JoeMercer'sWay said:
sjk2008 said:
You can say he's lost his touch but as I've said, other people will revert you to the situation he has to deal with from above. Nowadays, you can't go out and buy a Vieira, Overmars or Henry for less than £15m on total. It'd cost you that for one of them in today's market. Unfortunately for him, he's not given the finances to either fund such transfers or when he does, he isnt able to hand out the wages which will attract the more stella names and, as such, ends up with Arteta, Mertersacker or Gervinho, aka panic buys.
Do you think if he was in charge of either City, Real, Barca, Bayern or Chelsea, with the backing of each of those respective boards, he'd win absolutely nothing? If not, then you're comparing apples with oranges.
On the flipside, if Mancini was at Arsenal, and had to work within the situation created by Kroenke and his men, do you believe Mancini would win league titles and FA cups? I'm not so sure.
I don't agree, I think as Newcastle prove if you scout well enough there is value in the market, especially in territories where Wenger used to have the advantage.
Panic buys are like we proved last season the result of a poorly thought out transfer policy and whilst the board have a huge influence by now Wenger would know who he's inevitably going to lose and should have a contingency, he doesn't. He buys poorly or averagely on the whole.
Mancini won cups on tight budgets in Italy so I think he'd do a fair job, you have to question the mentality of Wenger and his modern Arsenal when they bottle Carling Cup finals to Birmingham and the like, there's a genuine issue there.
Whether he'd win trophies or not elsewhere is a different matter and one that cannot be proven without him doing so obviously. The fact remains that once the backline previous managers had built for him retired and his failure to replace the spine of his team properly in the early mid noughties started to take place we then see a whole host of flaws seeping through.
What we see is a manager who had a top class run but has slowly let his good work slip into mediocrity. That tells me that he's either been there too long, has lost his way and needs a fresh start and motivation to prove how good he is or he;s sold himself up the creek without a paddle in order to have a comfortable time of it. To me it's more the latter than the former and that's the wrong mentality for a top class manager and therefore I wouldn't consider replacing Mancini with him. If he had ambition he'd have done what many of his star players did and walked out of Arsenal or shown some backbone and stood up to the board, the fact he didn't sends alarm bells and along with everything I mentioned he to me is a massive gamble and a manager you would have picked 6/7 years ago, not now, he's let it ebb too long and there's other managers who set about challenging themselves everyday and are ambitious and are proving themselves. They have the right attitude and that is why they succeed whilst Wenger's legacy gets gradually turned to mush.
Or Wenger is just showing a breed of loyalty rarely seen these days and is biding his time for when a potential warchest becomes available?
He's the highest paid manager in the PL. 4 years ago, Madrid would have improved on that salary to bring him to the Bernabeu. You say that could be down to him preferring to take the easy ride with Arsenal and I say he could be an extremely patient man. As it happens, with the amount of shit he's received from some corners of Arsenal's fanbase, I wouldn't class the ride he's having at the moment as an "easy" one. Perhaps there's something in the offing within Arsenal that's keeping him there, other than his lucrative salary.
Let's face it - there will be teams in MLS, China, Qatar etc that will more than match the salary he currently gets.
As for building on the backbone of previous regimes, the general starting Xi for that Invincibles season was:
Lehmann
Lauren-Campbell-Kolo-Cole
Vieira-Gilberto
Ljungberg-Bergkamp-Pires
Henry
Only Bergkamp wasn't a Wenger signing, so that tells me that he built a side, rather than failed to build on past regimes.
I can see your point a little, in that he's failed to continually build. However, I again refer to the current regime he's had to work under, incidentally once David Dein had left. It's completely different, especially when it comes to finances. As the market value of players and their wages has changed dramatically, Arsenal haven't been able to follow suit accordingly. Whilst they pay average players like Gervinho & Mertersacker 60-70k p/w, the likes of RVP were only getting 90k p/w. Laughable in the extreme.
It can't be put down to pure chance than their regression (or failure to progress) began when they moved from Highbury to their expensive new stadium. I refuse to believe that should a new manager come into Arsenal tomorrow, that he'd have £100m to spend simply because Wenger has been too stubborn to spend it himself. I don't believe that kind of money has been available to him for some time, perhaps never.
You point me in the direction of Newcastle. Yes, they've bought some good players but how are they doing. Cabaye is decent, I'll give you that. The likes of Cisse, Sissoko & Debauchy are good but not world beaters either. Maybe Wenger thought the same. You'd think so considering his history of acquiring French players for little cost and turning them into World Class players.
When past players such as Fabregas, Henry, Vieira & Nasri state their admiration for Wenger and his abilities, it should not be ignored. He's a top class manager who's not had the resources to continually build year upon year. You only have to presume such an opportunity will finally arise soon enough.
