They fucked Emery under a bus because of his style of football.
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If Wenger was hired in say 2006 when they moved to the Emirates heād probably not have been ran. He was a victim of his own success in raising expectations. That said he had some strange traits in his latter days like abandoning the mix of flair and physicality of the invincibles in favour of a whole squad of injury prone tippy tappy players and a wage policy that overvalued young players and undervalued the stars. Probably needed reining in with a Director of Football.
He was still winning cups and had them competitive. He 100% didnt see the value in English players and the home grown rule fucked him a little bit.
He is right. The vast majority of English players hold their teams back. If Pep had his way heād maybe only have Foden and Iām not fully sure heād even have him
He probably had too much power within the club for the yanks
Wenger was a visionary in English football. He brought diet and nutrition and was great at scouting unknown foreign talent but once other clubs invested in these areas, his nice was more or less gone and he didnāt have the tactical mind or charisma to compete with the likes of Ferguson/Mourinho/Benitez and whoever came after.
He did compete with them though, until the investment dried up for him. Arsenal stopped being a draw.
He was probably the best money man of them all.
A miracle worker
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Did the money dry up or was Wenger a little too arrogant to spend?
He did so in his latter years to middling success.
I think Arsenal started to slip when they kept allowing the likes of Fabregas, Van Persie, Hleb leave when they got a good offer and tried to then replace them at half the price.
I think Wenger was too loyal to his obscure cheap signings. Iirc he had Denilson on 60k a week for 10 games a season and Van Persie not much higher.
Yeah, he didnāt know when to give up on a player. Think his ego and ideals caught up on him in the end, you need to be pragmatic if you want to win.
Surely Mikel Arteta should have been using his contacts in Spain to sign the likes of Unai Simon and Pau Torres for similar prices instead. Other than blooding academy players I canāt really see what heās trying to achieve with Arsenal. The recruitment is very haphazard.
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Theyāve gone through a few different Heads of Recruitment, Technical Directors and Director of Footballs as well as two head coaches. Ownership donāt seem interested either. The youth system seems to churn out a lot of mid level EPL attacking players which is one bright spot. Need to find a sucker like Bournemouth to buy these up.
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You can only have 17 foreign players in your squad, which is why the āEnglish taxā exists. The speculation is that the number will be lowered in the years ahead too. I think I read there are lads on big money at Arsenal like Kolasinac who arenāt even registered to play in the Premier League.
Wenger blew his load when he signed Ozil and then extended the contract on higher wages. No way back after that.
Torres wonāt go to Spurs cos he wants to play in the Champions League so I doubt heād agree to a switch to Arsenal.
Selling Van Persie to Man Utd defied belief in its stupidity.
For the sake of the couple of quid they got for him with a year left on his contract, they could have let him rot in the reserves ad run down his contract for the year.
Instead they sold him to a rival and he promptly won the league for them.
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Yeah I remember that rule well from my FM playing days when Iād fill the squad with young academy talents to make up the windfall. Busing in a rake of South American talents and nationalising them is another way around it.
I was never overly impressed with Ramsdale at Bournemouth or Sheff Utd.
It was effectively his last decent season of top level football too.
To be fair, if they did that their ability to attract top players would be zero. No football agent would advise their client to move to a club capable of such action.
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Such stonewalling is possible.
Tottenham refused to sell Modric to Chelsea back in the day, also Liverpool refused to sell Suarez to Arsenal.
What tended to happen is that the player realised they wouldnāt be sold and knuckled down therefore making ārotting in the reservesā unnecessary.
Needs to be more like Berbatov.
The man, the mythā¦