us that whoever we replace Wenger with, the likelyhood of him outperforming Wenger is slim. But it's an exciting time to see a new era coming.

Bro WTF does being a better defensive manager than his spend mean..I mean honestly WTF does that mean. I've heard some mumbo jumbo but this takes the cake.

 

[KROENKE SUCKS]

Not a popular opinion on this board, and not even one that's consistent with wanting Wenger gone, as much as some may like to make the connection. It's just a painful fact. Painful, for me, because I detest the man. But as you say, he's done all that one should expect. He's done his bit as an owner.

If he's done his 'bit' as an owner then why hasn't he sacked Wenger? How are we supposed to know that it isn't because he's a cheapskate owner and would rather not spend at the highest levels and knows Arsène is the only manager who can help him do this?

How are we supposed to know that he isn't using Wenger as a scapegoat for his own cheapness and unwillingness to compete at the highest levels? None of his other teams are competitors, none of them have won anything after this **** face became majority owner. Funnily enough Wenger used to be a competitor before this **** face turned up.

Wenger is so afraid to compete that he was able to work closely and become best friends with Dein who is desperate to see Arsenal compete and always found a way to do so, including over-paying for players and finding away to fit Sol into the wage structure in order to get him in by writing off 5M pounds as a transfer fee for a "free" signing. That was an Arsenal innovation. Back then we always found a way now we don't. You cannot pretend this isn't an operating decision that comes from higher up either Gazidis or Kroenke himself. Our downfall ties in with the arrival of these ****s at the club not Wenger.

 

[KROENKE SUCKS]

m 1) Since Dein left, he's been able to be a one man machine and he's been in total control of everything. Nobody can use squad cost or transfer budgets as an argument if the money has been available to spend and Wenger's chosen not to.

2) You get the feeling with Wenger's he's always building something, always looking long term but at the end of the day time always catches him up. Ask Henry, RVP, Alexis...they all wanted to go for the same reason, they can't wait around forever for him to strengthen the squad.

3) Wenger was a legend. Now he's just there, doing average or slightly better than OK if you count the three cup wins, and I always feel he's been quite happy to play and be the "financially restricted one" because it means he doesn't have pressure to win a league he can't win anymore. Everyone knows it's over now.

1) You know this how? You privy to inside Arsenal info that the rest of us don't have access to? Or are you just referring to self-serving comments made by the old board designed to take all accountability out of their hands and placing it all on Wenger? Many of which comments have been proven to be false, including their lies about having money to spend at a time when we were locked into long term sponsorship deals that had already been spent on the stadium?

2) How much of that is the fault of Gazidis and Law under whose auspices our contract negotiations have all become extremely prolonged allowing other clubs to swoop in and steal our targets leaving the squad perpetually hamstrung with lacking either the necessary personnel in key positions or lacking in squad depth, which then catches up with us once the injuries hit, usually both.

3) He's doing better than Ok if you consider that he had to deal with severe financial constraints up until our new deals kicked in 2014, and is still having to deal with the fallout of the issues raised in point 2. Frankly Im glad Wenger forced Kroenke's hand last summer by meeting him personally without the presence of pencil pushers and bean counters like Gazcunt and got him to sign off on the hiring of Mislintat/Sanellhi to replace the Gaz/Law combo when it comes to player recruitment. We are already seeing some of the benefits of this with how quickly and easily we've signed Mavropanos. I know some will say that its just a squad signing for the future, etc but Gaz/Law used to take forever just to get those done. My reading of it is we've finally got football people handling player acquisition instead of bean counters and we going to continue seeing the benefits of this.

EDIT: And yes the second part of point 3 is my reading of the situation. Wenger tanked the season and forced Kroenke's hand and now we have Sanellhi and Mislintat handling player acquisitions instead of Gaz/Law.

 

[BigPoppaPump]

I've watched Arsenal enough to know we do not defend well for a top level team, of course if you average it out we're gonna be one of the top teams that's probably the same for every stat because we are one of the top teams, duh.

 

[KROENKE SUCKS]

I've watched Arsenal enough to know we do not defend well for a top level team, of course if you average it out we're gonna be one of the top teams that's probably the same for every stat because we are one of the top teams, duh.

I thought we defended well against Chelsea in the FA cup final. Funny how we go through good and bad patches. Almost as if there are underlying issues with squad depth/injuries and a lack of proper stability with player personnel, forcing the manager to continually change tactics and making our defenders look unprepared. Hmmm... strange that innit.

 

[BigPoppaPump]

I thought we defended well against Chelsea in the FA cup final. Funny how we go through good and bad patches. Almost as if there are underlying issues with squad depth/injuries and a lack of proper stability with player personnel, forcing the manager to continually change tactics and making our defenders look unprepared. Hmmm... strange that innit.

This team has been the most stable since we bought the Emirates, we've been keeping our best players instead of selling them and our injuries have gotten much better. Just our league performance (the real metric for how good you are) has gotten worse rather than improve.

One thing we've had over all the other teams we're competing with is the stability of the manager, the fact that he signs the players and practically runs everything in the football side of things means that there is no transition season. Theoretically we should be improving every season, but that hasn't been the case at all. All the disingenuous stats in the world won't change that.

