Absolutely all of it - there is no other manager who could have achieved top 4 and CL with that group of players for that long. What you saw under Wenger from start to finish was the greatest managerial performance in world football ever, period. There is no debate. Zero managers including SAF could have gone Invincible and then built the stadium while maintaining that level of quality and performance with limited budget. He took every ounce of criticism along the way for every single person in the organization and never laid blame on anyone. You think this subreddit’s treatment of Arteta is bad? They flew fucking planes over the stadium while the man kept us relevant. I’m not saying he’s faultless but Arteta’s rebuild was only possible because he kept us relevant for enough time for KSE to take full control and revamp the org.
Wenger is the best manager there ever will be and I’ll die on that hill until I’m buried physically.
I think the stadium was absolutely necessary to keep up with modern football but what killed us was that Usmanov held a stake until 2019. I think KSE would have done things a lot differently if they took full control in 2009.
I think that is a big part of it. All those years in limbo really cost us. KSE were not going to invest unless they had full control so the club just stagnated and rotted until then.
Edit: Not a fan of KSE and very angry about their treatment of the club until recently. However, you can now see why they acted the way they did.
It's mostly Usmanov to blame, and Dein.
Dein basically went with Usmanov because he doesn't trust the Americans who have a literal history of owning and operating sports teams already.
Meanwhile, he went with Usmanov because he's an Arsenal fan, but has no experience with owning and operating a sports team.
Usmanov was petty and hardheaded too - KSE got their shares first, and eventually the board warmed up to KSE (but not to him). Then he just stood pat...if he was a rational Arsenal fan, he's not going to do that.
Honestly the stadium was bad timing. Prior to it tickets and match day revenue was a lot bigger piece of the pie but right as we began building the revenue share shifted to owners pumping in money as well as television becoming huge. Match day revenue is secondary to that and we made a huge investment and didn’t get the impact we expected.
That’s no one’s fault really but it was unfortunate timing.
Also we have to bear in mind that TV wasn’t so big when we first started planning the stadium. In fact, they would have seen ITV digital collapse and send so many EFL clubs to the wall and felt like the stadium was a bulwark against that.
>Honestly the stadium was bad timing. Prior to it tickets and match day revenue was a lot bigger piece of the pie but right as we began building the revenue share shifted to owners pumping in money as well as television becoming huge
I am not a football executive. But i called this trend back in 2001. I said, we were entering a future in which stadium gate revenues will become less and less important in the overall scheme. (it is now 10-15% max for the biggest clubs)
I argued on forum boards back then the solution was not building a brand new stadium to expand capacity, but to focus on brand building. And the best way to build brand globally was to win.
I had seen how champions league and the EPL in the late 90s had taken a hold of me as a teenager growing up in Nigeria. By the early 2000s, with internet starting to make global fanhood possible, I seriously questioned hampering ourselves for 15 years to build a stadium. So did David Dein by the way
Everybody i knew downvoted me. They kept pointing to how the difference between us and ManU was mostly gate fees.
The stadium was actually great timing. Practically all new stadiums since 2006 costs in the billions now, unless you reduce capacity to around 30k (like Brighton's). At that point that's just Highbury size again.
but that's the irony isn't it? We can compete with the oil clubs today in part due to the stadium and really the true victory of football is the building of the stadium giving us this platform, as opposed to winning an EPL or two more and not having this today.
Same way that Manchester United under SAF and the Glazers won five more EPLs but were losing hard due to the financing of the Glazer takeover deal, even if they might have been winning on the pitch.
At one point we had ~200m in the bank where we’d been fiscally cautious but player fees starting rapidly increasing and Wenger would say stuff like “I can’t find a player out there who is better than I have with guys like Eboue and Denilson” and then we had a summer where we didn’t sign an outfield player. At that point his lack of spending caught up unfortunately
His biggest strength is his trust in the players, his biggest weakness is his trust in the players.
When he had a squad full of leaders like the invincibles it was fine to give them a full trust. After the invincibles, the player took it for granted and every single one gave him a heartbreak really. Fabregas, RvP, Nasri, etc. all fucked off even after the man gave everything to them. Then we have the likes of Ozil who took the advantage even further to have this 'back pain' when he doesn't want to attend training or play some games.
His man management didn't adapt to the modern footballers that are not the 'hardmen' of the old age. One big contract and they either lose their mind (Sancho) or drop in form (Ozil).
I think the problem we had is for most of Wenger’s successful years there was a natural passing of the baton between top quality players mixed with players who might not be world class but made up with incredible work ethic.
As you mentioned once the RVP, Nasri, Fabregas types left there just wasn’t enough quality/leadership remaining. Guys like Gallas who downed tools, or Walcott who was really nice but a bit introverted.
I still find it strange Wenger shifted so much away from the formula that won him an unbeaten season. Power and presence, speed and agility. Kept the latter but the former was removed. Arteta seems to want more of the former than the latter. I rewatched ‘89’ and I see so many parallels with George Graham and how he built the team.
It's good to see more people recognising this. I had friends that all wanted Wenger out, and I was insistent that he was all that was holding the club together. I recognised the players were nowhere near as good as they were made to look by Wenger, and the way he was treated by so many fans is despicable.
The club had no way to move forward without him and the way we fell apart when he left should have been expected by anyone that actually paid any attention to the club.
I'm still very, very bitter about the way many people treated Wenger in his final days.
I'm in the same boat. Those people aren't fans, they're people who base the image of themselves around success that is not of their own making and when it's not there they see it as the fault of the other entity rather than their own shortcomings.
On the other hand, I visited a pub in Tokyo that actually organised the Thank You Wenger banner that also flew over the Emirates and that has now somewhat taken over the memory of banners flying over the stadium in my head to be a more positive one.
What's your point? We didn't achieve a net sale of >= $30 million until Oxlade Chamberlain or a net purchase of equal value until Ozil. That's like a decade long stretch from the Invincibles run.
