By Tony Attwood
All clubs have style. It is reflected in the way the players are encouraged to present themselves, the way the club reveres its past, the way the club considers its fans, even the way the club considers the people who live in houses round about.
In such an analysis there are some clubs that have all the style of a post-war barrow-boy (the black market retailers who worked London streets in the aftermath of the second world war) or an East End gangster associated with the Krays.
And there are some that seem to have a feeling for their supporters and an understanding of what the club is about.
For small town teams it is a bit easier, because they can have a nice local feeling around their poorly supported clubs – my local team Corby Town won the Southern League Premier Division this year (meaning promotion to the Conference North) and they organised a First XI vs Supporters match yesterday to celebrate. A nice touch. Today is the open top bus ride – and why not. Corby Town FC don’t get many chances to celebrate.
It is harder for the bigger clubs to get it right, because of the disparate and worldwide nature of their support, but when I see what Arsenal in the Community does I do feel the club is at least making a positive effort.
And indeed when we sing the “49” song, and comment on “playing football the Arsenal way” I go along with that. There is an Arsenal way. We lost it for quite a while but it was there in the 1930s and it has been with us all the way through the Wenger years.
Mr Wenger himself can get annoyed at times, especially on the touch line, but most of the while he conducts himself with admiral restraint when facing the journalists who have pilloried him and taunted him and ceaselessly misrepresented him from the moment of his arrival in the UK. Now at the press conferences he sits there, answers each lunatic question politely, smirks at the men he has so solidly outwitted from day one, and moves on.
At the other end of the scale there is the story told in “Men in White Suits” by Simon Hughes of the 1996 Man U squad who turned out in white suits. I don’t know if it embarrassed their supporters but it certainly gave most of us a laugh.
Man U’s style and “way” problems are enormous. Of course at Arsenal we have people who shout unacceptable things, but our club has worked hard to get rid of anti-semitic chanting, and has done this well in my opinion. It hasn’t gone totally, but it is much less than it used to be.
But Old Trafford failed utterly to counter the appalling chants and songs aimed at Arsene Wenger since he first came here. At one time they were even promoting a CD which contained the song – although ultimately they did remove it from their web site. But action of the concerted type that Arsenal has mounted to stop unacceptable chanting and singing, is unknown at Old Trafford. I am sure there is a Man U way in terms of quality and decency of human existence, but it has different values from those I hold dear.
There is a Man U way in terms of winning, of course. All those championships testifies to that, but in terms of human decency, it just has values different from mine.
But what the Hughes book focuses on mostly is Liverpool, which over the last 25 years is seen as a “car crash in slow motion”. His focus much of the time is with the “strategic errors” of each new managerial regime – errors which it is always interesting to see are excused by some Liverpool fans who write to Untold via the suggestion that we have no right to comment on anything Liverpudlian because we haven’t won the European Cup; an interesting way of viewing discussion, democracy and freedom of speech.
But the underlying point is that the game has changed – “modernised” in Hughes’ terms, and Liverpool have not quite modernised with it. His view is that until Liverpool do modernise, and indeed sort out who and what they are, they won’t climb back to the top.
Souness, Dalglish, Evans, Houllier all seemed to find it hard to find the Liverpool way, and then the desperate hope that Tom Hicks and George Gillett could inject the money and put it all right, and then more talk off and on of the mysterious and ill-defined “Liverpool Way”.
The “Arsenal Way,” I suppose, means putting style above the pragmatism of winning – the sort of thing Arsene Wenger is so often criticised for, but which brought us the unthinkable “49” and the Unbeaten Season, not to mention with him becoming the most successful FA Cup manager of the last 100 years and in terms of trophies, Arsenal’s greatest manager.
J Carragher recently expressed the view that the Liverpool Way was exampled within the fact that “Liverpool don’t buy stars but make them into stars,” which is a debatable point, but if it is true, one wonders if it is this philosophy that is the heart of their problems.
Arsenal in the 1930s did indeed go out and buy stars. But not all our top players were brought in as stars for just as Wenger has often bought unknowns, so did Chapman. Plus of course the occasional top men, even breaking the world transfer fee record on occasion (although not necessarily with success).
But we also had another tradition of promoting from within. Indeed the whole run of post-Chapman managers were part of the club. Shaw, Allison, Whittaker, Crayston, Swindin – it was a line of players who grew up with the Arsenal Way of doing things. And it worked to a large degree – the first three post-Chapman managers all winning the league.
