Summarise Arsène Wenger as manager since 2006

In as little or as many words as you wish.

For example if you believe Wenger should fuck off you could say:

  • When/what you think he was/is doing well as manager
  • When you thought he started to decline and in what ways
  • When you thought he was finished and why
  • When you feel he should have gone/been sacked

And if you think Wenger should stay, you should probably close this window now and hit up your nearest insane asylum pronto.

Meh.

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Almost.

I think the job be did between 2006-2014 will be much more appreciated in retrospect, in a way it can’t really be while he’s still in charge. They were hugely frustrating years in many ways but the fact that he kept some absolutely average teams in the top 4 at a time when Champions League revenue was a lot more critical than it is now and kept the club in or around the top level of domestic football (with a couple of good European runs, 2009 particularly) was a big, if not particularly glitzy accomplishment.

He also allowed the club’s inability to spend money to be presented as his unwillingness to. He has, at various times, allowed the buck for the inadeqacies of those further up the food chain from him to stop at his door, something else I think we will come to understand much more clearly when he’s gone.

None of which is to say he is not accountable for the current situation, or that the failure of the team to kick on from the FA Cup wins of 2014 and 2015 is something he doesn’t bare responsibility for. Some of the unacceptable things that are happening at the club are happening because his time has passed as I posted at length about some time ago now. I just think SOME of the things he’s done since 2006 will come to be looked back on with more respect after his tenure is over.

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Robert Mugabi :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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For me he was still a quality manager between 2006-2008. His teams displayed a world class technical level and he got the best out of them. His team in that period went from fighting for top four, to being genuine challengers for the Premier League and Champions League trophies. The worrying aspect of his management in this period though were our weaknesses as a team defensively.

I think Wenger started to rapidly decline in general back in 2009. After the end of season collapse of 2010 he was finished in my eyes. We knew back then that Arsenal were never going forward under him by this point. He was only going to get worse at his job.

Arsenal should have parted company with Wenger in the summer of 2011. It was the second grand end of season collapse in a row. That was the right time for change. Instead his position didn’t even come into question.

Unsurprisingly in that time since, he has progressively got worse at every aspect of his job, even what he used to do well. As a result his Arsenal seasons have been very similar since 2011 and his Arsenal sides have only performed worse and worse as the seasons roll on, to the point where by 2012-2013 we no longer had the technical level and attractive football we were renown for.

2014 comes around and Wenger finally wins a cup competition and has the chance to resign on a high note, leaving a confident squad and upbeat set of fans behind him for a new manager. Instead he signed a three year contract and all the talk was about the money Arsenal now have…

To his credit he won another FA Cup and assembled a decent squad with big money being invested into the squad, but in terms of overall performance his Arsenal side has continued to only regress as has Wenger’s decision-making.

With summer 2017 approaching, we face the prospect of another two years of potentially irreparable damage with this man at the helm.

All in all, he has overstayed his welcome by at least three years and in my opinion by about six.

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Lost his killer instinct.

is that the same time he got rid of his magic spectacles?
he lost it the day he paid £750000 for Silvestri

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Refusing the new contract after the 2014 FA Cup final would have been a good idea to save his face and to keep the status of greatest manager of our history.

Until the 2014, more or less, Arsène Wenger saved Arsenal from what we are now, a 6th place club with no ambition or quality.

Thanks to an outstanding group of young and cheap players, we have played one of the best football in Europe. The players were not capable to fight with the other top teams full of experienced and mentally strong players (Chelsea, United), but we were organized and passionate.

I would not change any players of this current squad with Sagna, Gallas, Kolo Tourè, Hleb, Fabregas, Adebayor, Flamini, Clichy, Nasri, van Persie, Eduardo,Ebouè, Rosicky Alex Song,

Imagine to see reactions like these, today. Impossible because of the spineless players we have.

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It’s really easy to say in retrospect but if he’d called it a day after the 2014 FA Cup Final, he’d have left an absolutely unequivocal hero, and right now when this mess were still going on to at least some extent (and it would be, because Wenger is far from the only factor in it) people would be clamouring for his return.

thoroughly depressing & groundhog day spring to mind.

