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Wenger: the red myths descend

tcahill

Well-Known Member
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.


My single biggest criticism of Wenger is his general refusal to spend money when it is clearly needed. This isn't reflected in your analysis. While Wenger might be punching above his squad cost, the question remains whether or not the squad cost gap between us and the oligarchs needs to be as large as it is currently. There have been some obvious clear gaps in our squad for several seasons, some of which still aren't addressed. The transfer window where we only bought Cech comes to mind.

I completely agree with the rest though, plenty of people just seem happy to dump all of their frustration about the club at Wenger's door. Unless we aim the club's strategy in an entirely new direction, no manager is going to be a significant improvement over Arsène.
 

freeglennhelder2

Established Member

Country: England

Player:Elneny
I get it. But you don't always get what you pay for. So Kolasinac was a free but may be worth 25 million. Ramsey was a lot less than what he's worth now. So my counter argument would be what's more important then is the value of the player you are putting on the field, not what you did or didn't pay for them.

I don't think that's a myth. As a one off yes, but in a tight game I think many people appreciate you can have a mishap or something go against you and lose 1-0 or 2-1, but so many defeats of bigger scorelines show a complete capitulation and highlight something isn't right somewhere. But over a course of a season I'd rather lose one game by a large margin than four games by a small margin but the problem is we usually do both, and the big defeats are highlighted because people are often waiting to see what's changed and what's been addressed and usually it's the same old story with the same old mistakes.

People expect more from us as a team and a club. And if we are going to not win the league, at least let's try it doing something different. There's literally no point in going away to Stamford Bridge and grinding out a 0-0 draw if you are going to go on and show the crazy stuff we did against Liverpool, United and Chelsea.

If we performed with the appetite, concentration and discipline of that 0-0 away to Chelsea, even 65% of games under Wenger, nobody could have an issue with him.

Right now, we perform like that so infrequently it is almost like that game was managed by a different person. It's clear the players can do it. Perhaps they are just fed up of doing it under Wenger.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
One thing I've noticed is that Wenger isn't absolutely terrible at anything (setting up a defensive team structure is probably his biggest weakness) he's just bad at a lot of little things which aggregate.

One season we'll be brilliant away, but terrible at home then vice versa. Sometimes we'll be excellent defensively (14/15 I think?) but stale upfront then we'll be excellent offensively (16/17) and woeful defensively.

It means things never look bad with a high level view, but we know, we all know.
 

IslingtonBornandbred

Active Member
One thing I've noticed is that Wenger isn't absolutely terrible at anything (setting up a defensive team structure is probably his biggest weakness) he's just bad at a lot of little things which aggregate.

One season we'll be brilliant away, but terrible at home then vice versa. Sometimes we'll be excellent defensively (14/15 I think?) but stale upfront then we'll be excellent offensively (16/17) and woeful defensively.

It means things never look bad with a high level view, but we know, we all know.

I think one of my biggest gripes with him is for one specific game, let's use the away Chelsea game for an example....the team will be set up properly, the distances will be right, both wing backs or full backs will be sensible, the work-rate will be there and as a defensive unit we'll look good.

And then, it's like he just forgets. He reverts back to "just go out and play lads" and the players don't look switched on, there are massive gaps and we concede stupid goals. The frustration is if were to transform into a team who were hard to play against and were consistently solid defensively then Wenger can let them do their thing going forward. The balance hasn't been right. G Nev's right, look at that front three, Özil, Alexis and Lacazette, we could have only dreamed of that a while ago when we are playing Arshavin up front as a lone forward or Chamakh....it's what's going on behind them that's the issue.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
I think one of my biggest gripes with him is for one specific game, let's use the away Chelsea game for an example....the team will be set up properly, the distances will be right, both wing backs or full backs will be sensible, the work-rate will be there and as a defensive unit we'll look good.

And then, it's like he just forgets. He reverts back to "just go out and play lads" and the players don't look switched on, there are massive gaps and we concede stupid goals. The frustration is if were to transform into a team who were hard to play against and were consistently solid defensively then Wenger can let them do their thing going forward. The balance hasn't been right. G Nev's right, look at that front three, Özil, Alexis and Lacazette, we could have only dreamed of that a while ago when we are playing Arshavin up front as a lone forward or Chamakh....it's what's going on behind them that's the issue.
I don't know how long it will take me to get over that tbh.

To know that my club had one of the best front lines in Europe but just couldn't get a half decent defence behind them. I don't know if we'll ever have world class forwards again.
 

IslingtonBornandbred

Active Member
I don't know how long it will take me to get over that tbh.

To know that my club had one of the best front lines in Europe but just couldn't get a half decent defence behind them. I don't know if we'll ever have world class forwards again.

To be fair, RVP and Cesc and that lot weren't bad either but again, we just failed to build up the squad enough around them.
 