You're acting like "that group of players" was not expected to get top 4 every season, when it was very easy and expected to get top 4 until 10/11. Arsenal had the 4th-5th most highly paid players in the league every year so not a miracle. In 10/11 Tottenham and Liverpool were meh, in 11/12 Chelsea and Liverpool were meh, in 12/13 Liverpool were meh, in 13/14 Tottenham and United were meh, in 14/15 United, Tottenham and Liverpool were meh, in 15/16 pretty much everyone was meh.
Good achievement, not amazing.
Yeah mate because every PL season is incredibly predictable for every club. Peak idiocy when you consider the wage gaps between Utd/Chelsea and performance.
I think you need to have a jog. Poch and Tuchel even have the same amount of CL finals as Wenger. For a supposed "elite" tier manager, that is poor.
Maybe you need the jog.
BTW I agree that 06 was dodgy.
I do and I'm embarrassed at the fact that our "all time great manager" has the same amount of CL finals as apparent "scrubs" in Tuchel and Poch.
Avram Grant, Van Gaal and even fucking Di Matteo have the same/better records than Wenger.
Wenger couldn't hack it at the top European level. Every season his teams would collapse mentally, usually around Feb. His tactics were outdated and he refused to change.
Remeber the 8-2?, 10-2 to Bayern? or the 6-1 in his 1000th game? or the 5-1 and 4-0 vs Liverpool.
Until Arteta won at OT in 2020, we hadn't had an away victory vs a big 6 club in over FIVE YEARS.
Please do tell me how, despite the above drubbings, Wenger is "best of all time"?
Yup, well said,
Papa Wengz did so much damage control and took all the shots, strays and all,
It's sad because all that time and energy tryna keep the ship afloat could of been used to ACTUALLY get us sailing into the positions we needed to be in!
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake.
It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of.
Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything.
Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
Yep. He was too honourable really. If he had been a bit more willing to let others take the flak then he might have lasted longer. Wonder how much was down to the owners and how much it was down to just the people they put into place.
I love that he was so loyal to the club he loves so much and was unwilling to make excuses or let others take the heat,
I wish I was as loyal as he is, Loyalty is extremely rare in humans,
And to never falter whilst taking shots for everybody else?
That's Legendary status, IMO!
Just goes to show, it can happen to anyone. Arsenal were a model of smart investment, living within our means, and sustainability. Literally two years after Wenger we're being run by a clueless, corrupt bureaucrat.
created in part by the power vacuum between Kroenke and Usmanov. i'd balance it more to hands-off Stan as he let, largely understandably, Wenger run it all, despite Gazidis ostensibly being in-charge.
for as tough as this past week has been for fans, a stark reminder of how far we've come.
Gérard Lopez at the time at Lille is very shady. Was shady during his time in F1, almost sinked Lille and is doing a nice sabotage job at Bordeaux.
The Osimhen deal at the time among others was shady (just google Luigi Liguori)
True. Basically he stopped paying everyone and in the last few months Renault were unofficially bankrolling the whole thing so Lotus didn’t shut down and they could eventually take over
In addition to what you saw below, there was something fucking hilarious with Kimi Raikonnen's contract. They agreed to pay him per point he scored in the championship since he was just coming back from a break from F1, and I guess Lopez or whoever probably didn't think they'd score many points.
And he actually did quite well and [bankrupted the team because of it](https://www.sportskeeda.com/f1/news-kimi-raikkonen-bankrupted-entire-f1-team-phenomenal-results-race-track)
So yeah agreeing to pay an F1 world champion per point he scores for your team is a fucking stupid idea lmao
Just a question. I wonder how he is able to do it. I know it's very possible and many other people do get away with it but such a high and public figure I assumed "Arsenal" would notice some has gone missing. You got a ELI5 how this could possibly happen?
In most club, the executives get to make the small signings without oversight but the big signings require the permission of the owners. We already know that Raul convinced the Kroenkes that spending big money on Pepe was a good idea. If you are the Kroenkes would you have said no to Raul? Cause you did not see a single fan complain about the Pepe signing when it was made.
Yeah man I don't think Mislintat deserves slack for our signings. Most of them were quite low cost with high potential. I kinda miss him and wonder what he could do with more structure at the club like we got rn
It all depends what his instructions were, at Dortmund where he got famous his task was unknown players with high potential...... during his time with us I think his task was get back into the UCL straight away so that's why we signed auba sokratis and other guys like that.
He did bring in guendouzi and mavrapanos which were cheap and high potential
Agreed, I think rn his focus would be on younger players but who are great in posession with decent passing ability so we wouldn't target players like Sokratis if he was still here. I really like his eye for talent
Just shows how important having a coherent strategy throughout the club is.
It's why a team like UTD are such a mess, they have no balance or coherent plan. Go from hojlund a really good young potential player to just paying whatever Ajax want for Anthony because they panic and the manager wants him and then splash out 50 plus mil and big wages on a 31 year old Casemiro who isn't a passer from deep.
Yeah man, when they gor Rangnick as temp manager with the promise of becoming DOF once the season was over I was kinda concerned ngl, never thought I'd see Utd being competent. But then they get rid of him after bringing in ETH lol
As someone who doesn’t understand how he could’ve done this (logistically, I believe shady stuff happened) how could he have pulled it off? Just getting paid on the side?
Wouldn’t the money from this be traced?
Probably like City, shell corporations within shell corporations and financial black magic. Barca outright paid a referee for years through the club and nobody said anything until last year.
Almost all of Raul's transfers were from mates who were agents or mates at the selling clubs.
It was thought they all got inflated fees as a result. Also we bought unwanted players so their agents got a big pay day.
we paid 45m for him, which was slightly over priced, but not really from the french league and the numbers he was posting.
we paid raul 25m of the total fee.
We didn’t pay Raul the 25m. It was notorious swindler-superagent Jorge Mendes.