The attempt to move out of the mould of Arsenal men managing Arsenal was broken with the disaster of Billy Wright being piloted in from without, but redeemed at least for a while and on occasions with Bertie Mee and Terry Neill. True Terry Neill only won one trophy, although he came close twice, and true, Don Howe didn’t win a trophy, but then we were back to success with George Graham.
Yet the fact remains that our two greatest managers have come from without – Chapman and Wenger. Both not only delivered trophies, but also transformed the way the club developed young players and transformed how we played and developed “The Arsenal Way.” When Graham was found guilty of going off the rails, he was removed post-haste.
So yes, to my mind, there is an Arsenal Way. A philosophy of style and pragmatism. Bringing in from without if needed, promoting from within if possible.
Indeed I suspect many of us brought up in London would agree with Carragher when he says that “I just think people in Liverpool have a natural intensity; aggression, if you like.”
That is their style – Arsenal’s is different. Arsenal’s is, I think, more sophisticated, more transformative, more developmental, less aggressive.
The whole point about the style of a club is whether that style allows the club to take the talent that it has and transform it into victories. It involves both a connection with the past and a desire to move forwards.
And this is the bit that most commentators seem to be unable to get.
The Emirates Stadium (hopefully soon to be renamed Stadium Wenger, since he is the man who engineered the ability to pay for it) is a classy place, quite different from every other ground in the Premier League. Quite different from the New Anfield that will emerge from the bulldozed homes and compulsory purchases around the existing ground.
What Arsenal did was take a disastrous waste disposal site and turned it into a stadium we can be proud of – while keeping us in the Champions League all the time. A new ground that remembers our past glories.
This is the sort of thing that writers like John Percy from the Telegraph fail utterly to grasp. Writing after last night’s game against Hull he admitted that, “This was emphatic proof that Arsenal have been the best team in the Premier League over the second half of the season, but Arsene Wenger cannot afford to sit back. He must build from a position of strength this summer and recruit more quality, adding to what he has got already.”
Which is fair enough. We know how we were destroyed by injuries in the first half of the season, and we know that although refereeing has been examined in ways previously unimaginable (this season the Telegraph even ran one of the PGMO press releases for goodness sake), we are still going to be chopped to death and unfairly treated in 2015/16.
So we need more troops – or rather a replacement of troops, since we already have a full compliment of the allowable “25”.
However we will also find another brilliant youngster from within the club. (This is something the media hate to mention since none of them saw Bellerin’s talent, and most thought Coquelin should leave for Charlton as soon as possible).
Thus then the Telegraph man shows his crass ignorance and total lack of connect with Arsenal by adding, “Arsenal supporters will not welcome another “close but no cigar” campaign.”
Leaving aside the fact that many Arsenal fans most certainly do not celebrate a victory with a cigar, and the fact that Arsenal are the holders of the FA Cup and in the final again (perhaps JP at the Telegraph and his editor forgot that detail) this continuing notion that a journalist actually knows what any Arsenal supporters think, let alone what all Arsenal supporters think, is not only crass, it is insulting.
Which gives me my final point about Arsenal’s style. There is a strong individualism at Arsenal which mixes with a sense of “the organisation”. The fans split into all sorts of groups with different opinions (which is how we come to have the aaa), and Wenger is his own man and has gone his own way. So when the press tell us what the boss or the fans think, they always get it utterly wrong.
We are The Arsenal – but any attempt to define us in a few words is bound to fail. That is the final part of the Arsenal Way.
——————
There is a guide to all Arsenal managers since the earliest days, with details of how well (or poorly) each has done, on the Arsenal Managers page of the Arsenal History Society web site.
Follow us on Twitter @Untold Arsenal
Back to back FA cup finals, winning one and looking good for the other. Looking very good for a 2nd place finish.
Such utter, utter failure!
Mourhino won zilch last season while coming 3rd in the league despite his renowned ‘tactical ingenuity’ and there was pip from the yammering class. They bought his pathetic excuse of not having strikers hook, line and sinker. You know, because it isn’t his job to get the strikers and he took little stick for loaning off one the best strikers of that league campaign in Lukaku.
