Too many new fans who had not experienced the doldrums of mediocrity that was Arsenal. Myself included. I started supporting Arsenal when Ricoh was in charge and Wenger came in and brought us success almost immediately. We became such a big club that everyone in football knew about the club and even if we weren’t always winning we were competitive. People took it for granted and assumed that any other manager would have done betterYou're absolutely right. When people were having a go at Wenger for not winning a trophy in nine years (despite coming very close several times) they didn't seem to realise that, historically, not winning trophies was the norm for Arsenal.
Arsenal have had like 4 golden era in their history: Chapman/Allinson, Mee, Graham and Wenger. That's all. The last three were all missed opportunities to cement us as the biggest club in England.
Sorry, I forgot Tom Whitaker who should probably be level with Mee more or less.
When I look at our statistical records it shows me that we’re a club that get some success every decade but not consistently dominating the game like say Forrest did in the 70’s or Liverpool did in the 70-80’s or Man U did in the 90’s. We have had sporadic success and so we should really reevaluate these expectations about titles.
Mind you what Arsenal did under Wenger was play such good football at times that we were always cognizant of the fact that we could beat any team on our day. During the latter years of the Wenger era that confidence was eroded and to be honest its a malaise that stretched back to our stadium move.
The lack of investment into the team and continual sales of our best players because of financial or competitive reasons had left a lot of fans disillusioned about the future of the club. Anxiety set in and some of the fans vented because they saw other money clubs winning and we were just there. Truth be told. I’m sure if we had the finances Man U or Chelsea or Man City had during the 2005-2012 period we would have won more.