I’m a newer fan who only started watching the club over the past 2 seasons. I’ve been trying to learn the history of the club, and I’m confused why there was hate for Wenger at the end of his career. I learned that he lead the invincible’s, and that amazing squad from the early 2000s, he gave us the only champions league final appearance in club history, and even after that he seem to do an amazing job. Heck he even got a new Stadium that is really nice. He seemed to be loved. By all accounts he should be a Saint to the gooners but then I look forward a few years, and they were all these Wenger out protests. What led to such a fall from grace.
You had to have been there to understand. He did good in the beginning but fell off hard!!! At the end
The guy wouldn’t spend any money in the market to compete with other teams for titles but gave himself a pay rise every year. Ridiculous stuff he needed to go
Nothing more than the club hung Wenger out to dry, and he caught all the flack for the lowering standards
To put things into perspective, and to highlight how toxic it got, at one point he was my absolute hero, by the end, I distinctly watching us go 4-1 down at home to Liverpool and getting happier as each Liverpool goal went in because it increased the chances of Wenger being sacked
This happens with every club. Overall, Kroenke is broke. He just knows how not to show it. He is shitting on Arsenal and we are still all trying to pretend he isn’t taking all that funding into the Rams and whatever the fuck team he owns in the NBA.
Plastics
So plastics for wanting him gone?
People were desperate for a league title and didn’t realize it was never going to happen with our level of spending. So they kept blaming Wenger and he always took the heat and refused to ever demand backing from the ownership.
Wenger did make a bunch of blunders in the market but players like Ozil and Sanchez only came Becuase of him, and he dragged utter dross to top4 year after year.
Its hard to understand that period without having been there for the previous success as well, and the weight of expectation that set in
He didn’t drag utter dross to top 4. The times when we used to get top 4 was when it was only Man U and Chelsea who were serious about going for the title. As soon as a few more teams got into the title mix, we dropped further down. But we were always at our rightful level in comparison to the competition.
Completely agree, because Spurs and Liverpool were mediocre back then.
Nobody was desperate or even thinking about a title during those years. We were scraping CL qualification most years. The issue was our football became pretty dire and uninspired with the horseshoe of death. Wenger was also quite stubborn at that point and it was clear we were not going to improve with him, that a change had to happen and he wasn’t willing let that change happen which led to the Wenger out stuff. Clearly still a legend and I think even the Wenger Outs love him (myself included), but those seasons were brutal.
By horseshoe of death are you referring to how we’d move down the field, pass it in an arch from one wing to the other wing, then someone would pass it back to a defender who would pass it back to the keeper and repeat? Those were some rough games, it always seemed like we’d concede a goal on the break then just follow that passing pattern with zero threat to score.
That and also when we’d control possession in their zone but had no incisiveness or spark in our attack and would just roll the ball around their box with no idea of what to do against a low block.
Wenger was very stubborn and set in his beliefs. One of those was that players cost too much after performing well in the World Cup and Euros. He thought Ozil was too expensive when he broke out and ended up going to Madrid for 15 million even though there was a lot of talk at the time about how he’d be great for Arsenal. A few years later and Wenger spent 42.5 million for Ozil.
The point is, managers mis-judge players and make mistakes all the time. Wasn’t only Wenger. But his rigid belief system in all areas of management didn’t transition into the new age of competitiveness very well. By the end it was like watching ballerinas getting beaten up by rugby players.
That’s not true on Ozil. Ozil chose to go Madrid, financials weren’t an issue. He even said to Wenger if he leaves, he wanted to go to where Wenger was.
Huh? He almost ended his reign with 0 away points in his final six months, humiliated by City twice in the same week, and allowed Ozil to skip games at will.
Yes at the very end, everything went to shit. But people were going for his head for years before then. He wanted to leave before he did, but the owners asked him to stay on a bit longer.
The club stagnated, fell out of champions league, then Europa league, and he probably stayed 3 years too long. Standards dropped and players weren’t challenged enough.
He’s still a legend. He is Arsenal. Man has a statue outside the Emirates.
I’m 41, all I ever knew was Papa Wengz and I absolutely adored him. But there comes a time where we still love our parents/grandparents but we start to wonder if it’s still safe for them to drive the car……
This is a great analogy. I think the other thing that annoyed us is that we always were challenging for the top 4 but never were serious title contenders. Also, we could beat all the little teams but struggled to compete with the big ones. It was just a little missing that we couldn’t seem to fill. In hindsight, top 4 for that many years is an incredible achievement and there were def some lean years after.
Same here, 34 years old Swiss gooner. Arsenal was Arsène as far as I am concerned. We moved on and we’re in good hands but I’ll never forget what the man did for us and English football.
I originally thought Mr Wenger stayed a season or 2 too long. Club needed a change.
However now in retrospect, if Mr Wenger left earlier we may not have ended up with Arteta. Opportunity is all about timing.
