This post is dedicated to Thomas’s everywhere. No, really, it is.
These comments before the weekend from Arsene Wenger, via the Daily Mail, should be of interest to anyone seeking to understand the events of the last few years at Arsenal:
“‘We are, resource-wise, more competitive,’ he said, and clearly he feels the money needed to fund the move to the Emirates has, until now, clipped his wings.
‘Until 2005, we could compete every year to win the league,’ he added.
‘After we moved into the new stadium, it’s not a coincidence even if some seasons we were close to winning the title, we couldn’t.
‘But, believe me, I have worked harder in the last four or five years, against scepticism, against players moving out.”
It’s that final sentence – the one about working harder over the last five years, and why – that I find remarkably telling.
He is, in effect, saying that his job was more challenging in the last few years than during any other part of his 17 year tenure – and he cites player departures and scepticism as the two key reasons. Whilst the older playing talent took flight, the Doubting Thomas’s began to hi-jack the headlines.
If you yourself are an Arsenal fan, but one riddled with doubt and cynicism, anger and criticism, just take a moment to think about that.
Ask yourself what role YOU played in making the Arsenal Manager’s job that much harder.
Then ask yourself, regardless of victory, draw or defeat, what role, as a fan and a supporter, you might play in the future.
If you are a Doubting Thomas or have loved ones or know of anyone who is doubtful about Arsenal’s future prospects, it’s not too late to do something about it. Simply log onto http://www.postivelyarsenal.com for at least 20 minutes every day and rediscover your faith in the club. Help is at hand; just twenty minutes every day.
Go on, take that first positive step. Today and every day.
Positively Arsenal 
anicoll5 September 30, 2013 at 1:21 pm
lol…a ten match ban for not doing it properly…its slap-grab-push in one move…thats the sequence..not grab and scratch
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Thanks, @rantetta, for the link to that New York Times article. If you guys can ignore the page heading “Soccer”, that’s a good read. An article written for an audience that doesn’t have pre-conceived ideas of the “facts”, by a journalist who doesn’t have a pre-ordained narrative to maintain. Sometimes Americans get it right.
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Best line from that NYT article:
“Wenger’s true triumph is that his optimism always gets the better of pessimism.” Genius.
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rantetta,
Thanks for that NYT piece on Arsene Wenger. That was a fair and balanced article with the writer just saying things as they are. I never see stuff like that from Britain. They are always trying to be smart by half. Even where the piece mentioned the lack of trophy, it was mentioned in an apirational way rather than the despondent manner that we are used to getting from the trash British media.
Thanks again for providing the link.
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The truth is of course the media pack don’t really care for success
They love crisis,turmoil, booing
They love dissent, misery and all that goes with it
yes off course, …thats what sells…mankind is brainwashed into a stupor to follow catchy headlines and stories (even fictional)…same with sports and the sports fans who are equally dumb ..
but thats their job..thats how they make their money..professional trolls…
what would our fans and bloggers excuse be? did they genuinely lose hope believing all the media trash? do they serve agendas of dein/usmanov ? are they simply thick and shouldnt be allowed near a computer let alone making opinions…. ?
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“….as the manager, coach, and MENTOR of every aspect of Arsenal’s business.”
luv’it
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AA, excellent post! I enjoyed your celebratory account of Positively Arsenal’s development and success a few days ago. Congratulations to you, George and your team if writers; there’s plenty of room in the Arsenal blogosphere for the orientation of PA clearly. I do miss many voices I’ve learned from elsewhere but it is nice to drop in on occasion for good Arsrnal football talk.
Re: Red Nose, I think he saw the writing on the wall the season before when ManU won no trophies at all when it lost the league to City. So he splurged all their dwindling resources to grab the little Dutch boy for one last bid for glory rather than trying to build a better balanced team for the future by addressing central midfield–how he must rue losing out on Ramsey! If they drop out of the CL places–please please!–the little boy inside will be crying tears that flow like water bursting through the dike because he wouldn’t stay through the cold night!
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“Yet it was the German youth international, purchased from Stuttgart for £100,000 when he was 16, who represented Wenger’s eye for a player.”
i dont know if he still has an eye for talent…his scouting network and practices are so outdated..everyone has cought up…..look at spurs …30m lamela……chelsea 32m willian….arsene needs to get with the times….
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I would break my ‘don’t be daft’ rule in writing off the Salford team so early in a season but watching them this season, against the Baggies, at Anfield, and even games they won against Palace and Leverkeusen they were poor. When Carrick is what passes for your creative spring you are not in a good place.