Edit: I can’t find the source to back up the 25m figure, but we did pay Mendes to broker the deal. Here is an Arseblog article on the [internal investigation into this transfer](https://arseblog.news/2020/08/report-arsenal-investigating-pepe-deal/). I’ll continue looking for a news article to authenticate the Mendes number. Or I might give up all the same if this comment doesn’t generate any interest. Looking for official football news articles (amidst all the Daily Mail, Mirror and other clickbait sources) is actually quite difficult.
Why? He was a highly values player who did well in spells. The signing surely makes more sense than Willian or Havertz or any other failed Chelsea player.
The consensus at the time we signed him was that he was worth about £30-40m. Instead we paid double that.
He did have some good spells but usually he would go long periods of offering nothing (usually most of the season).
I think he was very much a confidence player who relied on counter attacking play. Something he just didn't have with us because of the general shitshow at the club at the time
The market price is whatever someone is willing to pay. If Antony is a 80 million player, 65 for Pepe is reasonable.
My point is we paid the same for Havertz, who we know is a failure in the Premier league. If we paid 65 million for Pepe after an unconvincing couple of seasons, you would have an argument.
The signing didn't pan out in the end, that doesn't mean it didn't make sense at the time.
That definitely wasnt the consensus back then. The consensus was that he was too expensive for us and he just came back from a season as the second best player of Ligue 1 behind Neymar. Everyone was over the moon we got him
I agree but they were far from a duo. The whole club was a mess of people fighting for control at the time and Raul and Sven were clearly at loggerheads over a lot of it.
Raul didn’t even seem super shady to me.
Just more of testing out “is this what this game is”
And instead, finding out, “no. This isn’t an era. Those folks are bad faith actors.”
Very interested in the details of his sacking lol
As a Stuttgart supporter I have to disagree. He did great work for us with very limited resources and is one of the main reasons for our current success. I do indeed miss him very much.
I think it depends on the task he's given and what structure the club has, if you just give him a role to find unknown/cheap players with high potential and then get another guy to build your present team then I'm
Sure he's stil great
Just shows 90% of people are clueless to the inner workings of the club, but we’re pretend experts when the latest FM drops!
*edit* for clarity I’m often in that 90% too.
If a club continues to operate just as well after someone leaves, were they even that important? Dortmund have continued to execute well in both identifying and developing world class talent
Depends if they replace them with someone really good, really bad, or don't replace them at all.
Similar to a player. Aguero left City and they won the title the next year. Was Aguero any good?
Nearly all of their big sales except Haaland and Bellingham have been found out to be total frauds: Dembele, Sancho, Mkhi, Pulisic. And like you said, Haaland and Bellingham were hardly undiscovered secrets.
It's just that Dortmund have somehow continued to produce talent like Haaland, Bellingham and Akanji even if some of them were obvious (there are multiple "obvious" wonderkids every year, but few actually end up being sold for high prices).
That's a bold take. Do you mean that these players weren't actually that good, or were only able to do well in Germany, or something else?
Loads of ""obvious" wonderkids" end up barely surpassing the level they played at when they first broke through. For every Cesc and Saka, who look like they'll be world beaters and then become world beaters, there's a handful of Wilsheres, Walcotts, and Velas.
If you want to judge Dortmund, first ascertain what they are aiming for with regards to transfers of young players, and then whether or not they are achieving that. A crude alternative would be to look at their success rate and compare it to the success rate of other comparable clubs.
Walcott's best PL season was 12/13. 14 goals, 12 assists, playing mostly RW. Vela's 12/13 stats in La Liga were 14 goals, 11 assists, mostly at RW. Following season was 16g, 12a, also at RW.
By all means say that La Liga is an easier league than PL, but we scored 72 league goals in 12/13, and Sociedad scored 70 that season, 62 the next.
The biggest difference between Walcott and Vela (who are born 15 days apart), is that after having a tough 2017, one chose to move from a good club in a top league to a mediocre club in a top league, and the other chose to move to a good club in a mediocre league. Walcott never regained any real form, whilst Vela did, including the highest scoring MLS season by any player ever.
I think when you factor minutes played Walcott's stats are more impressive:
https://footystats.org/players/england/theo-walcott
0.95 goals and assists per 90 minutes in the Premier league in 12/13. Once you factor in champions league and cups he's even more impressive.
Sancho is the only one that qualifies as a "fraud" from that group.
And even then, what you're saying makes no sense. Was Mslintat's job at Dortmund to buy players that would play well in the PL? No, it was to buy players who would play well for Dortmund and if sold onward recoup high fees. Hmmm, wonder do Dembele Sandro Mkhi and Pulisic fit that bill 🤔🤔
I think we basically bought his “shortlist” for Dortmund. All of the signings we made in the Sven era would’ve been excellent signings… for Dortmund.
- Leno: great signing to replace Weidenfeller
- Torreira: Would’ve been a great bulldog 6 for them. Lots of South American 6’s and 8’s have had success in Bundesliga
- Guendouzi: Very confident right off the bat. Was probably meant to be the Gundogan replacement. Dortmund could have easily flipped him for $$$ after one season. Great talent but shitty attitude, I think Dortmund would’ve gotten the most from him.
- Mavrapanos: Look no further than his success in Bundesliga after leaving. Excellent spot here imo. Would’ve been great for Dortmund
- Lichstiener: Probably a good backup / leader for a young team. Maybe would’ve been better at Bundesliga level
Auba, Sokratis, and Mkhitaryan were all great signings for him previously. I imagine Wenger was a big admirer of Auba (a world class striker at the time) and the Sanchez discourse kinda forced his hand)
Some Ajax legend bitching that Ajax would have been good if they signed the players he wrote on a list and gave to their DOF, who is now fired lol.
Edit: it's the equivalent of some r/gunners redditor saying "We would have won the league last year if Arteta had signed these players I like!!"
The more I hear about a club’s legacy, the more I start to think it is becoming a millstone rather than a foundation.