Arsenal are looking very good for 2nd and on track for our 3rd trophy in 2 seasons (yes, the Super Cup IS a trophy) but we need to buy. We always need to buy. You can’t write about Arsenal and not include our need to buy players. It is a template but one that is unfortunately sanctioned by that whiny and pathetic subset of fans. Ultimately, the media serve what they think their audience want. The fact that Theirry Henry, who should know better, has joined the chorus after our first dropped point in 9 games is all that we need to know.
I know why I am an Arsenal fan and it mostly for the reasons highlighted in this article. And as long as those values remain, I shall continue to be a die-hard Gooner.
Now we’ve got the Ray Parlour spouting the same shit saying we need 3 or 4 players..
This fucking ‘spine’ of the teams crap.
Ospinas not good enough.
Having a go at per. Back four not good enough. Didn’t even mention Gabriel. We have the 3rd best defence FFS.
Since Christmas we’ve been the best side in the premiership.
Apparently, despite appending how much? United have had a good season.
What a bunch of idiots those people are.
Spending how much?
Jambug,
They all suffer from what I termed: “buy player Tourette’s”. Again, it is absolutely important when talking about Arsenal to insist that the club MUST buy players, any evidence to the contrary be damned.
After we comprehensive beat Liverpool, Theirry Henry was full of praises for the team. Not once did he mention our need to buy players but as soon we drew 0-0 with Chelsea, the topic became how many players Arsenal need. Every team in the world can be improved in one area or the other but the obsession with the topic when it comes to Arsenal is excessive.
Personally, I may find the whole nonsense a littler easier to accept but for its lack of originality and being extraordinarily boring.
media is not the media any more. And do we need say any more about pundits.
Media and the pundits are nothing but propaganda agents of the betting companies and the agents. A player moves, everyone gets his share. A player stays put, no one gets a penny. Hence all the need to sign four, spine and other shit being thrown around.
@Jambug
From January I think we may well have the best defense in the league – and we still have the capability to play attacking and at times scintillating football.
The Coquelin/Cazorla double pivot in front of the back four was an inspired selection & when our back four has been injury free it has proved to be a very good one. NB The back four have not had to depend on (ref permitted) thug tackles or sliding hand balls to maintain their defensive record.
Scoring 100 goals for the season is an excellent achievement, especially considering we had a lot of injuries up front and in the creative players earlier in the season – and again we did not have to depend on (hazardous) dives to add to the tally.
No we shown the Arsenal Way – play fast attacking football, play fairly and be good enough to beat the opposition (most times) despite the most appalling biased refereeing within recent memory. As the article suggests – off the field we have also seen the Arsenal Way – to conduct out business with humor and decorum.
Oh – and team spirit – clearly excellent.
For all this – thanks to our excellent manager!
ARSENAL 13,
I would accept your theory except for the fact that this unsolicited prescription of players that Arsenal need to buy is not done to other top teams with the same intensity. Would anyone be suggesting that any of Man United, Man City or Liverpool buy 4 more players if they were in our current circumstance?
The whole topic and the media (and sadly our some of our fans) obsession with it is tiring.
Do I know if there is ‘this ARSENAL way’. Am not sure.
BUT I, sitting continents away form Islington, shedding tears of joy when Rambo scored the FA cup winner last year…… If this strong bond has been established……. that must be “the ARSENAL way”.
Jambug
Same old crap from John Hartson on Talkshite this morning. His expert take is we need to by Peter Cech and a world class central defender, defensive midfielder and striker if we want to challenge Chelsea.
bjtgooner,
Well said!
Arsene Wenger gets nowhere near the credit he deserves but we AKBs appreciate him and so do his employers.
Would be interested to learn if Tony turned out for the Corby Supporters XI at the weekend.
Can’t ever see Wenger Stadium materialise. The black-suits in the backrooms at the Ems couldn’t see any income from a re-naming..unfortunately… 🙂
I watched a NBC stream that mentioned a program on the officials that do the most difficult job – on the fitness test etc but no mention of understanding the Laws of the Game. I’m sure Gord or OMGArsenal will do a summary of what was covered when it is aired.
This morning on Sky News there was a snippet of ugly sister Gary Neville who said that Arsenal need a Costa, a Matic & a Terry to win the league. Thank fcuk the spineless cheat didn’t say we needed a Mourning twat. What any team needs to win the league is the bias of the PGMO. How can additional Chelsea goalkeepers go unseen in key matches? Cahill & Terry using their hands to save goal bound shots? The Media are blind to those cheats & the obvious Red cards that should follow.
There’s a whole catalog of cheats in football that could show how corrupt the game really is. It would really show up the Sweet FA.
