By Tony Attwood
In one way I suppose Stan Kroenke the owner of Arsenal FC must be quite pleased about the past two years of unmitigated chaos. He is, after all, a man who has donated $1m to the Donald Trump election campaign, and Trump is the President par excellence who revels in chaos. One only has to listen to his speeches.
And certainly the last two years we have had a fair degree of chaos, as Arsenal FC seem to have been engaged in listening to the views expressed by AFTV and the Black Scarf Movement (ably and adeptly supported by the bulk of the British football media). But sadly instead of seeing what the media says as being a blueprint of what to avoid, the club has on occasion actually put these messages into practice.
Two years ago Mr Wenger had one year left on his contract. If he had been allowed to see that through the club would have saved something in excess of £20m compensation that contractually had to be paid to Mr Wenger and all the support staff who left the club with him two years ago. That would have been £20m that could have been spent on transfers.
So what did we get in return for that £20m+ spent on sacking the management team one year early?
Here are Mr Wenger’s last two seasons, and then the two subsequent seasons involved Messrs Emery, Ljungberg and Arteta
| Season | Manager | W | D | L | F | A | Pts | Pos | FAC | Lge Cup | Shield | Eur |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016–17 | Wenger | 23 | 6 | 9 | 77 | 44 | 75 | 5th | W | QF | W | R16 CL |
| 2017–18 | Wenger | 19 | 6 | 13 | 74 | 51 | 63 | 6th | R3 | RU | SF Eur | |
| 2018–19 | Emery | 21 | 7 | 10 | 73 | 51 | 70 | 5th | R4 | QF | RU Eur | |
| 2019–20 | Em/Lj/Arteta | 14 | 14 | 10 | 56 | 48 | 56 | 8th | W | R4 | W | R32 Eur |
So what have we got? At the end everything worked out with the FA Cup and the Shield (although we perhaps should not forget that the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal mobs have decried Mr Wenger’s achievements in the FA Cup – what with him being the person who has won more FA Cups than anyone else, and Arsenal the club that has won more FA Cups than anyone else – for years).
But just imagine the alternative. Supposing Arsenal had not given into the demands of Black Scarf, AFTV and the journalists and coattail hanging bloggers, what then? Apart from having another £20m to spend on transfers, that is.
Of course no one knows for sure, but it seems possible that Mr Wenger would have delivered a season in 2018/19 similar to those of the two seasons before. Another fifth or sixth finish possibly, but also maybe just squeezing into fourth.
Instead out of the chaos we got our worst League performance since 1995. The worst in a quarter of a century.
One more point and six more goals (or indeed three fewer conceded and three more scored) in 2018/19 would have delivered fourth place, which of course is not a trophy as we are eternally told, but which would have given us more money. It is possible that Wenger could have got that.
He might also have rounded off his tenure with a Europa win. Of course both are just possibilities, but his experience and knowledge would most certainly have ensured that one way or another he would have left the club in a better state for his successor in 2019/20 than his unplanned departure did one year earlier. And given a neat and tidy handover we could quite possibly have got Arteta as manager in the summer of 2019 – giving him time to prepare, organise and bring in the players he wanted.
Now I can say that would have been excellent because clearly Messrs Wenger and Arteta know and like each other, and got on well. Arteta is obviously a very clever manager, but he has been forced to pick up the pieces of the sacking of Emery and the unsuccessful temporary management of the ever likeable Freddie – who quite possibly will make a good manager one day – but wasn’t ready to take on the chaos created by the media, Black Scarf and AFTV, in their successful campaign to disrupt the club as much as possible.
Yes this is all speculation, but what is not speculation is that even now, after all the upheaval and turmoil of the last two seasons, BlackScarf in particular is not backing off. It is still negative negative negative.
We’ve just won the Shield by beating the Champions -a team that even people like me who don’t like Liverpool have to admit has been a pretty spectacular campaign by them, and what are they putting out on their twitter account
Another absolutely diabolical signing and pure BS with the sales pitch to fans
Chu Young Park
Now if you ever stray into the realms of the Arsenal History Society website, perhaps to watch our daily video of a game played on this day in the past, you’ll know that in addition to our daily video we also run a list of around 20 or so anniversaries, with invariably some positive ones.
And yes the AHS list does include an entry for Park Chu Young
30 August 2011: Park Chu-Young joined Arsenal from Monaco for £1.8m. He only played one league game and was soon moved onto Celta Vigo on loan.
