By Tony Attwood
And so now we know. Just as our ancestors allowed the Hill-Wood family and their allies to force out Henry Norris – the man with the vision of a club owned by its members, and with the best manager in the land – so our generation has allowed that combination of journalists and the Anti-Arsenal Arsenal mob to take over the narrative. And now we see the results.
Clearly what we didn’t need was Wenger Out – because that is what we got and we have seen the result.
| Club | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD |
Pts | |
| 10 | Arsenal | 15 | 4 | 7 | 4 | 21 | 23 | -2 | 19 |
| 11 | Newcastle United | 15 | 5 | 4 | 6 | 15 | 22 | -7 | 19 |
| 12 | Burnley | 15 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 21 | 24 | -3 | 18 |
| 13 | Brighton and Hove Albion | 15 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 18 | 22 | -4 | 18 |
| 14 | AFC Bournemouth | 15 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 18 | 21 | -3 | 16 |
| 15 | West Ham United | 15 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 17 | 25 | -8 | 16 |
| 16 | Aston Villa | 15 | 4 | 3 | 8 | 22 | 24 | -2 | 15 |
| 17 | Southampton | 15 | 4 | 3 | 8 | 17 | 33 | -16 | 15 |
| 18 | Everton | 15 | 4 | 2 | 9 | 16 | 27 | -11 | 14 |
Four points off relegation with 40% of the season gone.
But having seen what an absolute failure their “Wenger Out” campaign was in taking Arsenal back to the top, they thought, hey, that was great fun, let’s do it again. So we had “Emery Out”.
The simple fact is that the journalists, bloggers and banner waving fellow travellers who make up that Arsenal hating mob, the AAA, do have an approach – booing the team and complaining about the manager. And generally speaking that approach doesn’t make things better.
Day after day the journalists, the bloggers and the AAA tell us what Arsenal should do, and make life difficult for anyone who disagrees, and day after day they are wrong. What we should have done was have had a gentle, long-term hand over from Mr Wenger to the new team, but no, it had to be a quick break because anyone would be better than Wenger. Except that wasn’t true. Four points off relegation does not quite feel like an improvement to me (although I have still never seen any of the Wenger-out mob apologise).
And the big problem is that having achieved their wishes in getting rid of Mr Wenger, there is nothing that can be done to solve the crisis of their own making.
So now what is the response of the bloggers? One only has to look at the most read story just as I am writing this on Friday morning.
“Out of his depth”, “Must never play for us” – Many Arsenal fans slam ace who made just 6 passes
That is from
In such a situation, who would want to come and play for Arsenal? How does Freddie re-motivate the team when they are reading this all around them?
The fact is that the AAA won and Arsenal is now known as the club that is hated by an alliance of journalists and some of its own fans – fans who will go to any lengths to harm the club further.
Of course somewhere out there, there will be a manager strong enough to bond the Arsenal team together and silence the ever more excitable critics. But will he come to Arsenal knowing what the media and some of the fans in the ground are like?
If there is a choice between Arsenal and another club (as there always is) why on earth would he take the media and the AAA on?
And there is of course the other point. 80% of clubs in the the league who have changed managers in the past 18 months are now worse off than they were when the new man took over. As a model for progress, it doesn’t work.
With the media witchhunt and the AAA now at the heart of the club, it is going to take a very brave, very foolhardy, or just plain greedy man, to come in and take over as manager at Arsenal.
Things are not quite as bad as on this day in 1974, but with the AAA and the media now much more powerful and re-doubling their efforts it soon could be. Here’s the bottom of the league table on this day in 1974:
| Club | P | W | D | L | F | A | G.Av | Pts | |
| 16 | Tottenham Hotspur | 20 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 24 | 27 | 0.889 | 17 |
| 17 | Queens Park Rangers | 20 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 22 | 27 | 0.815 | 17 |
| 18 | Arsenal | 19 | 6 | 4 | 9 | 23 | 25 | 0.920 | 16 |
| 19 | Leicester City | 18 | 5 | 5 | 8 | 20 | 25 | 0.800 | 15 |
| 20 | Chelsea | 19 | 3 | 8 | 8 | 19 | 35 | 0.543 | 14 |
| 21 | Carlisle United | 20 | 5 | 3 | 12 | 17 | 24 | 0.708 | 13 |
| 22 | Luton Town | 19 | 1 | 7 | 11 | 17 | 31 | 0.548 | 9 |
Two points for a win in thos days. Under the present system it would have been 22.