I believe there’s an Arsenal way definitely. Every club has its own way. Just look at fabregas now; diving and appealing for eveverything, things get never used to do when he was with us. Another, but slightly different example, is Suarez. I keep an eye on la liga and can say he’s definitely cut down on his theatrics at Barcelona. I doubt he would be the same if he was with madrid.
Back to Arsenal, the club conducts it’s business and itself with dignity at all and this is reflected in the fans’ behaviour too. On the other hand if one looks at a club like Chelsea is it any wonder their fans behaved the way they did in Paris given their captain and manager’s conduct (I could add owner too). So yes, there’s an Arsenal way of doing things.
Conducts it’s business and itself with dignity at all times…..
In my opinion the club is run in a well balanced and fair way.
But even more impressive is the attitude and behaviour of the players on the pitch. Stems from their leader without a doubt.
Although the players are not perfect in their approach and reaction to adversity they certainly set a very good example to the country’s youngsters.
Well done to all players and staff of AFC,it is a privilege to be a supporter.
I don’t think there’s much need to get worked up about the “must buy PLAYERS” thing.
Wenger pays little notice to it. We shouldn’t either.
He’ll buy talent, if its available, priced right and will fit into the squad. That much we can be sure of.
I really enjoyed the game last night. While I was watching it, I actually thought that I would not mind if we lost because the football was so beautiful and you could see that the players were really enjoying it. It reminded me of the quote from Socrates :”To win is not the most important thing, football is an art and should be showing creativity,”
I do not think that Arsene would agree with that quote but I would!!
The bias, as noted here by Al and others by the Sky Plundits during the game was unbelievable. From Arsenal players elbowing each other (Dawson on Koscielny) to trying to ignore the incredibly pathetic and funny dive from EM. It takes concentration and effort for a lying commentator to try and mislead his audience and to attempt to describe this as a foul, when any dunderhead could spot the dive:
http://arsenalist.com/f/2014-15/hull-vs-arsenal/elmohamady-dive.html
I would advise all Arsenal to admit to themselves that the media in the UK are totally against their club. Utterly. Entirely. Like Marca for Madrid, they are for the petro-clubs and specialists in signing mules signed to the special agents. It is, simply what it is. There is some evidence.
If every hack dwarf who has been pining for a Gazprom victory since Mourinho’s return says they aren’t boring at every opportunity at the moment do you think this means that they might be protesting too much? It’s too funny. Props to those Arsenal fans out there and in the stadiums on the wind up. Well done! Mission accomplished.
They’ve been incredibly successful. 5live spent twenty minutes before kick off trying to explain to your average punter why a team spending two billion on winning a league playing boring football is not boring. Amazing. I doff my hat to all the Gooners out there who’ve known exactly what they are doing in this regard: Very, very funny.
The Mudchester Grunt’s contracted cartoonist can’t help himself and simply highlights the incredible fallacy of all these petty plundits, including many of the writers upon his own rag, as they attempt and fail to write their olfactory praises of extortionately priced “shit on a stick”:
http://www.theguardian.com/football/picture/2015/may/05/david-squires-on-chelsea-premier-league-champions-2014-15
Boring boring hack dwarves attempting to defend boring boring Gazprom.
The reason England will not win anything soon is because of dinosaurs like G.Neville.We all know what he said last night, the usual crap.We need 4 players! Thanks TH.This will now become the line all the media tossers will talk about throughout the close season.As someone said, “if we need 4 players,what do the likes of Utd,City,Liverpool and the tiny totts need ”
If AW buys, it will be max 2 players.Why is it,I have not heard any of the Media mention all our injuries up until Xmas.Let me see what has happened since then? It is so obvious.
One final thought.Why did AW not follow the Newcastle way and have the wonderful Graham Carr(Chief Scout)at the club bring in 8 French has beens to the club.Thats what all the media were saying he needs to do.
I get reminded there is an Arsenal way when i watch other teams play football and i am usually bored to tears.
One query, anti-semitic ? I don’t get the comparison.
Paul “the Gooner”
“The reason England will not win anything soon is because of dinosaurs like G.Neville.We all know what he said last night, the usual crap.We need 4 players! Thanks TH”
Exactly, Thanks TH.
When your heroes turn out to be as pathetically gullible and idiotic as muppets suc as Neville, Carragher, Robson, etc, it really is time to wonder what the fuck is going on.
