Wenger

[Yevrah]

Stay or go?

Balls on the line time gents. If you were in charge of hiring and firing at Arsenal, would you bin him off now or keep him? If it's the latter who would you replace him with?

[CJay]

I wouldn't fire him, but behind the scenes I would convince him to leave at the end of the season. If that was impossible, I would probably still get rid.

Sampaoli to replace him. :drool:

[Giggles]

Keep.

[Reg]

He has to go. His reign will leave a much better taste than it would if he stays another year or two (and presumably fails to push on).

[Yevrah]

I'll start.

It'll come as no surprise that I'd bin him. The bloke's been stealing a living for years now and is incapable of doing anything to move Arsenal forward. 4th was admirable while they were penny pinching, but I think I'm right in saying that the stadium's now paid off (or close to being) and he's actually spent a fair bit of cash over the last few years as well. Which leads me on nicely to the next problem, player recruitment. He's obsessed with buying the same flaky type of shit year in year out, despite the ludicrous number of examples that show it doesn't work.

As for who I'd go for, I'd chuck the kitchen sink at Diego Simeone. I also wouldn't let Wenger anywhere near the decision, or anywhere near the club after he's left. Allowing him to be involved just encourages the same sort of wank-think that led to David Moyes being appointed. No, by all means let him have a nice send-off, name a bit of the Emirates after him and let him mooch around the disgustingly priced executive boxes if he wants, but ban him from going anywhere near any part of the club that a member of the paying public couldn't reach. To allow anything else will only cause problems.

[Manc]

+1 for Simeone.

[Reg]

His transfers have changed a little, to be fair. Mustafi, Xhaka, Elneny. He also plays Coquelin whereas in previous years he's gone with Cazorla-Ramsey etc.

He's become more reactive in big matches and last night for instance tried to set them up to play tight and counter. The problem is he doesn't seem that great at it.

The era with Vieira, Llungberg, Pires, Henry etc was an anomaly in that the team seemed perfectly coached and everything functioned like clockwork. Nowadays it's all about possession, without a real system. It gets them in the top 4 because they have some really good players who can make it up as they go along. Or that's how it appears to me.

edit- Didn't even mentioned the lack of winning mentality which is obvious and people have been rightly talking about it for about, what, eight years?

[Ian]

Get rid. Even if he's the thing keeping them as high as they are, then get rid for the long-term benefit of the club. I don't really pay enough attention these days to name who I think the successor should be. Simeone makes sense if you're wanting to go for somebody who's had the success, would possibly be game for it and would be a change of pace from Wenger. If you're after somebody for him to 'pass the torch' to then I haven't a clue.

But he needs to go, and he needs to do it of his own accord in case it is eventually, finally done for him.

[Jimmy Floyd]

If they don't have an alternative and a clear plan for/around that alternative, I'd keep him for another year and spend said year developing said alternative.

I'm not sure the yeomen of Islington are quite ready for the sort of ultra-cynical football purveyed by Simeone. Klopp would have been a good fit there. As it is, it'll have to be some other fashionable German or Spaniard.

I personally would give Mark Hughes the gig. Decent manager, well dressed and loves a seethe, what's not to like.

[Yevrah]

I think it's also worth saying that Ferguson had one attribute that he excelled at which Wenger clearly doesn't, that if he did, he might have been able to fend off the changing nature of the game and kept pace with it much better - people management.

For all the changes that happened in football for the years Fergie was at Utd he could still motivate and manage his players, which meant he was largely impervious to the changes the game went through.

It's funny with hindsight that people thought Wenger was his equal, let alone even better for a time.

[Lewis]

If he had retired in 1986 Alex Ferguson would still have gone down as a better manager than Arsene Wenger.

[Yevrah]

If he had retired in 1986 Alex Ferguson would still have gone down as a better manager than Arsene Wenger.

Not if Wenger had retired in 2006.

[Ian]

I think it's also worth saying that Ferguson had one attribute that he excelled at which Wenger clearly doesn't, that if he did, he might have been able to fend off the changing nature of the game and kept pace with it much better - people management.

For all the changes that happened in football for the years Fergie was at Utd he could still motivate and manage his players, which meant he was largely impervious to the changes the game went through.

It's funny with hindsight that people thought Wenger was his equal, let alone even better for a time.

He maintained the thing that was lost the moment Moyes started gimping about. It's not a new sentiment but I think Floyd worded it best, and I think it was during the match when Villa were 2-0 up and lost 3-2 to United in one of Ferguson's last seasons: too many players have grown up watching United come back from behind to win for too long, and they didn't like it when the shirt/badge/however he worded it was coming at them.

And let's be honest, he was still doing it in the later years (albeit to a lesser extent) with players of questionable quality (at least they seemed so once lesser managers got their hands on them, but I suppose that's always the way.)