And a nice little trip to Donetsk underway – oh joy
Someone has a very big, very expensive rebuilding exercise at OT – whether it is Moyes remains to be seen – the man is wobbling
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im sorry but does anyone else agree with the following ? :
“That’s what football is all about, opinions.”
i dont understand why the above sentence is passed around as if its some proven axiom…
are people trying to cover their arses and excuse their negativity and attacks/loss of faith on the club as being just an opinion we should all tolerate regardless of how non sensical it might be ?
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“I’d go one step further and suggest it’s slightly more insidious than that in as far as, for safety’s sake, they (journalists) prefer to move as a pack with very little dissent between them.”
I would go even further and suggest many Arsenal bloggers do the same.
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Hunter
Opinions are fine, as long as they are based on the evidence.
and opinions should be adaptable and evolve – otherwise its just bigotry.
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@hunter
Most of the time it’s not even an opinion that people are giving, which should be some interpretation of the facts. It’s nothing but a theory, an emotional and baseless theory with no legitimacy to ‘opinion’ status.
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Beautifully written post Andrew. As ever.
What Limestone said.
Way, way too early for obituaries re: Red Mancs, as ‘Coll points out. They won’t be disappearing in the long term, whatever their current malaise. I did idly wonder to myself if Moyes was ever the right man for the job though, inherently conservative and cautious in his approach, it’s a big, demanding (and shit) stage he finds himself on now, and he’s got a lot to sort out, time slipping by and all eyes focused on his every decision. Some of the peasants are revolting as well (extremely revolting). Also the fear factor (or Fergie factor) is no longer there at Old Trafford. Anyway, not our problem!
Arsene did say we would benefit from the managerial changes elsewhere, and perhaps he’ll be proven right (once again).
Still getting your daily fix H13?
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Harry
The other place is beginning to sound like this one.
Some of the guys are nearly, (just nearly mind) smiling.
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double canister September 30, 2013 at 4:08 pm
nah i prefer something more honest and direct
there are correct/valid opinions and there are bullshit/crap opinions
those with the crap ones should stf up….if thats “fascism” then im with di canio all way…..lol…… the idea of having the liberty to talk shit without any accountability and disguising it as right to an opinion is plain idiocy.
+++++++++++
well harry those who were wrong and dared abuse and call us deluded should be reminded everyday that they were wrong and that they know fuck all about football… 🙂 got a problem with that too? ….. didnt realise part of being a supporter is calling our greatest ever manager inept and out of touch with reality…….. or that he cant coach defence or do transfers….hahaaa..
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Nice post, Andrew. Good comments as always, folk.
Hunter 3:37. You ask two questions, I answer No and Yes respectively.
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I’m very interested to see how the ‘Special One’ fares in his second stint at Chelsea. I am of the opinion that he was rather fortunate the first time around as he came up against an Arsenal and Man Utd in transition; our period of austerity had begun, while Man Utd nurtured the talents of Ronaldo and Rooney who were just coming out of their teenage years. Mourinho arrived at the right time, and left at the right time.
He now faces an Arsenal resurgent and financially competitive, and another petro-dollar competitor in Man City. As well as much more financial power across the rest of Europe with the likes of PSG, Monaco, Bayern. Chelsea are no longer clear at the top where spending power is concerned, when he could take players like Drogba, Essien, Robben, Carvalho, Cashley, etc. with little competition.
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The comparisons with Revie’s Leeds makes sense to me.
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< The comparisons of Slurgus' end with the end of Revie’s Leeds make sense to me.
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Some of the guys are nearly, (just nearly mind) smiling
nah its all fake… hehehe …the old guard is waiting for a fuck up to come out telling everyone we were wrong to get excited…. 😉
just cause we have had good results dont mean we should get carried away lads
BUT….
if we lose a game …wenger has to go yeah? rip our policies to shreds, hire mourinho and start all over again…got it? ….no overreactions people…..we are not getting carried away….
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Hunter 3:37. You ask two questions, I answer No and Yes respectively.
so the no goes to – no, they arent trying to cover their arses
and the yes goes to – yes, nonsensical opinions should be aired and tolerated.
correct?
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I don’t read any blogs that I don’t like the tone of,and don’t read comments by people I believe to be foolish .
Its not difficult.
Fuck e’m.
If I want a fight I will do it in the street (that’s Twitter in the virtual world) I wont go into someone else’s house ,take a swing at him ,and expect a cup of tea and a cake.
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Plenty to smile about DC!
Nothing wrong with striking a note of caution though, it’s still very early and it’s a marathon not a sprint as the cliche goes. Some tough fixtures come November as well. With the players we have returning though, I’m fair brimming with, er, (cautious) optimism. If that’s not a contradiction in terms
Fins, re: the Red Mancs. It will be interesting to see what happens should these dire results persist, and suddenly their CL place be under threat. Again, early days of course. Probably just wishful thinking on my part…
H13, I don’t know what battles rage in your head, but it’s good to see you still fighting the imaginary foes with such gusto. Take no prisoners!
