Looking back over the 16 years of Arsene Wenger’s reign at the helm of affairs at the red and white half of north London, I mean the only part of north London, I must say that I commend the Frenchman’s work in unearthing, developing and establishing world-class players in his tenure. Talents such as Vieira, Henry, Bergkamp, Henry, Cole, Anelka, Toure, Fabregas, Adebayor, Song, Flamini, Van Persie just to name a few have all come from the unknown and blossomed under the gaffer.
I was not surprised at him being awarded the Coach of the Decade a while ago as he has shown time and time again how exceptional he is at nurturing raw talent and making them the cynosure of all eyes in the soccersphere.
No doubt the world was right in accepting that Arsenal Football Club had the best coach of the last decade. I must point out that coaching is more about grooming and mentoring raw potential until they begin to perform at their very best. Wenger has done this and is still continuing to do so, especially when you consider the likes of Wojciech, Jack, Theo and Kozzer.
The job of a manager as it were in comprises not only of grooming players to be the best like Le Prof does, but also of managing the squad and team tactically when they are out on the field. Simply put, the tactical and coaching aspects are the two most important jobs of a football manager.
The tactical aspect entails managing the team before, during and after games and this is one area of a manager’s duties I find very intriguing, delicate and dynamic. Though Arsene may have and is still excelling as a coach, I am not so impressed with the tactical depth of his game.
I was quite shocked to hear that Fabregas, our one time captain, utter the statement that Wenger never studies his opponents, nor does he read their playing pattern. In retrospect, when did you last see Mr. Wenger at an upcoming opponent’s game?
As we all know, the knowledge of an adversary’s strengths and weaknesses is one sure way or advantage to get the best out of him. Little wonder tactically sound managers always prove to the canon fodder for Wenger’s guns.
Let’s go through some of Le Prof’s tactical displays. I begin with the Man United return leg at the Grove when he chose to substitute Ox-Chambo, our most influential player on the day, for Arshavin, who seemed disinterested and his lacklustre performance eventually cost us the game. Not looking too far back, our 4-1 drubbing at the hands of Barcelona at the Camp Nou was another one in which Wenger complained, but yet he didn’t take into account that our decimated squad didn’t have what it took to play the way we were lined up. Sagna stated that Arsene should have taken an altogether different approach since we had lots of key injuries prior to the return leg. We had lost players in the defensive and central parts of the team, yet Wenger went with no plan to cover the gaping holes the injuries created. A formation that should have been arranged to stifle the opposition, as opposed to the open approach, should’ve been employed.
True wenger is a great man and coach but he needs to be able to admits we he has failed and make corrections. Why are we so silent on the fact that his project youth he forced on us over the years has failed. And now we are back to the old ways when some of us have been shouting about this for a while. In other words ‘Wenger doesn’t always know best’
Project youth?
Wojciech Szczesny
Kieran Gibbs
Carl Jenkinson
Alex Song
Emmanuel Frimpong
Francis Coquelin
Aaron Ramsey
Jack Wilshere
Theo Walcott
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain
Ryo Miyaichi
Current 1st team/squad players
Let’s hope he gets rid of all these failures ASAP eh!
Ramsey and jenkinson r average gibbs is overrated. Wilshere too. Good player but praised above his actual ability atm.
Oxlade is promising along with wojech but a long way 2 go before greatness same with wilshere
As for walcott he is a class…….. Sprinter.you can reel out the stats and quotes but when u watch him you can see he is going nowhere fast.
Frimpong is the black cattermole le coq is quite good.
Atm none of this players will take arsenal to the top
A bit harsh in saying that! No doubt Wenger makes mistakes. He had done and will continue to do so. But tell me one person who never makes mistakes! Not trying to defend Wenger but to give him 3/10 is ridiculous. We didn’t always play 4-4-3 after our all conquering 4-4-2, for a while we played 4-4-1-1 when we had Flamini. We simply don’t have the player to play 4-4-2, it would be too open in the middle and we will get killed. Fiberglass is a great player, no doubt. But would I complain with him being replaced by Arteta? Not one bit. Chances we can create and always will even without Cesc. But grit we don’t have. The addition of Arteta really help this team endless. We are a better team with Arteta then with Cesc. We are more balanced in every way.
Wenger has always let his player have the freedom to play on the pitch that’s why our movement are always so good and players switching for positions. When things are going our way, everyone was saying how wonderful everything is, but when things get tough, everyone starts to question Wenger for his tactical sense. It’s simple sometime it works wondrous, sometime it goes horribly wrong. But would I change our way of play? Not a chance.
Another thing is, parking the bus doesn’t work with us, because we don’t defend well as a unit. We are an attacking team, our strength is to defend high up, put pressure on the opposing team and try to score a goal. We didn’t loose against AC because of tactical error, we lost because we had no heart, we didn’t have the drive to win, we didn’t have any guts to go out and play. The players’ attitude was absolutely un-defendable. Had we scored an away goal, even at 4-1, we would have won the tie. Wenger took a gamble and didn’t pay off. That was that!
For the most part i agrèe with you, &this isn’t anythng new. For löng many people have said the same good coach, poor manager.
The coach is supposed to hone the players technique &character to get him to be the best he can be. The manager is supposed to take that player knowing his technical ability &fix him where he can maximize that ability to the best for the team. Some persons are better coaches than managers -wenger. Others are better managers than coaches -mourinho/ or wenger of old. Few are good either way – SAF, ?guardiola.
Unfortunately, in top level football coaching comes 2nd to managing. Its more important to be able to 2get the best out of talent available to him,if that isn’t sufficient he must go out &get ready-made talent-ala SAF,mourinho,pep. Coaching is predominantly done at the academy,youth &reserve team levels.
But i disagree with u on som matters, wenger couldn’t have made a player like bergkamp who was fifa’s 3rd best player in 1993/4,years b4 joining arsenal. Also agree that he had a hand in henry’s development but the boy was already a star. Voted best young player in the 1998 world after scoring 3goals from the wing. Juve didnt pay big money to monaco for him for nothng. Point is those 2 &viera to a lesser extent were far from unknown before arsenal.
Some people have defended wenger with myriad of excuses
1. Injury- we have been beaten by teams with worse injury problems. Last year an injury ravaged man utd dumped us out of the fa cup with a team of defenders, the 1-3 CL loss to the same team occured wen utd had 3/4 of its 1st choice defence out injured. Even the recent 1-2 loss utd had a beta chunk of 1st team starters out. Thats wen a manager shows his ability. Getting the best out of the available is his job. Btw its no coincidence we always hav an injured squad -another failure in management
2. Age -well i think man utd thrashing 8-2 with a younger squad put that to rest, despite mourinho telling the world that wengers team can’t be young forever. All great managers utilize young talent, none use it as an excuse, they just play them when they thnk the boy is ready.
3. The others, referees, pitch,balls etc. Yada yada yada. Bla bla bla
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