End of Season Survey Part 2 Wenger's Biggest Failure

Wenger keeps calm
By Celine Dion
June 26 2011

Celine's end of season survey continues with Part 2. Here Wenger's biggest achievement, and failures are considered, as well as match of the season, best goal against, best away fans.More sections of the survey will be published over the coming week.

You can Return to Section 1 here

Section 2

Best Goal Against

In what now looks to be the highlight of his career, Danny Rose won last years AT award by a landslide, for his mishit effort over Almunia’s head at the Lane. So it is time for Chiek Tiote to go running for the hills this year, as his long range effort takes the prize with just under 50% of the vote. Perhaps it was the heart stopping nature of these two strikes that stays in our heads. For the same reason perhaps, Messis’ flick and finish in the Barcelona away game comes in second with Huddlestones’ blasted effort in the 3-3 derby game coming close third, however these were a long way behind. Other nominations include Alex’s goal for Chelsea, and, bizarrely given the nature of it, Oba Martins’ winner in the League Cup Final.

Match of the Season

I think we all knew the forerunners here, for there were only two possible winners. Sure enough, miles ahead of the others , the Barcelona home game wins with about 40% of votes, and the Boxing Day Chelsea win comes 2^nd with 25%. No other game gets a look-in, except for the 3-3 derby game, which reinforces the idea that people go for result over excitement, because the 3-3 game was surely the best of the three. No other game really gets a substantial mention, except for some unruly dissenter who voted for the Villa home game (ahem).

Best Home Atmosphere

A bit pointless this one, I’m getting rid of this question next year. Everybody went for Barcelona at home (60% approx) and the rest went for the Chelsea game. Someone insisted on voting for the Villa game again (well, it was definitely an atmosphere) and there was one stray vote for the Blackpool home game, which considering the fantastic turn out of their fans, makes sense actually. But then perhaps this vote should have been in –

Best Away Fans

Well, it’s the lower league clubs who run away with this one. The votes were spread out with no runaway winner – Leeds steal a narrow victory from Orient with about 12% of the total vote. Of course it probably helps if you are given about 12,000 seats, but let’s not quibble. Blackpool and Villa feature amongst the Premier League sides (Villa had a fancy dress party and were, in my opinion far and away the best away showing of the season) – and Flava voted for SPURS. I thought I would just point this out. The survey is of course anonymous but I feel I must break ranks at this point and expose Flava as the person who voted TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR as having the best away fans.

Best Assist

Rather a hard one to mark this one, and I can see why the larger surveys of this nature go for the ‘multiple choice’ option. For a large number of you, the season is clearly little more than a red and white blur. I got a lot of answers like ‘that one Nasri did’, and in one case, enigmatically, just the word ‘Arshavin’. Not prepared to watch all Arshavins’ many assists and determine which one my correspondent might be talking about, I am afraid this vote was discounted. Some of you voted for assists which didn’t actually happen (I checked). As with many aspects of the survey, the Arsenal v Barcelona game provided inspiration for the winning vote, it was Nasri to Arshavin for our ‘winning’ goal (exactly 25% of the vote). The runner up was Jack Wilsheres’ impish backheel in Europe against some load of Bratislava postmen that I have forgotten the name of(10%). Arshavin gets most of the other votes, although Songs excellent cross to Chamakhs’ head at Wolves also gets a mention.

Away Trip of the Season

Well, a few of you go away, and our 4-1 trouncing of Spurs at White Hart Lane was the very clear winner, with about 75% of the vote. Just shows how low our standards have dropped, frankly. The City away game featured as well. Probably because it was just about the only other big away game which we actually won.

Wengers’ biggest achievement of the season.

This is where the survey became quite fun to assess. Many of you broke ranks and only a few answered this question with a straight face. ‘Coming fourth in a two horse race’ attracted many votes, ‘keeping his job’ was another favourite. Of the serious ones, the emergence of Chesney as our number one keeper comes second (strangely, when you consider that Wenger only bought him in when he had exhausted all other options) I am afraid the narrow winner came from those of you lacking any kind of imagination, it was ‘beating Chelsea and Barcelona’ with about 25%.

Wengers biggest failure of the season.

Well, the postbag positively BURST with answers. Some of you saw this as less of a survey response and more the cathartic opportunity to let all the feelings of anger and frustration come pouring out. Obviously I loosely categorised the answers in order to determine the winning one. People’s top failure got three points, with two for their second, and so on. Runaway winner was failure to strengthen in January, with 22% of the total points. Failure to vary tactics was next, at 7.12%, not buying a new Centre back (at any stage of the season) was next (6.6%), rather amusingly, ‘buying Squillaci’ came next. The list of gripes was fairly long after that, ‘odd behaviour during games’ got a few mentions, ‘playing Bentdner out of position’ was popular. My favourite was ‘talking b*llocks’.

End of Part 2

End of Season Survey Part 2 Wenger's Biggest Failure

Posted by: Arsenal Times (IP Logged)

Date: 26/06/2011 12:31

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011:06:26:12:37:53 by Padre Pio.