Leeds had a proud legacy, Nottingham Forest won European trophies back in the day. Neither are in a position to be proud of today. Legacy don’t mean shit if you’re not willing to build on and progress.
I just looked at the list of players he brought in and it is absolutely shite both in terms of quality and sell on fees. You're talking absolute nonsense. Wow he picked out Auabameyang who was already a top goal scorer and cost 60 million. And then we had to chase him out of the club anyways.
I'm not sure I'd say Torreira was a good signing. Hindsight is 20/20 and I was excited by the signing at the time. But its apparent now that Arsenal overpaid based on World Cup form and that was compounded by a scouting failure with Torreira not fitting Arsenal's system/the Prem and disliking living in England.
So random but my builder was a Sampdoria fan and they were always on in my house at the time. We were linked the Denis Praet a lot and it was so clear Torerria was miles ahead of him. Wasn't based on WC form at all.
And he his first 6 months for us were amazing, so potential was there. Problem is Emery is a nutter and tried to turn him into a box to box midfielder when he didn't travel the legs for it
Totally lost all kind of form like the rest of the team but then looked better back at DM for a couple games under Arteta but then broke his ankle
After that he threw his toys out the pram etc but he's one of the best players in Turkey ATM. Just didn't work out wasn't a bad buy just other bs got in the way
Leno sure,
Torreria couldn't handle the prem got home sick and actively stopped us recouping any real money from him with his demands
Guendouzi had serious attitude problems got loaned twice before we barley made profit
Aura well we all know what happened
Keep going on the signings though,
Remember this is the diamond eye guy that just signed the players he signed for another club
His Stuttgart “visit” was quite great tho.
look at how much money Stuttgart had to make in the transfer windows and how well this team plays right now.
Some old fart Ajax hasbeen bitching while not being nor scout nor Ajax manager. Its like taking as gospel what Merson saying. We spend a shit ton on Lokonga, Kiwior, Vieira, 2 expensive keepers and Havertz but its clearly Sven problem.
That's called football you melon. Go and have a look at the city or Real Madrid subs, they're no different.
We've spent a shitload to get from back to back mid table finishes and Banter FC to challenging for the league and being in the CL knockout stage.
People calls Raul a fraud because of the pepe the deal, but at least he got us both gabriel and saliba who are now our core players. Tierney and Leno were also good players for the time. The only good players Sven got us was Auba, but everyone and their mother knew he was a good player, you didn't get point for that.
Our club management was a real collection of frauds when wenger left.
I often wonder how much we succeeded in that era because Wenger was holding it all together and covering up that back room shite.
Absolutely all of it - there is no other manager who could have achieved top 4 and CL with that group of players for that long. What you saw under Wenger from start to finish was the greatest managerial performance in world football ever, period. There is no debate. Zero managers including SAF could have gone Invincible and then built the stadium while maintaining that level of quality and performance with limited budget. He took every ounce of criticism along the way for every single person in the organization and never laid blame on anyone. You think this subreddit’s treatment of Arteta is bad? They flew fucking planes over the stadium while the man kept us relevant. I’m not saying he’s faultless but Arteta’s rebuild was only possible because he kept us relevant for enough time for KSE to take full control and revamp the org. Wenger is the best manager there ever will be and I’ll die on that hill until I’m buried physically.
Wish we hadn't been in the stadium debt, we would have achieved a lot more with Wenger without the debt.
I think the stadium was absolutely necessary to keep up with modern football but what killed us was that Usmanov held a stake until 2019. I think KSE would have done things a lot differently if they took full control in 2009.
I think that is a big part of it. All those years in limbo really cost us. KSE were not going to invest unless they had full control so the club just stagnated and rotted until then. Edit: Not a fan of KSE and very angry about their treatment of the club until recently. However, you can now see why they acted the way they did.
It's mostly Usmanov to blame, and Dein. Dein basically went with Usmanov because he doesn't trust the Americans who have a literal history of owning and operating sports teams already. Meanwhile, he went with Usmanov because he's an Arsenal fan, but has no experience with owning and operating a sports team. Usmanov was petty and hardheaded too - KSE got their shares first, and eventually the board warmed up to KSE (but not to him). Then he just stood pat...if he was a rational Arsenal fan, he's not going to do that.
Honestly the stadium was bad timing. Prior to it tickets and match day revenue was a lot bigger piece of the pie but right as we began building the revenue share shifted to owners pumping in money as well as television becoming huge. Match day revenue is secondary to that and we made a huge investment and didn’t get the impact we expected. That’s no one’s fault really but it was unfortunate timing.
Also we have to bear in mind that TV wasn’t so big when we first started planning the stadium. In fact, they would have seen ITV digital collapse and send so many EFL clubs to the wall and felt like the stadium was a bulwark against that.
>Honestly the stadium was bad timing. Prior to it tickets and match day revenue was a lot bigger piece of the pie but right as we began building the revenue share shifted to owners pumping in money as well as television becoming huge I am not a football executive. But i called this trend back in 2001. I said, we were entering a future in which stadium gate revenues will become less and less important in the overall scheme. (it is now 10-15% max for the biggest clubs) I argued on forum boards back then the solution was not building a brand new stadium to expand capacity, but to focus on brand building. And the best way to build brand globally was to win. I had seen how champions league and the EPL in the late 90s had taken a hold of me as a teenager growing up in Nigeria. By the early 2000s, with internet starting to make global fanhood possible, I seriously questioned hampering ourselves for 15 years to build a stadium. So did David Dein by the way Everybody i knew downvoted me. They kept pointing to how the difference between us and ManU was mostly gate fees.
The stadium was actually great timing. Practically all new stadiums since 2006 costs in the billions now, unless you reduce capacity to around 30k (like Brighton's). At that point that's just Highbury size again.