[phonics]

He should walk. Simeone would be a fucking massive disaster as will absolutely everyone. We'll be as irrelevant as mid 90s Spurs. Spurs will somehow manage to be worse.

[Lewis]

I don't think it's so much a case of Arsene Wenger not being able to keep pace with things, because what has left him behind? Where is he so obviously behind his peers? He inherited a strong side from Bruce Rioch, supplemented it with pasta and his proto-FM Genie Scout knowledge, had some success when there was only one other team to beat, and it all peaked in 2004. Well done. You can't knock the bloke. But being unable to maintain that success (either by replacing people adequately, or adapting his policies to suit inferior replacements) suggests that he was simply never as good as people thought, rather than having been left behind. There are plenty of managers who have a few good years in particular circumstances and then spend a decade failing to replicate them. It's just that they go from club to club doing so, rather than stinking up the same one for fifteen years.

[Reg]

This is quite interesting (at least as someone without much knowledge of the Arsenal board, executives etc): https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/feb/16/arsene-wenger-arsenal-david-dein-successor-manager?CMP=fb_a-football_b-gdnfootball


"The problem is that should the manager make the decision to leave – and make no mistake, it will be his decision – is there anybody senior at the club with extensive football knowledge? It’s all very well asking who can replace Arsène Wenger but the real question is whether there is anyone left at Arsenal who is qualified to choose his successor."

[Yevrah]

You don't need to be a Proper Football Man to make a decent appointment. It's quite irksome that journalists insist on peddling that myth.

[Yevrah]

After all, it was Proper Football Men that kept giving Joe Cole contracts when he was clearly ready for the scrap heap.

[Reg]

You do need somebody that knows something about football.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Will Ryan Giggs apply for this one, or is he too busy continuing his successful career in the urban planning industry?

[Lewis]

Choosing his successor via internet poll is the only fitting tribute.

1. Diego Simeone
2. Roberto Martinez
3. Patrick Vieira
4. Roberto Martinez
5. Roberto Martinez

[Offshore Toon]

With Brexit and Trump maybe the time is right for Ron Atkinson to return.

[Reg]

Choosing his successor via internet poll is the only fitting tribute.

1. Diego Simeone
2. Roberto Martinez
3. Patrick Vieira
4. Roberto Martinez
5. Roberto Martinez
I've made the Alan Curbishley joke before, but he's genuinely on the list of candidates at a couple of bookies (@150 and @80).

Among the top thirteen are 3 guys I've never heard of. http://www.oddschecker.com/football/football-specials/arsenal/next-permanent-manager

[Lewis]

The Sky box will be in the bin if they expect me to watch Thomas Tuchel parading that hairline around.

[Jimmy Floyd]

Eddie Howe would be one of the biggest flops ever. Sacked in December with them 17th.

Please get Löw and his minime assistant.

[Ian]

If my FM save is anything go by then this Arsenal job is Stale Solbakken's time to shine when Wenger fucks off.

[John]

I'd bin Wenger, and I'd have binned him three years ago at least.

He's an abysmal tactical manager, as he always has been. His success came from having Patrick Vieira at a time when everyone was playing two in midfield, because he was like two players himself, and the success died the moment the tactics truck rolled in and people started playing three in the middle.

I'm surprised Julian Nagelsmann isn't being seriously linked with the Arsenal job. He's fourteen years old and incredibly tactically astute, and he's about six months away from being flavour of the moment. That sort of manager is usually near the top of any bookies list for a big job.

[Reg]

That team with Vieira was killer on the break. Probably up there with any counter attacking team I've seen. The new Arsenal teams rarely seem to score well-oiled moves like that.

[GS]

They're not getting relegated if he goes, so they might as well try something new to break the evident malaise pervading the club.

[Kikó]

He'll retire at the end of the season and they will kick on. The lack of fight comes from the manager so if they got someone in who can sign a couple of hard bastards they will be fine.

Get Conte and Kante in.

[Shindig]

I wonder if there's any characters in that dressing room willing to step up. This is all probably as tiring to Arsene as it is for the fans. He'll retire and be done with it. LvG to sneak in through the door.

[Yevrah]

You do need somebody that knows something about football.

You'd need to know a minimal amount and not much more than that.

[Reg]

Why's that? It's a huge decision. Five different executives (or whatever) might pick five different managers/coaches.

[Yevrah]

That's why they collaborate and come to an agreed decision.

It's no different to picking a director of a specialist area when you're the MD of a business.

[Lewis]

There is definitely scope for a proper behavioural study of football management, and the mindset of the Proper Football Man in particular, to determine once and for all how far your head needs to be up a particular arse before you emerge in an alternate reality where Joe Cole is a decent signing at thirty-one.

