mirrorstare
Well-Known Member
I agree with parts of your comment, but the issue right now is we are in a mess and have to work our way out of it. The solution cannot be going back to Arsène Wenger, he is probably too old now anyway.
Midtable is unacceptable. Few questions maybe. Did you see the final direction under Wenger of Mustafi, Xhaka, Lucas, et al. as acceptable in retrospect, or maybe that is all blamed on Gazidis? What was the club culture that led to failure to retain Alexis and mismanage Ramsey’s contract? What do you want managerially now - stick with Arteta or change, and to who?
The point is we weren't in this mess, not even under Emery. Being an Auba penalty, a Xhaka/Mustafi single error or whoever else you want to blame (once) away from the CL can hardly be called decline.
- Did you see the final direction under Wenger of Mustafi, Xhaka, Lucas, et al. as acceptable in retrospect, or maybe that is all blamed on Gazidis?
Strange question this, his final direction was the inspired swap that brought us Aubameyang, a player finally capable of wearing the iconic #14 shirt, and telling Theo Walcott to **** off (for me this was like silverware)
Xhaka in retrospect is a mistake, and Mustafi was not the first La Liga defender mistake we had made, but you can also count other piss poor signings like Danny Welbeck, Mohammed Elneny, Gabriel Paulista, Mathieu Flamini the revenge, etc.
You know why that period innocently called banter era at the time is no longer discussed? because Wenger still delivered, getting the best of players like them or enough to meet the objective, but we didn't suddenly become bad at signing players since Xhaka, it was just the player that turned out too limited for him to produce his magic
- What was the club culture that led to failure to retain Alexis and mismanage Ramsey’s contract?
For Alexis, one I actually appreciated, not retaining people that doesn't want to be here even if we end up losing in the deal, which btw for Alexis arguably we didn't, the consequences of that deal were fruitful for us and Alexis lost his edge.
For Ramsey, no club culture thing, it wasn't a secret that the end of the Wenger era would lead to some departures. He wanted a change, we couldn't negotiate and considering how important he was on his final season, it was worth the risk of letting him walk away for free. Remember, we were quite close to a CL spot.
- What do you want managerially now - stick with Arteta or change, and to who?
I'm just unimpressed with both the football we're playing and the way we want to play considering Arteta's background and the good moments we have had. If we're actually going to throw 3-5 years down the drain hoping a manager can build a full team there are plenty of people I'd prefer to Arteta, of course all of them with at least some degree of success in their CVs
To be fair to the club we're not alone in this hire unproven recently retired footballers fad, but eh, what I see now compared to Wengerball an even chaotic Emeryball bores me to tears what can I tell you. It also strikes me as unfair to people with the career experience and without the, hmm, networking skill let's say, but that's not really a relevant thing here
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