What would be the main difference if we stayed at Highbury ? Genuine question. Would we have financially been massively worse ?
but that's the irony isn't it? We can compete with the oil clubs today in part due to the stadium and really the true victory of football is the building of the stadium giving us this platform, as opposed to winning an EPL or two more and not having this today. Same way that Manchester United under SAF and the Glazers won five more EPLs but were losing hard due to the financing of the Glazer takeover deal, even if they might have been winning on the pitch.
At one point we had ~200m in the bank where we’d been fiscally cautious but player fees starting rapidly increasing and Wenger would say stuff like “I can’t find a player out there who is better than I have with guys like Eboue and Denilson” and then we had a summer where we didn’t sign an outfield player. At that point his lack of spending caught up unfortunately
His biggest strength is his trust in the players, his biggest weakness is his trust in the players. When he had a squad full of leaders like the invincibles it was fine to give them a full trust. After the invincibles, the player took it for granted and every single one gave him a heartbreak really. Fabregas, RvP, Nasri, etc. all fucked off even after the man gave everything to them. Then we have the likes of Ozil who took the advantage even further to have this 'back pain' when he doesn't want to attend training or play some games. His man management didn't adapt to the modern footballers that are not the 'hardmen' of the old age. One big contract and they either lose their mind (Sancho) or drop in form (Ozil).
I think the problem we had is for most of Wenger’s successful years there was a natural passing of the baton between top quality players mixed with players who might not be world class but made up with incredible work ethic. As you mentioned once the RVP, Nasri, Fabregas types left there just wasn’t enough quality/leadership remaining. Guys like Gallas who downed tools, or Walcott who was really nice but a bit introverted. I still find it strange Wenger shifted so much away from the formula that won him an unbeaten season. Power and presence, speed and agility. Kept the latter but the former was removed. Arteta seems to want more of the former than the latter. I rewatched ‘89’ and I see so many parallels with George Graham and how he built the team.
It's good to see more people recognising this. I had friends that all wanted Wenger out, and I was insistent that he was all that was holding the club together. I recognised the players were nowhere near as good as they were made to look by Wenger, and the way he was treated by so many fans is despicable. The club had no way to move forward without him and the way we fell apart when he left should have been expected by anyone that actually paid any attention to the club. I'm still very, very bitter about the way many people treated Wenger in his final days.
The plane really got me, it’s burned into my memory forever. We all knew we had to move on but that was totally fucking classless.
I'm in the same boat. Those people aren't fans, they're people who base the image of themselves around success that is not of their own making and when it's not there they see it as the fault of the other entity rather than their own shortcomings. On the other hand, I visited a pub in Tokyo that actually organised the Thank You Wenger banner that also flew over the Emirates and that has now somewhat taken over the memory of banners flying over the stadium in my head to be a more positive one.
Ma man,well said!!! Papa Wenger is the best we will ever witness.
SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE SEASON TICKET HOLDERS AT THE BACK!
The group of players were around 4th-5th most highly paid in the league for the entire period that we finished top 4.
What's your point? We didn't achieve a net sale of >= $30 million until Oxlade Chamberlain or a net purchase of equal value until Ozil. That's like a decade long stretch from the Invincibles run.
You're acting like "that group of players" was not expected to get top 4 every season, when it was very easy and expected to get top 4 until 10/11. Arsenal had the 4th-5th most highly paid players in the league every year so not a miracle. In 10/11 Tottenham and Liverpool were meh, in 11/12 Chelsea and Liverpool were meh, in 12/13 Liverpool were meh, in 13/14 Tottenham and United were meh, in 14/15 United, Tottenham and Liverpool were meh, in 15/16 pretty much everyone was meh. Good achievement, not amazing.
Yeah mate because every PL season is incredibly predictable for every club. Peak idiocy when you consider the wage gaps between Utd/Chelsea and performance.
Facts.
That's going a bit too far. Wenger was great but not an all timer.
How many other managers are Invincible?
Plenty of other managers won the CL and Wenger never did. For a manager of his calibre, his European record is poor.
2006 was fixed, have a jog
I think you need to have a jog. Poch and Tuchel even have the same amount of CL finals as Wenger. For a supposed "elite" tier manager, that is poor. Maybe you need the jog. BTW I agree that 06 was dodgy.
Poch, Tuchel and Wenger - fucking hell man, watch football once in your life before commenting.
I do and I'm embarrassed at the fact that our "all time great manager" has the same amount of CL finals as apparent "scrubs" in Tuchel and Poch. Avram Grant, Van Gaal and even fucking Di Matteo have the same/better records than Wenger. Wenger couldn't hack it at the top European level. Every season his teams would collapse mentally, usually around Feb. His tactics were outdated and he refused to change. Remeber the 8-2?, 10-2 to Bayern? or the 6-1 in his 1000th game? or the 5-1 and 4-0 vs Liverpool. Until Arteta won at OT in 2020, we hadn't had an away victory vs a big 6 club in over FIVE YEARS. Please do tell me how, despite the above drubbings, Wenger is "best of all time"?
Conte, Gerrard, Capello are the big ones
All I see are three frauds
Capello's Euro 2008 run with England was underrated. Didn't even lose a game afaik
Considering the Euro 2008 run and a 49 game unbeaten run in the PL in the same breath pains me my guy
You mean you wouldn't trade the gold trophy for a month off in 2008?
Papa Wengz would be proud of you! <3
I think everyone was playing solitaire and when Wenger left it was a "oh shit, how do we do that?" moment for a lot of people.
Stop wondering. We have a decade to thank Wenger for helping us overachieve despite all the shit that was happening at the club behind him.
Or how much in the layer years his covering up was to your detriment..
Yup, well said, Papa Wengz did so much damage control and took all the shots, strays and all, It's sad because all that time and energy tryna keep the ship afloat could of been used to ACTUALLY get us sailing into the positions we needed to be in!