I am sure the AAA, sensing their power growing as the media throw more and more weight behind them, will now redouble their efforts and with no one fighting back against them, it will be very hard for the team to re-motivate themselves. Relegation after 100 years in the top division? Yes it is a possibility, and it will be totally down to the media and their allies the AAA, simply because players – especially young players – will no longer want to play for this club.
Under Mr Wenger they wanted to come here and learn. After the way FootballFanCast wrote about Joe Willock, do you think other youngsters will want to expose themselves to that sort of abuse?
The enemy (the AAA and the media) have got control of our club, and I guess the reality is we let them take it – although quite a few of us really tried our best to point out what they were about. It is their victory, and this is what that victory looks like.
Yes there is always a way out… but whether the club can find it, that is a different matter.
Be careful what you wish for, they used to tell us.
Mind you, doesn’t help a senior players being pals with the likes of Troopz, or AFTV founders being seen in the directors box.
We have a problem, the guy most experienced in running a club was forced out. Stan is just the owner, with a multitude of other concerns, some I suspect might outrank this football club. The others running the show , perhaps with the exception of Raul, are pretty inexperienced at managing a club in this league.
The club needs strategic planning, top to bottom, not spending for the sake of it, cozying up to super agents, bringing in last minute candidates to the interview process and rushing them into the job, not power building and losing supposedly visionary scouting types.
That’s a big inbox for the board, for Edu who needs to sort out an identity and playing values, and for the next manager, I hope they chose objectively, and well.
And all that’s aside from problems with the media, the haters, the self entitled, and a seemingly empowered Mike Riley.
Get it wrong, and this club could be torn apart.
Perhaps they need another very senior experienced guy who knows the club to take a place upstairs, Raul reportedly wasn’t keen on O Leary in such a role, perhaps they need someone above him.
As you said Mandy be careful what you wish for , what about this , one mans vision for this club is a bit different to three mens vision .
Some very big decisions are going to have to be made soon , we’re not in a very good position .
That’s what the AAA meant when they said they want their Arsenal back.
Only one person who has the love, passion, and dedication to this club that could turn this mess around, let bring him back. The Board should swallow their ego and ask for his return.
It is so very easy to slip into the ‘I-told-you-so’ mode and conclude that everyone else is wrong and you are the only person with the solution to a problem. It seems to me that you imply this in your article today. That the Arsenal hierarchy caved in to the mob then by getting rid of Wenger and even completely severing ties with him only tells us that their ownership of the Club is only profit driven.
Indeed they could have given Wenger a new role in the Club after a reasonable break from work as Manager of the team but they didn’t. It appeared the empty seats in the stadium and the ruckus and mayhem created by that mob absolutely scared the daylights out of the Kroenke clan and they then took the wrong steps to ‘protect’ their investment.
Wenger is not indispensable nor immune to human weaknesses but, he surely knows a lot more about football and AFC than the entire Board could ever muster in the same period at the helm of affairs. That they failed to see the critical role the man could have played in bringing in a suitable successor as Manager to AFC, only further emphasized their solely profit motive for owning AFC.
However, we are where we are but we need to find a solution to the morass the Club is daily sinking into. We know you have been banging on and on that simply getting rid of one manager to replace him with another one is a recipe for failure. Cut these owners some slack for they may be savvy business men but may also be very inept football club owners.
The chasing pack out to bring the Club down would not have recorded any success if the owners hadn’t pressed the panic button once too often. It is looking like this process will repeat very soon again given the last 2 results of the Gunners in the EPL. There is no one solution or way to solving a problem, there are as many possibilities as there are human minds that you bring to bear on it.
The owners are part of the AFC problem, so are the players and their dwindling level of self-confidence, so are the AAA, so are the PGMOL, so are the random injuries that strike a footballer without warning, so are the issues of adaptation to a new league, so are the opposing teams who capitalize on the PGMOL’s AAA agenda by committing fouls on field of play that go unpunished, so are the current crop of the Club’s management, so are a host of other underlying issues that are unknown to us but which play very decisive roles in bringing us to where we are.