Henry, just another media puppet. I was really hopeful he would be different.
Sad, very sad.
Overnight (to me), there has been a number of articles published about Aliko Dangote. He apparently tried to buy into Arsenal in the past, and for some reason people think he is going to do so again. One article seemed to point the finger at Metro for starting this. It would seem that Dangote is not a fan of Wengerball, and would either get Wenger to change his style, or be sacked. I don’t think I would like to see this development.
Interestingly, the very thing Arsenal “need to do “to challenge Chelsea next season( buy four world class players), would in all likelihood actually prevent them from doing just that.
Replacing the “spine ” of a successful team with four players would undoubtedly effect in a negative way the chemistry of our team at least in the first half of the next season.
We mustn’t forget that part of the reason for our slow start was not just injuries to our key starters , but also different systems and formations Arsene Wenger was trying out to find the best one .
Now that he has finally found it, well , actually some months back, inserting four new players into the squad would put us exactly where we found ourselves at the start of this season, in terms of finding out our best eleven at least.
Interestingly enough, Arsenal aren’t the only club in need of four players to compete with Chelsea next season.
A Man City fan, musician Noel Gallagher , when asked what man City need to win back the title next season, said , four new players of course 🙂
–
Slight tangent but you all saw poor old Dawson trembling under the shadow of St.Totteringham during yesterday’s game.
The AAAA pin up, hero, Le groan’s idol the B-Movie second rate shock jock Adrian Durham was calling for Dawson to be called up for England last season. To be clear he thinks he is a good, a gr*tty player. Nevermind that on his previous international debut the hapless clogger managed to clog himself a hilarious injury following an embaressing mis-control after about thirty seconds coming on as a sub. His performances over the years have been there for all to see. Poor blighter didn’t know if he was coming or going for the third goal. The Tottenham internet troll who did the rounds on various Arsenal blogs admitted to being a big Dawson fan. Hehe.
Durham has given more praise to the clogger then the likes of Koscielny or the hundred cap WC winning BFG over the years. Nevermind the football.
It is, what it is!
Lets have a look and see what it is about Arsenal, and there results, that have convinced everyone from Henry to the bloke in the paper shop, that we need 4 new ‘super star’ players, in fact a whole new spine, if we want to challenge Chelsea.
As Tom says, the beginning of the season was a nightmare due to a few things:
1-Injuries to key players for quite long periods.
2-Bedding in new players
3-Players back from World Cup duties, 3 of which had won the thing, giving them less time, and extra psychological issues to deal with.
4-Some typically dodgy refereeing. (Not Tom this one)
So lets look from where it all settled down, where the team hit there stride and this great run started.
I’m going from the match following the defeat at Southampton. That gives us the last 14 matches as a sample. I’m only focusing on the PL.
So lets see how we have compare over the last 14 PL games with the team we are SOOOOOOOOOO far behind, Chelsea.
ARSENAL
Won………..12
Lost………..1
Drew………..1
Scored……..32
Conceded…….7
Clean Sheets…8
Points……..37
CHELSEA
Won………..10
Lost………..0
Drew………..4
Scored……..23
Conceded…….8
Clean Sheets…7
Points……..34
So over the 14 matches since Southampton back on the 1st of January, we’ve:
-Acquired 3 more points than Chelsea.
-Won 2 more matches than Chelsea.
-Lost 1 match to Chelseas none.
-Drawn 1 compared to Chelseas 4
-Scored 9 more goals than Chelsea.
-Let in 1 goal less than Chelsea.
We have both failed to score on just one occasion each, the 0-0 draw between the 2 of us. But Chelsea have scored just once 8 times where as we’ve only scored once on 2 occasions resulting in our dodgy forwards scoring 9 more goals than Chelsea.
Our dodgy defence has somehow let in one goal less than Chelsea and in the process kept 8 clean sheets compared to Chelseas 7. Amazing, how on earth did that happen.
In summery, since the 2nd of January we have:
More wins
More points
More goals scored
Less goals conceded
More clean sheets
Surely these statistics conclusively prove that we are perfectly capable of competing with Chelsea with the squad we have.
If this set of statistics applied to Liverpool, Spurs or united, the media and Pundits would be wetting there knickers about how they where ‘ready to launch a real challenge for the title next season’.
The more you look into this ‘new spine’ shit, the more utterly ridiculous it looks.
Henry ??????????????????????
