Wenger right signings won't change anything- Board Must Go
I see no crisis
By Boris Mellor
August 28 2011
This is the worst defeat in Arsenal’s history this side of WW1 (1896 8-0 to Loughborough Town), but who or what is to blame for this sad state of affairs? Nor is it true that this is a blip, unless only winning 2 games out of last 14 is a blip. One point out of last 7 EPL games is not a blip, it has never happened under Wenger before.It’s true that Arsenal played a weakened team, but whose fault was that? Is anyone surprised that Gibbs is off injured? It is up to the club to ensure there is a suitable replacement, there isn’t one. It won't do as an excuse
Jenkinson is a £1million player, and it’s now clear that Arsenal were robbed, lawyers should be checking the double no money back guarantee for a loop hole, he makes Eboue look world class.
Who is to blame for the selling of so many star players over the last six years, and the failure to replace them with similar quality? Where has the money gone? In some businesses this would be described as asset stripping.
Who is to blame for the selling of so many players this season and failing to replace them at this stage of the season with similar quality? Some fans have suggested that it was time for Clichy to go, well if it was because of a better replacement then fine, but sick note Gibbs? Never
Others suggest Vermaelen could do the job, well if he’s is fit he might, but then that means that Koscielny plays with Djourou, who is also not up to it. Wenger says the defence is not a problem, well its conceded 10 goals in 3 games, which if continued would double last year’s already poor defensive record.
Why is the club incapable of signing players? We are told that no suitable players are available, yet it was known well in advance that Fabregas and Nasri were going. Don’t ask me who the replacement should be – I haven’t got hundreds of scouts all over the world looking for players. Nor did I sign a young player who can’t get a permit
No these questions can’t be answered by throwing them back in the face of those with the temerity to ask them. They need to be answered because they prove serious mismanagement, that the ethos and structure of the club has become rotten.
If fans were demoralised by two years of their captain playing footsie under the table with Barca, how did the players feel? And when it became clear Fabregas was going Nasri was made the Captain in some friendlies. Whilst one section of Arsenal tried to sell him, Wenger tried to keep him. If that wasn’t the board at loggerheads what is? Yet Arsenal are known to be angered about insinuations that Wenger has been at odds with the board. (See link at bootom of this page for AT exclusive on board at loggerheads)
When this blog dared to suggest that Wenger and the board were at odds they wrote to me denying it as completely untrue within 48 hours, yet they still haven’t answered those who wrote in at same time questioning what is happening.
You don’t have to be a genius to realise that the Nasri transfer saga demonstrated a split in the Arsenal management. This is a club that has no strategy for winning trophies, or even improving the squad. The idea that Ramsey can replace Fabregas is nonsense, you can see the burden of that has taken the joy out of his game.
Missing team spirit
Nor is it the case that the youth strategy will succeed this year, or next, it’s not just a question of age, it’s a matter of quality, spirit and fight. Wenger claims his team has spirit and fight back written all over it, but ever since Eduardo’s injury at Birmingham this squad has lacked spirit, and at the same time players have been plotting their departure, Hleb and Flamini, then Fabregas and Nasri.
You can guess who is the next to leave now that the captaincy has become a shop window position. Leadership has been reduced to a mockery. Wenger admitted that Hleb’s ice cream jaunt unsettled the team, as did Cole’s dalliance with Chelsea in the weekend before Man Utd beat us yet again. These events happen again and again, even the Cole incident show that Wenger and board are split. It’s clear the board overruled Dein and reneged on a pay offer.
It’s not important that we were beaten by a Championship side in the Carling Final, its happened before, what is important is the club went into free fall immediately after. A free fall that hasn’t ended yet.
That’s why it needs more than signings
The problem isn’t money, although the club must have plenty after all the recent sales. Nor is the fact that fees are paid in instalments a problem – how do you think Arsenal pay for their incoming players?
However the problem is bigger than how many signings are needed, it’s a matter of ethos and structure. Firstly players are not loyal to the club but to a manger. The players are also spoilt, Sol Campbell is right mediocrity is rewarded, it doesn’t matter how weakend the squad was players should fight for a place in the team. The ethos is weak, up one match and down the next. A lot of good games are talked, but rarely played. These players are selling the club short, and allowed to get away with it.