Or go to LeGrove, start a fight with some of that awful lot, if you must, but in the name of Beelzebub’s balls. get over this obsession with a certain other site. Move on. Frankly, it’s unhealthy, and more than a little disturbing.
Arse.
Toodlepip.
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What about that Zaha guy, a self-professed gooner, that called us a paper tiger and went to Manchester. With us he would now be having regular game time. Not that I particulary want him at the club, boy is clearly daft, if he was bit smarter he would have seen that while ferguson bought the little Dutch boy it was Wenger that created the player.
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This is the latest string of thought emanating from the Wenger can’t do tactics crowd:
“Arteta has to fight his way back in the team because Flamini (free transfer, ewwww!) is playing out of his skin.”
“We need to stop conceding cheap goals because Ramsey will not be in this form for ever.”
Put two and two together, then, you bloody idiots. It was only last year that Arteta helped the team achieve the second best defensive record in the league.
Let’s make it simple for those who are a bit slow. A deep lying play maker like Arteta is better than a destroyer like Flamini because possession is a better defensive tactic than just breaking up play. Tiki Taka is not just a nightclub in Mykonos.
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He could be living the life Jenkinson is living now, in a dream. Now that’s a proper trooper. Karma.
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imaginary?
nah i think youve talked to them too….. they do exist….
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The notion Wenger doesn’t do tactics is a myth created to vilify him. Read before, Just a couple seasons ago or so he was the manager who created most goals and gained most points through his substitutions.
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Harry: “Fins, re: the Red Mancs. It will be interesting to see what happens should these dire results persist, and suddenly their CL place be under threat. Again, early days of course. Probably just wishful thinking on my part…”
They’ll be alright. Their sponsors will not care if they do a Liverpool and they can sell enough Wayne Rooney lunch boxes in Asia to cover all their losses. Thanks to the Ferguson mystique, they’ll be able to pay £17m for players like Anderson and Phil Jones indefinitely. I mean, everyone knows they are Manchester United and the rules of economics don’t apply to them.
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I love to listen people’s opinions (yes, opinions) about Arsenal, as long as they are respectful, and there are always some cracking ones here. Most of which I’ve laways been in agreement with.
It’s just all that other shit I can’t be doing with.
But looking back, perhaps I went too far there, with that last, um, paragraph in the previous post. And If that’s the case, I offer my humblest apologies.
Laters.
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Also read years ago a former player telling the story on how Wenger before taking over the team went into the dressing room during half time and started drawing some lines on the drawing board. The player said the players had no idea what was going on but did exactly as he suggested and scored two goals based exactly on that drawing.
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Ooooh I don’t know Arry – politely asking H13 whether he feels his talents in the art and science in football are being unnecessarily confined on the very, very small canvas of interblog rivalry seems a fair point to raise.
A brave point to raise, some might say Arry.
Clearly the answer must come from the soul of the artist himself.
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A great quote from todays Irish Times, by Ken Early
“As for Mourinho, the longer we know him, the more often we watch him hop from club to club, accumulating wealth and enemies. He appears to be in football for the status it brings him rather than for anything to do with the game. If football could not give him that, he would have looked for it in some other sphere: politics perhaps, or media.”
http://www.irishtimes.com/jose-s-puzzling-motivation-an-all-consuming-personal-passion-play-1.1544209
lovely stuff about Bergkamp too.
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@Apropos
Wenger is the only manager who managed to beat Bayern Munich at home last season. Before that, if it hadn’t been for an eager ref, Guardiola and the Barcelona freight would have been brought to their knees.
Whenever I hear someone say Wenger can’t do tactics, all I see is a two headed alien who has been on earth less than five minutes. Shit, if Wenger couldn’t do tactics we would have had trouble finishing in the top half of the table, never mind the CL places.
On the other hand, you know who can’t do tactics? The same guy who while at Madrid had trouble accommodating Ozil in his team because he needed Khedira to play alongside Xabi Alonso and who is keeping out Mata despite his teams dismal chance creation rate.
And what’s funny is these same tactical geniuses would have been as happy as pigs in poo if the sad one had been given the reins at Arsenal.
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But looking back, perhaps I went too far there, with that last, um, paragraph in the previous post. And If that’s the case, I offer my humblest apologies.
you dont need to apologise for anything mate…i dont see you doing or saying anything wrong…..
its just im not that magnanimous like arsene….i remember those who have spoken utter shit about the manager, the players, our policies, the owners, the executives, the coaches, the scouters…. thats all….lol
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I see Atalanta in Seria A have a striker by the name of
German Denis.