I used to be of the ilk that though he should be given more time and used to be on his side but this is enough now, too many excuses and he is worse with a better team than the teams we had were absolute garbage how can you scrape into the CL with Bendtner Silvestre Chamakh etc sometimes even finish 3rd but somehow play like relegation fodder with Sanchez and Ozil, its a travesty!

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I see roughly three eras for Arsenal since 2006 and Wenger has gotten progressively worse through each of them.

He did a truly impressive job building a young exciting team after 2006 with very few resources at his disposal, constructing the team around Fabregas. Both the 07-08 and 09-10 teams were very good. The 10-11 team looked promising until the League Cup final and subsequent league collapse. Up until the morning of that Birmingham final, I’m not sure any manager in the world would have done better given the limited resources and the kinds of money and resources at the disposal of our major league rivals.

Wenger gets generally negative marks during the banter era that essentially began with the Birmingham loss and continued until the Ozil signing. Yes, he kept us within the top four, mainly because he was still pretty good at grinding out wins against lower table clubs. But this is where our football became kind of shit and he lost his magic with player buys and development. He began to sign players that didn’t seem to have complementary skill sets (mixing highly technical players like Santi with butchers like Podolski), deepened his obsession with the British core, etc. There were a couple really good buys like Santi and Kos but overall our young players seriously integrated into the first team during this era and going forward were a massive disappointment. Essentially, he kept us in top four, which was great for the beancounters doing the club’s finances, but he was not building the foundations of a good football club from this point onward. It was all scattered shit tactics (especially against stronger clubs), strange team construction choices, and young players stagnating rather than developing.

And the most recent era from 2013-14 onward has basically just been the story of a manager who already lost it tactically and in terms of player selection/development but who now has been given more resources to purchase a few shiny expensive toys. So we’ve been better overall than the banter era simply because we’ve been able to buy players like Ozil and Sanchez . But we haven’t been nearly good enough because those players are like frosting being added to a cake that is just kind of shit due to Wenger being the manager.

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I think that describes the situation very well.

Wenger ignored strengthening positions we were weak in for several seasons, like GK, CB, striker and DM, but did buy two world class players, Ozil and Sanchez.

Like you say, it’s just frosting.

No club can win the PL with just two world class players if the rest of the team consist of inadequate players.

When Wenger came here, we had almost no weak links in the first team.
We had a great defence, great midfield and world class strikers and attacking players.
They also were physically strong mentally and physically, but since we moved to the Emirates we have become light weight, physically and mentally, and a lot of our players are complacent and inconsistent.

Ironically, moving to the Emirates was Wenger’s plan, and it was him who planned for the move, and that has got him into this mess.
Since we moved from Highbury we haven’t achieved anything apart from a couple of FA Cups, and this season he has dragged us down to where we were when he first came here.

He was our greatest manager, but now he could drag us down to new levels we haven’t seen before in the PL.

There have been to many things that have gone wrong to say any stretch since 2006 has been ‘good’. We lost the League Cup final in 2011 to Birmingham City. We had won one game in the last seven games in 10/11 when 2nd place was up for grabs. 2nd place was up for grabs again in 14/15; we lose to Swansea and draw to United and Sunderland. The League title was delivered for us on a silver platter in 15/16; we all know what happened.

Wenger is praised for what he achieved during 2006-2014ish. But was what he did during that time really special, did we have the 5th/6th squad (I don’t think we did), and did he really made this team punch above it’s weight? In my opinion he did what was supposed to be doing with the resources he had at his disposal. We were a team below the real top during that time. We performed likewise.

I’ve said it before Cup success, imo, is not an indication of improvement. There are a lot of other factors playing a roll which determine a teams success in the Cup rather than measurable improvement of a team.

Around 2009 everything from scouting to acquiring players and team performances/tactics all went wrong and he never recovered from it. It only got worse.

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Best indication of progress for IMO is points tally in the 38 game league season.

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SHIT

‘Dare we dream?’

‘No’

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Oh fuck it’s February again

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  • “4th place trophy”.
  • “I almost signed Ronaldo”.
  • “We have many options at Striker.”
  • “The other side wanted it more from the beginning.”
  • “He will be out 6-8 weeks recovering.”

There are so many more…

Fuck this shit (turn off tv/stream, search porn).