Meanwhile the directors and scouting staff allow the squad to weaken, Wenger is forced to make financial excuses and talk up youngsters way beyond their ability. Meanwhile the directors planned to get rid of their shares at a premium price. One minute they had a share lockdown, the next minute they cashed in every penny. I have a larger shareholding than most of them.
Their asset stripping and price increases have sent share prices sky high. Their actions have ensured we are owned by two billionaires, and the majority share holding has little interest in the team, as long as the books balance.
Meanwhile Gazides has developed a structure where young players are put on long term contracts at exceptionally high rates of pay. Gazides claimed this was protecting Arsenal’s assets, nonsense it’s been hard to give some of these players away. Clubs don’t want Bendtner or Denilson because they can’t afford the wages. This strategy has undermined any chance of bringing in top quality players. Hence Wenger tell us he won’t bring in players of less quality. What he means is he will either buy more youngsters or top stars, but the board won’t allow money to go in wages for the top stars.
The board have allowed Wenger to turn into a CEO, meanwhile no one has kept their mind on the strength of the squad, or progress of the club as contender, there is no vision. Wenger’s strength has been allowed to become a weakness.
We need a structure where Wenger can concentrate on developing his squad and creating a robust club ethos. The current board have no authority, only Stan has shares. Having made their money on Wenger’s back they have no interest in arguing with him. Gazides acts as a bagman for Kroenke and is also scared of Wenger. Hence Wenger has led Gazides a song and dance over Nasri. Kroenke had to turn up to insist that Nasri be sold.
It’s time the board and Gazides went, and Kroenke appointed someone to work with Wenger who actually knows how to develop a strategy that will develop the on pitch success. All Gazides has done, apart from Arsenalisation, is to get Indesit to sponsor the club, if you add an H that sums up his contribution.
Gazides and Board Out
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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2011:09:01:09:29:54 by Padre Pio.
Only at Arsenal are the men of the Arsenal Board biggeer than the club and that is the problem and has been. Too many people believe they are living embodiment's of what makes Arsenal a special and unique club that is better than the rest and they used that to take full advantage of us. Sadly we let them for far far too long.
We need to hold those people including the late Dan Fiszman to account for their very clear direct and critical role in all of this happening. Remember some of them are still on the Arsenal Board now.
I am utterly depressed, this will be a period of time we will look back on in years to come and tell people that business men nearly destroyed our club. I believe someone will save it sooner or later....I hope.
To paraphrase a well known phrase: "Don't mourn, organise".
Perhaps a well organised fan protest at the next home game is called for.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality.
Winston Churchill
Jose champion, king, legend.
And now 2 of the worlds best football managers have leapt to his defence. Reassuring fans of Wengers quality. They didn`t have to say anything. They could have sat back and smiled, but they didn`t. That says something to me.
Since the end of WW1, 1919, when the FA restarted its 4 tier football league, with Arsenal fc in the 1st div, there’s only ever been one club to have never been relegated from Div 1/ EPL.
Arsenal fc
Let’s keep making history
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
So what I see is a long road ahead and the starting point of cleaning up this mess isn't just the body. You need a sword to cut off the body and the tail together. The only way change towards the better I see PHW out, Gazidis out, Wenger out, bring a new man in the middle by keeping Stan as head and a new manager..and yes in all probability the new manager will be a stop gap manager. A considerably weaker head will automatically RUN away.
Quote:reeves55
There is more than meets the eye going on at our club. I agree but I have also felt for some time that it is time for Pat Rice to retire. Wenger needs young, virile ideas and a second in command that will challenge him from time to time.
I am utterly depressed, this will be a period of time we will look back on in years to come and tell people that business men nearly destroyed our club. I believe someone will save it sooner or later....I hope.
couldnt agree more, one day we will look back on these days and think how bad this club was managed, just like the liverpool fans talk about the two rats who almost destroyed their club. We will come back stronger because we are Arsenal and thats what we always do
Arsenal fans are united against the board, and they are weak. Kroenke cant take this lightly
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
This corporation will continue in its current vein of beer footballers for champagne money as long as we are still paying them to do so and the only way to stop it is to stop going to the games.