If muppets galore are going to pronounce that we _MUST_ have 3 or 4 players in order to win the league next year, I want to have some muppets come out and say ManU _MUST_ purchase 11 (or 25) players.
And speaking of purchasing entire teams, I think Mr. Dangote should look at some other team: Derby, Forest, Preston or whatever. Some team that already has a style closer to what he wants.
As we all know Arsenal are on a fantastic run.
We just won 3-1 away to a team fighting for it’s very PL survival, with a beautiful performance that put us equal 2nd on points.
Yet all we’ve had since the final whistle is YOU’RE NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Truly unbelievable treatment.
finsbury
“Durham has given more praise to the clogger then the likes of Koscielny or the hundred cap WC winning BFG over the years”.
The thing is, whenever that prick gets caught out he just says he didn’t mean it that way, or he only said it to ‘stir up debate’. He cant lose.
Basically he can spout any garbage he likes without ever being wrong or held to account, not that ANY of them can, it’s just that he’s the most odious out of the lot of them, and considering the competition that’s a mighty fine effort on his behalf.
Jambug 3:05pm
Hear hear. Every media hack should be forced to read this 🙂 But I’m sure someone will come along soon and say stats are meaningless, they can be used to prove anything. Despite your brilliant analysis you so eloquently put.
Jambug
Durham’s a second rate shock jock who clear knows less then the sweet FA about the national game. The primary function of his job is to make his paymasters feel superior to the plebs (that would be us then) that he trolls. Why anyone who loves football would choose to listen to this professional and pathetic troll I have no idea. Unless they were indulging in an unflattering form of confirmation bias 😉
Someone overnight put up an article suggesting the proof that the homegrown system wasn’t working, was the sale of Benik Afobe to Wolves. I think the reverse is true.
But first a diversion. Many people go to university. Some people go on to other (often more advanced) degrees. There is nothing wrong with getting a Master degree from the university you got a Bachelors, or to stay for the Ph.D. or to also do a post-doctoral fellowship there too. But most people are told that you should have multiple institutions in your background.
The same is true in football. It doesn’t matter how good Wenger is, I think most players benefit from time in some other system. What other teams in the UK play Wengerball? Or come close? I think Southampton and Swansea are fairly close, but are there any others? If Arsenal loan out players, they most likely will be exposed to systems quite different than is found at Arsenal.
And they are still learning. It is entirely possible that they learn enough about a different system, that the abilities that Arsenal was looking for, are now suppressed. Or, just like young people can go through a growth spurt, they could go through a learning or skills spurt. Which is what I think happened with Benik Afobe. At Millwall, something clicked, and he just started scoring goals. And Wolves noticed. We had an abundance of players, and were not in a position to bring Benik back. And Benik sees that his career could be starting. I can’t imagine Wenger would desire to hold a player back. I would imagine Wenger talked to Benik a fair amount, probably even since going to Wolves. In large part, everything people now see in Benik, is Arsenal. Benik is not a failure, he is success.
There have been noises that WBA is looking at Benik. It would not surprise me to find out Arsenal have right of first refusal, and/or a sell on clause. I don’t pay attention to contracts, there could be common knowledge about either possibility out there. But, if Benik did want to move to a higher level than Wolves, I suspect he could still talk to Wenger.
There was also a blurb about JET getting scouted by Birmingham. But, the accuracy of these blurbs is close to 0.
And in the spirit of accurate blurbs, apparently Stewart Robson is now advising Wilshere to get away from Arsenal.
Stewart, why don’t you pack a suitcase, including your bathing suit, and go visit the NW corner of Scotland. And then start the swim to Greenland. All by your self. If you make it, don’t come back.
Gord
“apparently Stewart Robson is now advising Wilshere to get away from Arsenal”
And why would that be?
Perhaps sad old Robson is just worried about Wilsheres health, as he knows at any other club the regular attempts at breaking his legs just wouldn’t be tolerated as they are at Arsenal.
Ah, that’s so nice of him.
I still have confidence in Arsene Wenger as the overwhelming majority on this site do. Do we need 4 world class players? To take over the universe – probably, to win the league maybe, maybe not…we would probably benefit, as any team would, if our players were replaced with better players…but as has been mentioned, Mr. Wenger has his finger on the pulse of the team and knows whom amongst our young players has the potential of developing into one of these mythological ‘world class’ creatures. He also knows whom of our older players is on the downward part of their careers and could be moved to a club more suited to his abilities. And, he also knows that understanding amongst players is worth a world class player all on its own. The short and the long of it is that I trust that Arsene Wenger will make some moves this summer to improve our club. I trust that he has analyzed our club and will do what he thinks is best. Would it be nice to make a big signing? Yes, something like a Oezil signing gets everybody buzzing, but Oezils or Sanchezs are not found under every tree.