My working assumption is that most of them are complete wallies, and that the sport succeeds in spite of them. It is basically a cliche in rugby league that having too many 'rugby league people' running things is a guaranteed recipe for disaster, because the clubs that are run by actual business-minded people (not even major business figures in most cases; just local, self-made men with a bit of brain power) slowly but surely expose the passionate clubmen and leave them for dead, because the nature of the sport is such that you can't just throw money at problems, or replace half of your personnel, and expect a rapid turnaround. I reckon if football was run on similarly restricted finances, thousands of coaches, managers, and administrators would rapidly be smoked out as being absolute tits (there must be some figures on the attrition rates of those groups in the lower leagues, where the circumstances have more in common with league than top flight football, so it would be interesting to see what the turnover rate is when they are operating in fine margins).

[Lewis]

Actually, the increased rate at which Premier League managers get sacked when their clubs are in Christmas relegation fights bears that out. If you go down now you might well be fucked forever, where as previously you stood a very good chance of coming back up and establishing yourself due to their being less of a financial gulf between the divisions. The owners have caught on that it fucking matters, and don't wait around like they would have done in 2002, but the Proper Football Man (managers, administrators, and journalists) inevitably preaches TIME because they are effectively conditioned to.

[John]

The highest available coaching badge comes on the back of a 120 hour course. That's three weeks of work. The barrier to entry doesn't seem particularly high so it'd be little surprise if most of the people getting their badges were complete prats.

[Reg]

Is it any trickier to go straight back up now? Hull and Burnley did last season.

You're got a point with the football men though. Read "Why England Lose" (or 'Soccernomics" as it is now) - it's all about that stuff.

[Yevrah]

I think the assumption that most of them are complete wallies is probably a fair one. I mean, after all, most of them leave school at 16 having probably not attended much in the first place and then they're straight into a life of training > golf > locker room bants on rinse and repeat.

The only part of football that 'normal' people couldn't do properly is actually play football, everything else (with varying degrees of ease/difficulty) they could. That this myth is propagated is down to the old boys network and the constant need to make football seem more than it actually is, with the latter being driven by the fear that the arse will fall out of it and a load of chancers will have to get proper jobs.

[Yevrah]

Actually, the increased rate at which Premier League managers get sacked when their clubs are in Christmas relegation fights bears that out. If you go down now you might well be fucked forever, where as previously you stood a very good chance of coming back up and establishing yourself due to their being less of a financial gulf between the divisions. The owners have caught on that it fucking matters, and don't wait around like they would have done in 2002, but the Proper Football Man (managers, administrators, and journalists) inevitably preaches TIME because they are effectively conditioned to.

There are an absolute shit load of things parroted like that that don't remotely hold up to a modicum of scrutiny. Continuity of managers is another one. You'll get no stability at a club if you keep sacking people etc. Well Abramovic has done alright and hasn't remotely followed that. He's also (back to the original point) largely recruited people that have won the Champions League, that any cunt with an internet connection could have found.

[Yevrah]

The highest available coaching badge comes on the back of a 120 hour course. That's three weeks of work. The barrier to entry doesn't seem particularly high so it'd be little surprise if most of the people getting their badges were complete prats.

Yep - And think about the fuss when it was decreed that our managers (read ex-players) would have to do it before they could take a job.

Actually, given how much money they're all on now (and have been for some time) it can't be too far into the future before none of them can be fucked to go into management and the clubs are all run by 'professional' managers instead.

[Lewis]

Is it any trickier to go straight back up now? Hull and Burnley did last season.

You're got a point with the football men though. Read "Why England Lose" (or 'Soccernomics" as it is now) - it's all about that stuff.

I'm wrong there. You can bounce back up, but what I mean is that there is a greater risk of going down, and then going down some more, because your better players will get hoovered off, and there are generally about half a dozen Championship clubs who have been managed properly waiting to replace you.

[Shindig]

Agreed. We went back up because we managed to keep the crux of our Premiership side. This year we're top but we've struggled with a side that's been hastily drafted together with numerous new faces. The risk is always there. Just look at how Villa started this season.

[Mazuuurk]

Yeah he needs to go. Sacking him now would probably be a safe way of not reaching the top 4 (though I suspect that may not happen anyway, which honestly might be for the best). I think chaos will kind of ensue at the club, and a whole bunch of players will leave because I think they all really like him as a manager, but I also think that's because he's soft on them and that creates sort of soft players as well.

So he needs to go, 5-6 players will also go, and whoever comes in will need 2-3 years to get the club back on track.

[Lewis]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmgVPi_YQ7E

Not having 'TY' there was a disgrace.

[Jimmy Floyd]

'Robbie' must be in the top five biggest chancers in Britain. All power to him.

[Lewis]

For anybody who hasn't watched it, there are about ninety seconds of actual Arsene Wenger discussion, and then the rest of it is them trying different ways to get him to apologise for what they believe was a slight against the channel.

[Shindig]

Sounds like our Dino Dini arguments. It's nice to see that Wenger's talking like there could be life after Arsenal. I actually might want to see that before he hangs up his specs.