Sign him up Wenger!
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anicoll5 September 30, 2013 at 5:30 pm
lol…well how can i put it…people who have offended the idea to trust wenger should be made to eat shit really…..
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@gains
Early days perhaps, but isn’t it funny how mourinho clearly got the job on premise that he employ attacking football. Oh how he struggles despite a wealth of creative players.
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@LeoS
Mourinho won the CL with Porto by clawing his way past opponents and using every dirty tactic ever invented. From there he was handed a Chelsea team, built by Rainieri, starring Didier Drogba, and built a strong reputation thanks to having won a couple of leagues. Then he went to Italy, after the league had been decimated by the betting scandal prior to the 2006 world cup, where he won some leagues and used the same underhanded tactics to win himself another CL trophie. After that, he went to Madrid and that’s where he became stuck. And the reason he became stuck is because the Real Madrid support were not going to let some upstart like Mourinho stain their legacy by winning through the use of underhanded tactics. Mou, in the end, couldn’t hack it when he was expected to give his supporters beautiful football. Now that he whinged his way out of Spain, he’s at Chelsea having to make do with an expensive team that stopped being a force once Drogba moved on.
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Also will be interesting to see how he reacts when the media start turning against him. He became a media darling being stamped as a funny angry man. Now he’s just angry.
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Shit, if Wenger couldn’t do tactics we would have had trouble finishing in the top half of the table, never mind the CL places.
nooooo silly….that was lack of ambition you see….now he’s found it again, he did some yoga with them black bin protesters outside the emirates in front of chapman’s statue and it all came back to him …
its like the keys and the lighter…you lose them, you find them…simples
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@Apropos
Funny that, isn’t it? But I guess playing Ozil out on the wing, in order to play Khedira next to Xabi Alonso, can provide beautiful attacking football if you try really hard.
The best thing to have happened to football in the past five years is Mou’s Real Madrid getting the shit hammered out of them by Dortmund. Mourinho can blame whomever he wants for his exit from Real Madrid, but he was sacked because Real Madrid’s heaviest loss in CL history exposed his tactical ignorance.
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@Hunter:
“nooooo silly….that was lack of ambition you see….now he’s found it again, he did some yoga with them black bin protesters outside the emirates in front of chapman’s statue and it all came back to him …”
That was pretty funny.
The black bin bag protestors, don’t they feel a smidge stupid right about now, eh?
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Oh funny this, as I typed my last post mourinho ‘Stormed out’ of a press conference after being questioned. Gains, his session in Madrid certainly didn’t do him well. To him as person and his reputation as man manager. As I said, angry now, all the time.
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feel a smidge stupid? heh..remember that tall old big guy who was on fans cameras ripping into everything arsenal related after the villa game which was used by all media ?????? he was back on cameras with a smile when we signed ozil…….
remorse? regret? feeling stupid? …..not a chance…….
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@Apropos:
“What about that Zaha guy, a self-professed gooner, that called us a paper tiger and went to Manchester. With us he would now be having regular game time. Not that I particulary want him at the club, boy is clearly daft, if he was bit smarter he would have seen that while ferguson bought the little Dutch boy it was Wenger that created the player.”
He could have been the next Wilshere, Ramsey, Theo or Gnabry. Instead he is sitting on the bench for a lower table side, which could really use his exploits at the moment.
In the same line of thought as Zaha, but involving the little dutch boy, what about the Jong Oranje players, Ozyakup and Ebecilio, who fucked off back to Holland because Van Judas told them Arsenal was a sinking ship? I bet those two players curse Robin when they see Gnabry in the first team. Ebecilio in particular would have been given his chance if he had stayed. He was just breaking in and was very well regarded by fans and coaches alike. What a waste.
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Gains, Apropos et al
The worse part about Maureen is how entirely predictable is the current destruction of the career of young creative talents at Chelsea. We said it on these very pages. But not for one moment did I imagine that Mata would be the one ruined, not Oscar or Hazard, the latter IMO is clearly struggling. Chelsea has no room for the the youths in the U-21s who frankly outplayed Gnabry and co in the Net Gen semi-final. All have been sent on loan as well as a stud like Lukalulu in place of an over-the-hill donkey Et’oo. Predictable!
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The dude who puts out videos under the name Arsenal Fans TV, he interviewed that tall moron, is a doomer bastard. He only interviews a select group of fans and never features someone with a positive outlook on the team. I wish someone from here would catch up to him after a game and give him a piece of their mind. In fact, it would be awesome if positive fans could do a show to compete with that one.
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I see the last time Chelsea played against Steau in Bucharest they lost – just six months ago – a repeat would round off Mou’s week nicely
My fingers crossed and Roman’s on the trigger
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