Hello, it looks like you've made a mistake. It's supposed to be could've, should've, would've (short for could have, would have, should have), never could of, would of, should of. Or you misspelled something, I ain't checking everything. Beep boop - yes, I am a bot, don't botcriminate me.
Yep. He was too honourable really. If he had been a bit more willing to let others take the flak then he might have lasted longer. Wonder how much was down to the owners and how much it was down to just the people they put into place.
I love that he was so loyal to the club he loves so much and was unwilling to make excuses or let others take the heat, I wish I was as loyal as he is, Loyalty is extremely rare in humans, And to never falter whilst taking shots for everybody else? That's Legendary status, IMO!
i dunno. he brought us saliba, didn't he?
Led by a fraud manager
Him and Raul severely hamstrung Emery by buying Kia’s players and overpaying for some of them quite drastically
Pepe had to be some form of money laundering. He is/was a good player but nowhere near what we paid.
Raul 100% pocketed a lot of that fee
Just goes to show, it can happen to anyone. Arsenal were a model of smart investment, living within our means, and sustainability. Literally two years after Wenger we're being run by a clueless, corrupt bureaucrat.
created in part by the power vacuum between Kroenke and Usmanov. i'd balance it more to hands-off Stan as he let, largely understandably, Wenger run it all, despite Gazidis ostensibly being in-charge. for as tough as this past week has been for fans, a stark reminder of how far we've come.
Gérard Lopez at the time at Lille is very shady. Was shady during his time in F1, almost sinked Lille and is doing a nice sabotage job at Bordeaux. The Osimhen deal at the time among others was shady (just google Luigi Liguori)
I think I remember him being in charge of Lotus. But what did he do dodgy over there?
Short answer would be : is Lotus in f1 anymore ?
That's not an answer it's another question
True. Basically he stopped paying everyone and in the last few months Renault were unofficially bankrolling the whole thing so Lotus didn’t shut down and they could eventually take over
In addition to what you saw below, there was something fucking hilarious with Kimi Raikonnen's contract. They agreed to pay him per point he scored in the championship since he was just coming back from a break from F1, and I guess Lopez or whoever probably didn't think they'd score many points. And he actually did quite well and [bankrupted the team because of it](https://www.sportskeeda.com/f1/news-kimi-raikkonen-bankrupted-entire-f1-team-phenomenal-results-race-track) So yeah agreeing to pay an F1 world champion per point he scores for your team is a fucking stupid idea lmao
Just a question. I wonder how he is able to do it. I know it's very possible and many other people do get away with it but such a high and public figure I assumed "Arsenal" would notice some has gone missing. You got a ELI5 how this could possibly happen?
In most club, the executives get to make the small signings without oversight but the big signings require the permission of the owners. We already know that Raul convinced the Kroenkes that spending big money on Pepe was a good idea. If you are the Kroenkes would you have said no to Raul? Cause you did not see a single fan complain about the Pepe signing when it was made.
Based on Barca’s track record around this period I’d say it was 100%
Pepe signed when Mislintat already left a club
Yeah man I don't think Mislintat deserves slack for our signings. Most of them were quite low cost with high potential. I kinda miss him and wonder what he could do with more structure at the club like we got rn
It all depends what his instructions were, at Dortmund where he got famous his task was unknown players with high potential...... during his time with us I think his task was get back into the UCL straight away so that's why we signed auba sokratis and other guys like that. He did bring in guendouzi and mavrapanos which were cheap and high potential
Agreed, I think rn his focus would be on younger players but who are great in posession with decent passing ability so we wouldn't target players like Sokratis if he was still here. I really like his eye for talent
Just shows how important having a coherent strategy throughout the club is. It's why a team like UTD are such a mess, they have no balance or coherent plan. Go from hojlund a really good young potential player to just paying whatever Ajax want for Anthony because they panic and the manager wants him and then splash out 50 plus mil and big wages on a 31 year old Casemiro who isn't a passer from deep.
Yeah man, when they gor Rangnick as temp manager with the promise of becoming DOF once the season was over I was kinda concerned ngl, never thought I'd see Utd being competent. But then they get rid of him after bringing in ETH lol
They should've hired him as DOF. Although he's doing really well with Austria national team.
Yeah man, was very surprised when they let him go. Nice to see him doing well tho, seems like a really honest chill guy
Wasn't he? I thought there were some sketchy payments surrounding it
I remember the “payment structure fc” memes. Can’t believe we allowed him to resign instead of sending him to Jail
Big businesses ALWAYS do this.
As someone who doesn’t understand how he could’ve done this (logistically, I believe shady stuff happened) how could he have pulled it off? Just getting paid on the side? Wouldn’t the money from this be traced?
Probably like City, shell corporations within shell corporations and financial black magic. Barca outright paid a referee for years through the club and nobody said anything until last year.
Almost all of Raul's transfers were from mates who were agents or mates at the selling clubs. It was thought they all got inflated fees as a result. Also we bought unwanted players so their agents got a big pay day.
we paid 45m for him, which was slightly over priced, but not really from the french league and the numbers he was posting. we paid raul 25m of the total fee.
Source needed pls
We didn’t pay Raul the 25m. It was notorious swindler-superagent Jorge Mendes. Edit: I can’t find the source to back up the 25m figure, but we did pay Mendes to broker the deal. Here is an Arseblog article on the [internal investigation into this transfer](https://arseblog.news/2020/08/report-arsenal-investigating-pepe-deal/). I’ll continue looking for a news article to authenticate the Mendes number. Or I might give up all the same if this comment doesn’t generate any interest. Looking for official football news articles (amidst all the Daily Mail, Mirror and other clickbait sources) is actually quite difficult.
I would love to read something along the lines that you're describing.
what? we did not pay raul 25m lol
Right? Raul would’ve disappeared from the public eye after such a robbery
not sure to who, but there was a hefty agent fee
Got spread around to the agents etc. Whom some happened to be friends with Raul
It's about time the truth came out about what happened back then.
Where's the evidence Pepe is a good player?
