Manchu wrote:Arsenal actually provide an interesting social experiment. Normally, when a club starts heavily under performing expectations, the manager is sacked within short order, and a new(and hopefully better suited one) is put in his place. Arsenal's current states shows what happens when you leave a manager who should have been sacked long ago in place for years, and it is a sad sight. I believe it to be final proof that, contrary to the claims of certain statisticians who believe that managers exert very little influence over results and that it is the club's spending that ultimately determines placing, managers do really matter a great deal.
Of course, all of that speculation is just my attempt to find some sort of silver lining in a horrific situation, and I hope that Arsenal sacks Wenger as soon as possible and then manages to appoint a manager who can bring them back to their former glory.
The whole story still 'worked' as long as Arsenal was able to reach the 4th place or places above the mentioned. That was the key reason why Arsenal couldn't, or even better, didn't want to work on their Premier League ambitions. They thought Arsene Wenger will do his job like he was doing 15 years ago, or even 20 years ago when he joined the club.
But football changed a lot since these late 90's and first 5-6 years of 2000's and that's something they were constantly ignoring, in the first line the board and in the second the manager. Wenger's project in 2005 was an ideal one for pre-Bosman and first 5-6 years of post-Bosman era; developing young players(primarily buying foreign talents than using young, native English players) and turning them into world-class players while selling proven and experienced players under the argument of passing their prime, etc.
In the end we saw players' greed for big money and glory had screwed the whole concept that Wenger's planned in late 2000's and early years of this decade, whereas Chelsea, City, Barcelona and co. took their both best young players and performers at that period and left them every time behind on a pure zero despite the money Arsenal got. 85-90% of these players after they left Arsenal were bench warmers and rotation players and they never played or become important as they played and were important at Arsenal.
The money that Arsenal earned served very well for the Emirates stadium expenses of building, however, Premier League title ambitions were too long on hold. Add to that Wenger's coaching team who without doubt screwed the players' fitness and led them to constant situation of dozens of injuries throughout the whole season, what did they have in favor to compete with United, City and Chelsea? Literally nothing.
And for the last 10 years the only thing that Arsene Wenger has been doing is whining on the referees, opponent clubs, coaches and players. Everyone has always been fault except him and his team.
With that kind of attitude no wonder why they look terrible now(just as the last 6-7 years), but the board brought all this systematical rape and humiliation by tolerating Wenger's mess and incompetence by living on the old glory and days of Arsene Wenger when he was one of the five world's best coaches, the architect of Arsenal's success in modern days, repeating, singing and quoting the phrase: "Arsene knows".
The Frenchman doesn't feel embarrassed and humiliated by everyone, doesn't want to step down and the board... Well, it seems they've been supporting him in that perversion and they only focused on the money, the highest ticket prices in England, etc.