The AFC hierarchy now needs to, first disable the ‘fire-the-manager’ panic button and go into a process of damage repair and control while working on, as Unai famously put it – being ‘protagonists’ of the AFC project. How they do it is their call, but they must realize that the stakeholders in that project are global not just in the U.K and USA.
Putting Wenger upstairs wouldn’t be the worst move the club could make, bet he would do it as well, but those running the club would lose a lot of face
He could help a younger manager.
Might be a good idea, as long as they had a decent defence coach,
I was very Wenger out in the last few years, because I really felt the things he had done so well for his first 15 years at the club were becoming things he was doing very poorly. Our squad management was falling behind the rest of the league. Important players were being allowed to wind down their contracts. Young talent that previously would have sought out the chance to stay and play for a manager who would give them a chance were now starting to leave for other clubs.
No manager is going to have any real success here without first overhauling the squad that Arsene left them. I think we’ve found an adequate goalkeeper, and we seem to have two solid fullbacks. None or our center backs should be anything other than backups at a successful club, we’ve got some young midfielders that might see minutes at a successful club, but not a single one that should see starts, Ozil looks to be at the point of his career where he should probably be used in a limited role, and our two best players both best fit in the same position.
The new manager shouldn’t be measured on results in the short term, he should be viewed with the big picture in mind. Is he finding minutes for Martineli and Pepe? Is he using Torreira in a role the plays to his strengths? Can he integrate the new young players that we so desperately need? We really need to be prepared to give some slack to the new manager, much the way Chelsea were giving Lampard some rope to look at the big picture. Arsene, for everything he did well, left this squad in an absolutely terrible place for his successor, much like Ferguson did at United.
Scuba is quite correct and if you know football it is true that Wenger was with Arsenal way too long and most of the current problems would not be occurring if he had left when the transition to the new stadium was completed. Most top managers now move on after a few years and Wenger If he really was the greatest would have moved to fresh challenges having done so well at Arsenal. The article above is just emotive knee jerking that states an opinion with little foundation. Remember it has taken Liverpool 30 years to regain their mojo. Again – if Wenger was still a great manager why is he not managing?
Well. If The AAA which you say constitute only 3% of the fan base can achieve so much, I wonder what the remaining 97% could do. My summation, the problem of the club is the 97% who are only supporters on untold and positively arsenal
Riley Out
Aside from money, players, managers, etc. will or will not come to a club based on league position, Europe places or not. Surely you’re overstating the power, and I quote, “control” the media and fans have over the club. I’m 70 years and I’ve never heard or read a quote from a player or manager saying they wouldn’t go to club X because the fans are too harsh. If anyone has, please cite the example.
As ever, I’m more concerned with Riley and that lot influencing AFC’s place in the table and what that contributes to the anti Arsenal attitude. There isn’t anyone at the club with the stature in Football and willingness to take on PGMOL and the FA. If I were a player, that would concern me more than the cretins carrying signs and following AFTV – a decidedly negative bunch dripping with self-importance.
@ Scuba I’m not going to accept this criticism of Wenger ‘Arsene, for everything he did well, left this squad in an absolutely terrible place for his successor,’. He did not leave the squad. He was forced to leave and incidentally the squad is capable of winning the league given an even playing field.
The powers that now take control at Arsenal are to blame for the poor state of affairs. Primarily the playing out of defence that allows the opposition to press and take control in an advanced position that leaves us vulnerable.
As soon as the frailties were obvious, the process should have been changed. The midfield as primary defenders must tackle the opponent early and not allow them to pressure our defenders who seem to have lost all concepts of their positions.
Arsenal’s players need to gel and play together even in friendlies to get synchronised as a team. They seem to have been chopped & changed to the point of not knowing each other.
Like Nitram, I will not desert this club or its players despite the aweful press we have to cope with.
We sure do need to start picking up some points . Personally I would be happy to see stiffening the midfield, drop of one of the attackers. Play with Pepe on the wing for pace . Defence is definitely our Achilles porous and somewhat off the pace . Hell don’t we miss Ramsey and with hindsight £350k on Ozil could and should have been better invested .Won’t personally miss Europa nights ruins weekend, would take mid table with a heartbeat, hoping for vast improvement next year .