Lookin' for a new Baby

New name pending...
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.
Look at Ox and I think it was Ramsey in the 4 nil defeat at pool, the ball is kicked out from our back line, it is quickly lost. those two are facing the touch line, one of them is talking to the bench - pool scored,
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
Here's another example that would get lost in your averaging out the results:

2015/16

Arsenal 1-1 Sp*rs
WBA 2-1 Arsenal
Norwich 1-1 Arsenal
Arsenal 3-1 Sunderland
Villa 0-2 Arsenal
Arsenal 2-1 City - Arsenal Top of the league
Southampton 4-0 Arsenal
Arsenal 2-0 B'nmouth
Arsenal 1-0 Newcastle
Liverpool 3-3 Arsenal - crucial stretch of games to get back into title race
Stoke 0-0 Arsenal
Arsenal 0-1 Chelsea
Arsenal 0-0 Southampton
Bournemouth 0-2 Arsenal
Arsenal 2-1 Leicester - there's still hope
UTD. 3-2 Arsenal
Arsenal 1-2 Swansea - 7pts of 24 when a genuine league title challenge on the line - title challenge done & dusted - March 2nd

After the Swansea game, Arsenal go unbeaten till the end of teh season and somehow manage to scrape 2nd after Sp*ds hilariously collapse at Newcastle.

All your averages fail to highlight the simple fact that in recent years Arsenal have capitulated when positioned to challenge for the title and all because we don't score enough & can't defend well enough when it really counts at the business end of the season.
So that's just a result of your own viewpoint . . in the title race, bomb out, in the title race, bomb out etc.

A strange way of viewing our progress. What you're doing is calling 3/4th place inconsistency by another name, 'hope', 'no hope'. The rich 3 teams have carved up the league for 12 of the last 13 years, Wenger never had much chance. Not sure where your hope comes from.
 

NieThePiet

Loves Overhyping Our Rivals
and Mike Dean will be our referee next three games surely too. FA is a joke, they know the referees are trash, but they don't want to believe it.

Hope Wenger will say the same after another decision like this, we should not accept hat.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
The stats over 5 years are skewed slightly for a few reasons, so they don't really represent the here and now or even the most recent seasons. Sp**s and Liverpool weren't real forces until 2 to 3 seasons ago - in that period I'd imagine Sp**s are absolutely conceding less goals than us. Tim Sherwood's Sp**s aren't comparable to their current team. Since Potch and Klopp came in, the stats will look different (certainly for Sp**s) and we've allowed them to leapfrog us.

Similarly, is Pep's City comparable to Pellegrini's. Conte comparable to Hiddink who finished 10th? My point is that we've had longevity and been consistently OK but aren't capable of any more under the current regime, where other teams have had drops but much higher peaks. I fully expect a drop initially (or at best maintaining current position) when Wenger leaves initially, but in time we could be capable of more than aiming for 4th under the right management. That's the best that Wenger can do, and right now even that's out of his reach.
The stats are not skewed. They are the most recent 5 seasons. I've addressed this season's and last season's trend in the post.

The point is, Wenger's defence is not worse than his attack. He has out performed his spend position on both counts.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
I get it. But you don't always get what you pay for. So Kolasinac was a free but may be worth 25 million. Ramsey was a lot less than what he's worth now. So my counter argument would be what's more important then is the value of the player you are putting on the field, not what you did or didn't pay for them.

I don't think that's a myth. As a one off yes, but in a tight game I think many people appreciate you can have a mishap or something go against you and lose 1-0 or 2-1, but so many defeats of bigger scorelines show a complete capitulation and highlight something isn't right somewhere. But over a course of a season I'd rather lose one game by a large margin than four games by a small margin but the problem is we usually do both, and the big defeats are highlighted because people are often waiting to see what's changed and what's been addressed and usually it's the same old story with the same old mistakes.

People expect more from us as a team and a club. And if we are going to not win the league, at least let's try it doing something different. There's literally no point in going away to Stamford Bridge and grinding out a 0-0 draw if you are going to go on and show the crazy stuff we did against Liverpool, United and Chelsea.
People will always expect more, that's why managers change so frequently.

Squad cost isn't an exact science, but there's a good chance that Pep's €800m+ squad has a lot more quality than our €400m+ squad.

It's blatantly obvious we don't lose lot's of 4-0 and 1-0s, otherwise our goals against and clean sheets would be a lot worse.
 

al-Ustaadh

👳‍♂️ Figuring out how to delete my account 👳‍♂️
I wonder if Bould will continue to just sit on the bench and not say a damn word.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
One thing I've noticed is that Wenger isn't absolutely terrible at anything (setting up a defensive team structure is probably his biggest weakness) he's just bad at a lot of little things which aggregate.
Just ignore all the proof I've shown and say it's wrong with no justification. OK, I'm used to that on here :lol:
 

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