Thierry Henry is doing what his employers are asking him to. Its the editorial direction. He gets paid a lot of money in return. I take it with a pinch of salt and I’m sure Arsene Wenger does.
@Jambug why would Wilshere listen to career advice from Stewart Robson who screwed up his own career for want of a few quid? That man is poison. As a player I liked him but he has no credibility.
Well said Jambug. I hope TH somehow gets to see this analysis before he continues with his employers wishes.
Gooner S
Are you suggesting slagging off Arsenal is an ‘editorial direction’ ?
Are you suggesting that’s acceptable, when I, as an Arsenal fan, pay SKY £100’s of pounds a year?
Are you suggesting Henry being friends with Wenger, idolised by Millions of Arsenal fans, means so little to him that he can start slagging us off simply for money, money he doesn’t even need? Okay Wenger may or may not take it with a pinch of salt, but going by his comments the other day I would suggest not, I certainly don’t see why I should.
As for the comments about that snake Robson, I was being sarcastic.
Finsbury 12.47, so…so true! Have heard little else on the radio apart from pundits saying Chelsea really are not boring….really…really. As you say, respect to those fans, that will stick, spread, and one day, cost the eye gouger his job
@ ARSENAL13/10:47am + Menace/11:09am + finsbury/12:47pm
I agree with you all. But there is more. Please read on.
Media – Disgusting reporting and writing by two major media. BBC and Eurosport both deliberately misinformed their readers by omitting to mention that Wilshere’s shot was blocked by the hand of Hull’s defender (Menace – another goalkeeper for your collection!). So Lee Mason (PGMOL) does not want to give us a penalty, like many others every year, well nothing new, but to see major media ignoring it totally … just make me furious!!
BBC – http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/32476691
84:22 Attempt blocked. Jack Wilshere (Arsenal) right footed shot from the centre of the box is blocked.
Eurosport – https://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/news/premier-league-hull-city-v-arsenal-preview-nikica-111613087–sow.html
85′ Wilshere looks to tuck home the rebound but his shot is blocked by a desperate defender.
Tony – is there an organization in England controlling the deontology of the press and media? If it exists, here is a good case to present the complaint. With little positive result, I know it in advance, but at least with the satisfaction of exposing these unethical media.
Expecting the referee report on Lee Mason by Walter. Keep the good work going Untold. COYG!
Prudence , fortitude , honour , honesty , patience and lots of hard work – that’s the Arsenal way !
” Close some doors . Not because of pride ,incapacity or arrogance , but simply because they no longer lead somewhere.”
Michael Baisden
@Nekuhan,
Can’t quite agree with your view on the Wilshere incident.
As the referee didn’t award a penalty, it’s not up to the media to report a missed handball. Maybe the reporter didn’t see it as such, anyway.
Another example of the Arsenal way and another example of why I love the club…..
http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/arsene-wenger-speaks-of-his-pride-as-arsenal-community-centre-opens-its-doors-10228212.html
I really don’t understand the meaning of ‘world class’ players. What does it mean? Players who played at World Cup? Or players who won the World Cup? If that’s the case, Arsenal have the most. They play the most attacking and attractive football in EPL. AW bought many unknown players and made them into world-renowed. He also bought two World Cup superstars in Ozil and Alexis. So, what are these moronic media people are talking about? Chelsea players are basically static except the attacking players. Most of them don’t run that much and stay in their position most of the time courtesy of their ‘brilliant’ manager. Terry, Cahill, Ivanovic and Cahill are good but I can guarantee that none of the top five clubs in Europe will ever be interested in them. Hack, they don’t even want for free. I have seen how clumsy and comedic Cahill, Terry, Ivanovic and Matic can be but for some bias morons, World Cup winning Per and Flamini are clowns. If such ancient propaganda will work, then I wish this society all the best.
To require a world class player to have won the world cup is going to make for too few world class players. If a person said to have appeared in a world cup, is going to make for too many. Perhaps something like, to have appeared in a semi-final, might result in about the right number.