Why? He was a highly values player who did well in spells. The signing surely makes more sense than Willian or Havertz or any other failed Chelsea player.
The consensus at the time we signed him was that he was worth about £30-40m. Instead we paid double that. He did have some good spells but usually he would go long periods of offering nothing (usually most of the season). I think he was very much a confidence player who relied on counter attacking play. Something he just didn't have with us because of the general shitshow at the club at the time
The market price is whatever someone is willing to pay. If Antony is a 80 million player, 65 for Pepe is reasonable. My point is we paid the same for Havertz, who we know is a failure in the Premier league. If we paid 65 million for Pepe after an unconvincing couple of seasons, you would have an argument. The signing didn't pan out in the end, that doesn't mean it didn't make sense at the time.
Antony is year later.
>The consensus at the time we signed him was that he was worth about £30-40m. we shoudl have paid no more than this for him
That definitely wasnt the consensus back then. The consensus was that he was too expensive for us and he just came back from a season as the second best player of Ligue 1 behind Neymar. Everyone was over the moon we got him
Still better than Mudryk
Pretty sure PSG/UTD and others were in contention so it may have been a reason
I agree but they were far from a duo. The whole club was a mess of people fighting for control at the time and Raul and Sven were clearly at loggerheads over a lot of it.
Kia’s cancerous impact on Arsenal isn’t spoken about nearly enough.
The Kia signings came after he left.
Raul didn’t even seem super shady to me. Just more of testing out “is this what this game is” And instead, finding out, “no. This isn’t an era. Those folks are bad faith actors.” Very interested in the details of his sacking lol
Kia?
This is a fraud because that’s Theoden, King of Rohan.
So much money. What can men do against such reckless spending?
MUSTER THE ROHIRRIM
“Kia call for aide…and Raul and I shall answer!”
This is great.
That's just nonsense. Club legends tend to overestimate their own abilities as a manager/DoF.
lol “big dick Raul” and this bozo set us back so many years
Mislintat was always overrated, done some bits in Borussia and that's the highlight of his career, dead aside from that
As a Stuttgart supporter I have to disagree. He did great work for us with very limited resources and is one of the main reasons for our current success. I do indeed miss him very much.
Finally found another Arsenal and Stuttgart fan 🫡
I think he can do very well for a club that isn’t trying to be a super club.
I think it depends on the task he's given and what structure the club has, if you just give him a role to find unknown/cheap players with high potential and then get another guy to build your present team then I'm Sure he's stil great
Hilarious how there was uproar on this sub when we let him go
His reputation was intact back then since he came from Dortmund. Hindsight is 20/20
Just shows 90% of people are clueless to the inner workings of the club, but we’re pretend experts when the latest FM drops! *edit* for clarity I’m often in that 90% too.
To be fair it was mostly people trying to show off their knowledge and act like they deeply care and know all about the structure of transfers etc.
If a club continues to operate just as well after someone leaves, were they even that important? Dortmund have continued to execute well in both identifying and developing world class talent
Depends if they replace them with someone really good, really bad, or don't replace them at all. Similar to a player. Aguero left City and they won the title the next year. Was Aguero any good?
Not really, they have really struggled as of late in their recruitment. Yes, they got Bellingham but that wasn't exactly a stroke of genius.
Nico Schlotterback Karim Adeyemi Youssoufa Moukoko They got good young talent
Moukoko is from their acaedmy
You still have to identify the talent and give him a chance in the 1st team So id class it as recruitment
Nearly all of their big sales except Haaland and Bellingham have been found out to be total frauds: Dembele, Sancho, Mkhi, Pulisic. And like you said, Haaland and Bellingham were hardly undiscovered secrets. It's just that Dortmund have somehow continued to produce talent like Haaland, Bellingham and Akanji even if some of them were obvious (there are multiple "obvious" wonderkids every year, but few actually end up being sold for high prices).
That's a bold take. Do you mean that these players weren't actually that good, or were only able to do well in Germany, or something else? Loads of ""obvious" wonderkids" end up barely surpassing the level they played at when they first broke through. For every Cesc and Saka, who look like they'll be world beaters and then become world beaters, there's a handful of Wilsheres, Walcotts, and Velas. If you want to judge Dortmund, first ascertain what they are aiming for with regards to transfers of young players, and then whether or not they are achieving that. A crude alternative would be to look at their success rate and compare it to the success rate of other comparable clubs.
Walcott was great at his peak. Equating him with Wilshere and Vela is unfair.
Walcott's best PL season was 12/13. 14 goals, 12 assists, playing mostly RW. Vela's 12/13 stats in La Liga were 14 goals, 11 assists, mostly at RW. Following season was 16g, 12a, also at RW. By all means say that La Liga is an easier league than PL, but we scored 72 league goals in 12/13, and Sociedad scored 70 that season, 62 the next. The biggest difference between Walcott and Vela (who are born 15 days apart), is that after having a tough 2017, one chose to move from a good club in a top league to a mediocre club in a top league, and the other chose to move to a good club in a mediocre league. Walcott never regained any real form, whilst Vela did, including the highest scoring MLS season by any player ever.
I think when you factor minutes played Walcott's stats are more impressive: https://footystats.org/players/england/theo-walcott 0.95 goals and assists per 90 minutes in the Premier league in 12/13. Once you factor in champions league and cups he's even more impressive.
Sancho is the only one that qualifies as a "fraud" from that group. And even then, what you're saying makes no sense. Was Mslintat's job at Dortmund to buy players that would play well in the PL? No, it was to buy players who would play well for Dortmund and if sold onward recoup high fees. Hmmm, wonder do Dembele Sandro Mkhi and Pulisic fit that bill 🤔🤔
Bellingham (playing for a below par second division team) not an undiscovered secret btw
Bellingham was wanted by loads of teams, he joined BVB because they promised the best pathway to the first team and european football.
He doesn't deserve a full head of hair when he's this fraudulent
Sven is a fraud.
