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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.