Its a sad alternative but unfortunately its the only way to kill this particular dragon.
Some might argue that this would destroy the club but I argue that the club is already being destroyed, this board and the owners are akin to a cancer eating away the vital organs of the club and are slowly killing it, chemotherapy will either kill it stone dead or conversely save it by killing the cancer.
The only reason they carry on in this way is because we allow it to happen by regurgitating soundbites and edicts which come from boardroom levels thereby justifying their actions or omissions to act at all because we don't want to believe we can now all see.
Its understandable, we support Arsenal FC and so have sought to protect it. Its a bit like the scene in the movie where the shapeshifter assumed the likeness of the hero's girlfriend, the hero walks in to find his girlfriend fighting her doppelganger to the death and he decides based upon things that the doppelganger missed in assuming her identity which one is his true love and which one to destroy............we are there, we have walked into that room and now we have to choose.
ARSENAL PLC is not Arsenal FC, we are sleeping with the enemy at this point by justifying it. Stop going to games to watch this joke, do not buy replica kits, key rings, coffee mugs, anything at all which would further enrich these criminals and we do this until they are forced (and they will be) to act.
Its the same truth at Arsenal as is replicated in society at large and that is that the state is no longer the enemy, we have assumed that role because we allow them to get away with it, we have become our own enemy through omissions to act and the reality is that the future of this club/society is in our hands and always has been, but an unwillingness to take responsibility for our power is ultimately the primary contributing factor to our own misery.
No victory without sacrifice !
Quote:fair points Sandy, but in any battle you have to start somewhere and pick your forces where you are strongest and the opposition weakest.
Arsenal fans are united against the board, and they are weak. Kroenke cant take this lightly
Agreed on this..it's almost impossible to get rid of Gazidis, PHW and Wenger together. As getting rid of them isn't in our hand but it's in the hand of the most powerful man the Stan. I've my reservation on Wenger whether he's stupid or not but I've no doubt Stan is one hell of a fox in the box businessman.
We need a sacrificial goat right now..and I think PHW and Gazidis should be the one. But by no means anyone of the two should remain, Dein must be in.
Wenger and Dein combined will weaken Stan the man, his intention will be clear..it means we are actually after the head rather than the tail.
But there is a big problem in this road, a unholy nexus between Stan, Dein and Wenger could be strengthen Voldemort to gain the eternal power. It's a bit of double edged sword.
I think Billy said it all, match going fans have to very assertive and start boycotting home matches, which is easier said than done though. But as Billy said, without sacrifice there isn't any victory.
This sums it up quite nicely..
Quote:why is the club incapable of signing players? we are told that no suitable players are available
more like no suitable quality player is willing to come to arsenal cos we have lost that appeal..we are more or less a feeder club & a grooming stage for teenagers who are looking for a platform to show case their budding talents.
Quote:this is a club that has no strategies of winning trophies, or even improving the squad
This is the brutal truth. Tis incompetent board & wenger have succeeded in making Arsenal a mediocre brand that no quality player wants to associate with. we can't even discern their business model any more..
Quote:it is a matter of quality, spirit and fight. leadership has been reduced to mockery
so true..this is what has been lacking for 6 years & it started when wenger with this board started to dismantle the invincibles. wenger is indeed a CEO who can't seem to balance the responsibilities has been handed by the crooked board.
Can We Now Trust The Process 🤔🤷🏿♀️ or Should We Still Remain Cautious 🙇🏿♀️
Quote:salisbury69
I hope PHW is proud of himself. He has witnessed the biggest embarassment for over 100 years after calling the fans idiots. Well who is the idiot now, you numpty??
He hasn't just witnessed it he was an accomplice to it and a willing one. He made 6 million GBP from it after investing exactly nothing since he inherited every piece of the club he ever was lucvky enough to be associated with. I sense that if either his father or grandfather were still alive their last act on this earth would have been to strike his jaw and disown him for he betrayed tham every bit as much as he betrayed us I suspect.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.