… but that was one of a list of around 20 anniversaries for today. Apart from commemorating the birth of Mary Shelly, the author of Frankenstein, (which I would have thought would have been right up BSM’s street), they could also have maybe noted the first ever match played at Highbury, the start of the longest ever run by any club in the first division (still ongoing), the first game for Gerrit Keyser – our very successful keeper, who then suddenly vanished, the first match in which Arsenal were officially allowed to wear numbered shirts, even playing Tottenham at home in the second double season…
Each day has a mix of good and bad moments that can be remembered – inevitably because there are getting on for 8000 entries in the AHS anniversary directory – so why pick out one negative?
The answer might be an inner psychological drive, or it might be that there is a constant campaign going on even now, with a new successful manager emerging, to knock the club all the time, endlessly, ceaselessly.
But there is a medical condition known as NAS (negative affect syndrome) which is characterised in individuals by the preponderance of negative moods and emotions that impair adaptive functioning and well-being. For anyone who feels they might be suffering from it and would like to seek help there is a useful article here.
Of course I don’t know anything about the person or people involved in putting up that little tweet, and it may well be that there is nothing wrong with the individual or the group at all; they simply do it to wind up people such as myself, who believe that supporters of a club should support the team. In which case, yes they are being successful, and I guess I should congratulate them on that.
But if that is the case, is this not the time to stop? We’ve had a pretty awful couple of years, which have been rescued by the appointment of Arteta, the winning of the FA Cup for a record time, and a follow-up victory in the Shield.
In the last six games we have beaten Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City and again Liverpool. If that isn’t a cue for writing something positive about Arsenal in a tweet, what on earth is?
- Arsenal’s victories in cup and shield were predictable, for anyone who wanted to look
- How the FA is helping corona virus spread through football via 54 unnecessary games
- How Arsenal has taken on the media, and the club is winning
- Those Arsenal matches without crowds and not shown on TV & 4 fantastic tales
Right on.
Some people don’t have a life and need to try to destroy others’ lives to feel they are living.
I guess what Robin Williams said it in Good Morning Vietnam would apply to any of these tweeters
You are in more dire need of a blowjob than any man in history.
JustArsenal, which I would say is supposedly a blog about Arsenal – and thus should somehow support the club posted a piece of junk.
I won’t post a link, it would bring them more traffic.
But the piece tells us that Arsenal has the worst record from an english against Messi.
I mean, is this stat worth anything other then bashing Arsenal with data that is worthless ?!?
Interestingly, the piece then says that Mssi will have a hard time adapting to the Premier League and that Arteta will come up with a game plan to neutralise Messi.
So guess the punchline is just baiting, and the peice ends up on a positive note.
Then again, it needs someone to read it all which I imagine most will not.
Chris, read the article you are alluding to and, quite rightly, it has produced negative reactions.
I’m not sure what the article was intended to do, but every site has it’s negative posters, some more than others.
I’m pretty sure that you have posted on Just Arsenal, as I do… surely one just has to separate the wheat from the chaff?
@ken1945
No I never posted there.
To be honnest, I still don’t get the point of the article.
If and when I post, there is a subject and an opinion.
Here we’ve got a supposed statistic and some sort of explanation thereof, all of that ending in a positiver way then the way it started. maybe some robot just wrote it up. Artificial whatever but not intelligence !
Had the article gone into Fergie time, maybe the writer would have announced Arsenal will win the PL ? ;=))
Maybe one of these days we’ll be treated to a ‘Liverpool has a negative track record against Arsenal’…since septembre 2019….
Gues this is baitclick and nothing else.
AW had to leave one day, and we needed a Moyes type manager after him. Emery was our Moyes.
Let’s rejoice in finding a fantastic new manager who is one of our own and has won 2 cups in his first half season in charge amid a pandemic. Compare that to Chelsea’s young manager, or Jose from Spurs.
The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades!
As we now look ahead to a new season of the EPL, as well as in the Europa competition, the presence of Ozil in everything except an Arsenal shirt continues to be a source of despair.
There appears to be no plan to play him and as the first team blossoms, his future until the end of his contract would seem to be bleak in the extreme.
I only hope that the dressing-room doesn’t become adversely affected by the situation.
Every instrument has a place in Arteta’s melody. Right now he is planning his orchestra and as instruments become available he will decide the orchestration to suit his choice of melody.
Stay calm and keep the silence till you hear the first movement. We have before us a maestro to entertain us with sounds we’ve been craving.
I agree with the first part Menace, and I’m glad we’re both still on this journey, but I am not (for my part at least) that sure about keeping the silence. At least not as far as Untold goes.
@Menace,
nice image.
But as for the silence, there is enough of it in the Emirates… and we’ve got to be behind our team lest the usual troublemakers become audible again.
This is why, IMHO, they ought to be called out each and every time.
Apart from that, I’m very positive about Arsenal.
The silence refers to contracts of new and current players. Ours is a pause till Arteta confirms his beliefs have been ratified.
It will then be our moment to enjoy, yet again, another glorious moment.