It was always easy to get rid of Mr Wenger, just bray. Nobody gave a toss about how to replace him. Now the club falls apart.
I agree with the comments about Riley and the pigmob. They are getting a free ride in all this. Last night we had two shirt pulling incidents and Laca being kicked in the back of his leg which never lead to penalties. Our quick free kick called back because Brighton were not ready. The puppet they put in the middle was again very quick to card any Arsenal player making a challenge whilst allowing aggressive tackles from Brighton to go unsanctioned. Brighton were allowed to kick us whilst we were booked for any contact in a tackle. I certainly feel that this may be a factor for players holding back in 50/ 50 situations. After all the pigmob do allow our players to have their legs broken quite frequently when compared to other Premier league teams. The campaign needs to be for an unbiased organisation of match officials rather than seeking targets within our club. Its backs against the wall and in such positions we need to fight together. Fans need to stop being divided by various sources and raise the level of support. COYG
Laos Gooner
Great post. Agree 100%
Especially:
“Last night we had two shirt pulling incidents and Laca being kicked in the back of his leg which never lead to penalties”.
“Brighton were allowed to kick us whilst we were booked for any contact in a tackle. I certainly feel that this may be a factor for players holding back in 50/ 50 situations”.
“The campaign needs to be for an unbiased organisation of match officials rather than seeking targets within our club”.
Arsenal Wenger wasn easy to get rid off from Arsenal. For, he was at the club for 22 season campaigns campaigning in all competitions to win titles for the club. While at the club as the Gunners manager, he could only build 3 successful Arsenal teams that won the PL title 3 times out of the 22 seasons he had at the club as manager of the Gunners. With their last win coming in the Arsenal invincibles team of 2003-2004 season’s campaign. He left the club in 2017-2018 season with a poor success rate of 3 PL title wins out of the 22 time seasons available to him to win. Thus, he left the club with a 19 season deficit of no PL title win. This is absolutely unacceptable! Because if it were to be an Exam, it means he has scored 30 over 220 percent. Or 12 over 100 percent. And this will F9. Right? In the FA Cup, he did well for the club by winning the Cup multiple times. But in the League Cup, he scored 0% there. He didn’t win the League Cup during his entire 22 years reign at Arsenal. This is appalling! And this where the WOW comes in. Did he win the CL or the ELC for Arsenal during his 22 years tenure at the club? Nay is the answer. But as a consolation price, his Arsenal managed team reached the CL final in 2006 but lost to Barcelona to come as runners up. So, this is the on the field score-card of Arsene Wenger at Arsenal as manager of the Gunners for 22 years.
But on the brighter side of things to him at Arsenal. He help built the Emirates Stadium and the Arsenal London Colney training ground. While also he had the Arsenal Academy School set up. On these 3 sides, he achieved very big for Arsenal FC.
But nevertheless, Arsene Wenger has left the club after managing the Gunners for 22 years and he has moved on to a Fifa appointment. And therefore he should be left alone. He tried his best for Arsenal when he was there. He can’t be at Arsenal as manager of the Gunners for life despite he is loved so much by many Gooners.
Even in 10 years time some will lay all the blame with Wenger.. sigh….
What wouldn’t I give for an unbiased officiating set up where officials were drawn out of a hat rather than appointed.
This PGMOL select group of cheating officials both on field and behind VAR is truly unbelievable. How the law has not been forced in to check for fraud, money laundering and immoral activity is truly amazing.
In Wengers’ era I knew we had a chance of around 80% of not losing a match. And a chance of winning the match of around 57%.
Now our win % is around 27 % this season.
I know this may not be a popular opinion but the days of cup runs and glorious wins are no where in sight. When was the last time an Arsenal team really smashed the opposition. The answer to being kicked is not to avoid contact for fear of getting carded. Viera and Petit as players fought fire with fire. Like many supporters I’d take the defeat if the team showed some spirit and aggression. But worrying about social media and journalists has made players howl at the referee and hang their heads rather than kick back. And we have made hard men soft. Look at what we’ve done to Sokratis, Toreira and Xhaha…