 

[freeglennhelder2]

Why has the Wenger thread been allowed to fork into a variant like Bitcoin Cash vs Bitcoin?

If the intention is to exclusively discuss stats in relation to defending it’s not going to happen because all the other topics relating to Wenger are closely linked. I sort of get attempting to isolate squad cost discussion, this one ain’t gonna work.

Jah Bless.

 

[Makingtrax]

People wanting rid of Kroenke remember that it wasn't he that decided it was quite Ok to be the ONLY team in the top 5 european Leagues NOT to buy an outfield player a few seasons ago. The problems with Kroenke should be that he gives Arséne too much slack & being satisfied with a cash-cow of a football club rather than a winning one. Kroenke has ponied up the money when he's needed to imo.

I'm no fan of Kroenke and don't know how he interfere's with the club.
And the fans have no idea about how much money Wenger's really been given to spend or the reality of Law's transfer deals.

Some people discuss this stuff endlessly but it holds no interest for me.

 

[bingobob]

The problem with the eye and the mind analyzing the game is that you can't remember everything. You count a lot of bad things but no good things there in your comment. Negative people will always only talk about the negative things, and focus on them during the games.

The truth is, and stats back it up, is that we are decent team with good manager. Not great, not a title winning team. But nobody can expect that in current climate and with owners lacking ambition.

I don't think the stats do back it up. And I'm not a negative person and don't allow stand out moments to cloud my judgement.

The stats are not dodgy. We're averaging 2.8 for clean sheets, over 5 years and 3.4 for goals against. Wouldn't a clueless defensive manager be a lot worse?

You're mixing words but I don't think it's intentional. And this is why your stats aren't stacking up. Personally I prefer discourse analysis using quantitative methods. As it is though you want stats and I'll give you some in a way that I prefer.

We are a possession team. We are a possession team for two reasons. Having the ball more frequently will allow us to create more opportunities while also limiting the opportunities for the opposition. If they don't have the ball they can't score. So that is our defence. And it's very different from how Mourinho defends or Roy Hodgson or Klopp. And that's fine. Football can be played in different ways.

So now we've established how we defend let's see how the stats stack up. I've averaged finishing position using the same six teams you used from 11-12 upto 16-17 season. The stats came from whoscored. I created an exception of 13-14 where Southampton actually came first and us and City joint second. For simplicity I removed Southampton and had us and City tie first and moved everyone else up one place also.

The final average position for possession averaged out over those seasons.

Arsenal 1.83
City 2
United 3.6
Liverpool 4.33
Sp**s 5.16
Chelsea 6.33

Now your data has us ranked 4th for goals conceded (granted over a slightly shorter period than my own analysis). Now the stats show our strategy to stopping goals (possession) has us as the top ranked team yet 4th when it comes to losing goals.

There is an issue because we implement our strategy as the stats show yet concede more goals. The expectation would be that goals conceded (and goals scored) would align much more closely to our success in possession as that is our blue print for defence.

So the conclusion is our defensive record while being good can improve further in line with how we defend. The stats show while we have the second highest clean sheets we have the fourth highest goals conceded. That means being better at possession especially when put under pressure by high pressing teams or bombardment. It infers that we struggle without possession and need to be better organised without it. Are we good yes. But overall not as good as we could be.

 

[Makingtrax]

The cups have made it ok to fail. That's all it's done. And prolonged the future of a failing, hopeless dinosaur of a manager. That's all it's done.

No stats will ever change what I know, and that is Wenger is history and I do not respect his recent efforts. The next manager will show exactly why what he's produced these last ten years isn't worthy of much respect.

There you go again using the word 'fail'. Propaganda nonsense .

How can an average finishing position of 2.8 over 21 years be fail, with his spend against oil.

We've discussed this hundreds of times, what you really mean is Wenger hasn't met your expectations. Nothing wrong with that.

Could he have done better, of course. But all the reasearch of this and other leagues show that very few managers have. That much is true.

 

[Makingtrax]

That's the thing, you can dress it up all you want, but we all know.

Nobody's dressed anything up. Why not look at the figures I posted and comment on them.

 

[Makingtrax]

This team has been the most stable since we bought the Emirates, we've been keeping our best players instead of selling them and our injuries have gotten much better. Just our league performance (the real metric for how good you are) has gotten worse rather than improve.

One thing we've had over all the other teams we're competing with is the stability of the manager, the fact that he signs the players and practically runs everything in the football side of things means that there is no transition season. Theoretically we should be improving every season, but that hasn't been the case at all. All the disingenuous stats in the world won't change that.

No team has ever improved every season. What nonsense is that theory. All teams go in cycles, stable manager or not.

The stats aren't disingenuous, they're not a person. And our last league finish was 75 points. 0.6 below our 21 year average. So how has it gotten worse.

The level of posting on here is rock bottom

 

[Makingtrax]

Are we good yes. But overall not as good as we could be.

I read you analysis carefully and this is a pretty fair conclusion bro. Wenger's always been big on possession, that's how he likes to play.

This thread is addressing those people who have been saying for years that Wenger's defensive tactics are poor. The evidence shows he's far from poor.