His standards didn’t drop. Man wasn’t not funded in the transfer market toward the end. Arssenal built the stadium instead.
No tactical awareness. Play the same team with the same tactics for different games. He seemed to tell all his squads “go out there and do your best”, so not cool
We went from a perennial title contender to being a clear step below the rest of the big five. All of those clubs routinely hammered us toward the end of his reign. His ideas got a bit stale and he refused to transition to a more modern club model with more oversight/checks and balances. Still, he did not deserve the over the top displays of criticism and ridicule that were coming in. The flyover banners e.g. were embarrassing. He should have stepped down after one of the FA Cup wins but he was too proud.
This is said as someone who was Wenger In until the very end.
The two big innovations Wenger helped champion in English football were improved fitness and nutritional standards, and a ‘continental’ style of football that emphasized individual expression and creativity. This is responsible for Arsenal being synonymous with the beautiful free flowing football we are now associated with, as opposed to the boring orcish pragmatism we employed in the past.
It also meant that once other clubs caught up off the pitch fitness-wise, and more non-British managers came in bringing better ‘systems’, Wenger’s edge was no longer the difference maker, and we were finding ourselves regularly outmuscled by the weaker teams and outplayed by the stronger ones.
Wenger also deeply pushed for a ‘family’ dynamic within the club, getting personally involved with the academy and assigning far too much meaning on the young players coming up through the ranks. It meant that we constantly had exciting young players breaking into the team seemingly every year, but it also meant there was too much emotion placed in player dynamics. Players like Cole, Nasri, RvP pissed him off, but Cesc leaving seemed to break him. It also meant he was frequently taken advantage of by the grifters and perennially crocked towards the end of his career, and we found the squad bloated out with players he was too nice to sell and the injury room stacked full of futile talent that he was too invested in to move on.
I’ve lately wondered how much poor attitudes among certain players contributed to Arsenal’s weaker years.
Can’t really prove this myself, but just considering how Arteta was so keen on getting rid of Auba and Ozil, I feel like it had something to do with it.
No Champions league and just how shit we were away from home combined with some really strange transfer decisions and the overall feeling of a club not progressing led to just a negative atmosphere all around the club
Feel like a lot of this carried on into the Emery days too.
His tactics were predictable and the transfers were poor. We had a group of players that pretty clearly weren’t at the level of the top teams. Wegner actually managed to get good results out of those teams given their talent level. But you knew every time we played a big team that there was a good chance we’d get embarrassed and lose by 3 or more. And you knew top talent would never choose Arsenal. I thought he deserved the chance to stay as long as he wanted but those last few years were painful.
People are stupid, ungrateful and didn’t and still don’t understand the financial reasons why he couldn’t spend as much as his rivals,
Imagine building Arsenal from an English club to a GLOBAL power only for your fans to shit on you? disgusting behaviour.
People have a “what did you do for me lately” mentality,
Our fanbase lost it’s class, became like EVERY other clubs fanbase, cheap, wanting to "go ahead with the times " .
AFTV didn’t help with their “IMA SHOUT LOUD SO I MAKE YOU THINK IM RIGHT” mentality.
We would lose regularly to every big team by like 4 goals it’s not that crazy that people got tired of it
Each to their own,
I just wish it ended in a more classy way.
It didn’t end in a classy way because of how bad the club was run.
Liverpool and Spurs have less to spend than us yet ended up finishing above us… explain why that is the case.
There were huge problems at the club around mid 2010s. We were rotting from the inside. Gazidis and the entire board were to blame as much as Wenger himself, however, the club couldn’t move forward and adopt a modern club structure with Wenger in the way. He stubbornly refused to allow “football people” to have football jobs at the executive level. They were all money men. Gazidis - the CEO - and Wenger handled all the transfers.
In 2015/16 we only made one signing and it was Petr Cech. We then finished 2nd in the league to Leicester with our midfield depth being the likes of Flamini and an essentially retired Arteta, and our only striker alternate to Giroud being Danny Welbeck who wasn’t fit to play until the February of that season.
The following summer the club signed Xhaka, Mustafi, and Lucas Perez for almost 90 million total. These two windows are greatly attributed with our stagnant years without Champions League football that followed. And somewhere in there, Wenger signed a new 2 year contract, whilst results on the pitch got worse and worse. Not only were we getting battered by every top 6 team, we also got knocked out 10-2 on aggregate by Bayern in the UCL which turned out to be our final appearance in the competition until this season.
There’s a hell of a lot more to it than that but that’s a basic overview I guess.
Personally, I was pissed because he had the right time to go and he didn’t.
2017 FA cup final - he wins it’s for the 7th time.
Instead he stays on and it all starts to fall apart.
My faith on Wenger fell off when he failed to win against Leicester City. After that, I realized it was time for him to go.