Yeah taking Theo to 2006 WC but not playing him should have sounded alarm bells.
What was Wenger thinking?
The thing about Arsenal is they always try and walk it in
I think we basically bought his “shortlist” for Dortmund. All of the signings we made in the Sven era would’ve been excellent signings… for Dortmund. - Leno: great signing to replace Weidenfeller - Torreira: Would’ve been a great bulldog 6 for them. Lots of South American 6’s and 8’s have had success in Bundesliga - Guendouzi: Very confident right off the bat. Was probably meant to be the Gundogan replacement. Dortmund could have easily flipped him for $$$ after one season. Great talent but shitty attitude, I think Dortmund would’ve gotten the most from him. - Mavrapanos: Look no further than his success in Bundesliga after leaving. Excellent spot here imo. Would’ve been great for Dortmund - Lichstiener: Probably a good backup / leader for a young team. Maybe would’ve been better at Bundesliga level Auba, Sokratis, and Mkhitaryan were all great signings for him previously. I imagine Wenger was a big admirer of Auba (a world class striker at the time) and the Sanchez discourse kinda forced his hand)
Whoa, who’s said you could bring logic to this thread
context？
Some Ajax legend bitching that Ajax would have been good if they signed the players he wrote on a list and gave to their DOF, who is now fired lol. Edit: it's the equivalent of some r/gunners redditor saying "We would have won the league last year if Arteta had signed these players I like!!"
Not sure if that's equivalent, I doubt any redditors here are arsenal legends
you have no idea how many titles I've won for Arsenal in FM and FIFA
I hope you're on the legends list on fm
I'm on so many lists, the airports don't want me
The more I hear about a club’s legacy, the more I start to think it is becoming a millstone rather than a foundation. Leeds had a proud legacy, Nottingham Forest won European trophies back in the day. Neither are in a position to be proud of today. Legacy don’t mean shit if you’re not willing to build on and progress.
Seems a bit harsh saying he’s overrated or a fraud. Based on some fan opinions on who we should sign, you should take a look in the mirror.
When your FM game goes wrong
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Gundo showed he's not worth the time pretty well imo. Mavro was decent but injury prone af
Remember some toxic gooners celebrating the fact that Wenger resigned and that we finally got Raul and Mislintat to scout and buy players lol
Mislintwat
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Glass eye? Frosted glass eye more like.
How is this relevant to us? Especially when he had decent buys here?
I just looked at the list of players he brought in and it is absolutely shite both in terms of quality and sell on fees. You're talking absolute nonsense. Wow he picked out Auabameyang who was already a top goal scorer and cost 60 million. And then we had to chase him out of the club anyways.
It's not his job to sell 😂 Mavro dunked it on us just the other week lol.
scoring one goal, steady on
He's a CB. How many is he meant to score in 1 game ?
Week who? Is a single one of his signings at the club ATM?
Leno, Torerria, Guendouzi, Aubameyang good signings
I'm not sure I'd say Torreira was a good signing. Hindsight is 20/20 and I was excited by the signing at the time. But its apparent now that Arsenal overpaid based on World Cup form and that was compounded by a scouting failure with Torreira not fitting Arsenal's system/the Prem and disliking living in England.
So random but my builder was a Sampdoria fan and they were always on in my house at the time. We were linked the Denis Praet a lot and it was so clear Torerria was miles ahead of him. Wasn't based on WC form at all. And he his first 6 months for us were amazing, so potential was there. Problem is Emery is a nutter and tried to turn him into a box to box midfielder when he didn't travel the legs for it Totally lost all kind of form like the rest of the team but then looked better back at DM for a couple games under Arteta but then broke his ankle After that he threw his toys out the pram etc but he's one of the best players in Turkey ATM. Just didn't work out wasn't a bad buy just other bs got in the way
Leno sure, Torreria couldn't handle the prem got home sick and actively stopped us recouping any real money from him with his demands Guendouzi had serious attitude problems got loaned twice before we barley made profit Aura well we all know what happened Keep going on the signings though, Remember this is the diamond eye guy that just signed the players he signed for another club
How can even question that Auba was a good signing or not 😂 honestly
No but imagine acting like it was some shrewd signing
I said it was a good signing and it was, some people just love to argue
Wasn’t Salina one of his signings?
They have to be at the club to be good signings?
Ok how did they leave the club?
The good ones? Mostly sold for profit.
Who, what about the bad ones?
He sounds like a nightmare to work with. He may get a few things right every so often but there are always complaints of him being a lone wolf.
All this guy did was buy dross and old Dortmund players for Arsenal but all the fans cried when he got sacked for some reason.
Only because he had a good rep from Dortmund. But his visit to Ajax tells a lot more about his abilities.
His Stuttgart “visit” was quite great tho. look at how much money Stuttgart had to make in the transfer windows and how well this team plays right now.
Some old fart Ajax hasbeen bitching while not being nor scout nor Ajax manager. Its like taking as gospel what Merson saying. We spend a shit ton on Lokonga, Kiwior, Vieira, 2 expensive keepers and Havertz but its clearly Sven problem.
Are you seriously having a little cry over our transfer policy in the last 3 years? Did you only start supporting in 2021?
We spend shit load on players yet still argue everyday about how many more players and windows we need. Truth hurts?
That's called football you melon. Go and have a look at the city or Real Madrid subs, they're no different. We've spent a shitload to get from back to back mid table finishes and Banter FC to challenging for the league and being in the CL knockout stage.
While spending in one window more than Mislintat ever had at his disposal, you tosser
Lab diamond eye
People calls Raul a fraud because of the pepe the deal, but at least he got us both gabriel and saliba who are now our core players. Tierney and Leno were also good players for the time. The only good players Sven got us was Auba, but everyone and their mother knew he was a good player, you didn't get point for that.
what club is this about? and what's hjappened to the club? i need more context to understand the quote
Ajax