What happens if we finish below Leicester & Spurs?

Naughty triple post but I should probably point out that the best football Arsenal ever played was 12 years ago, and that wasn't a possession based game, it was based on direct counter attacking football.

There's an interview with Keown where he said something like (paraphrasing): "All I used to do was give the ball to Vieira, but when I asked him what he did he said all he did was give it to Bergkamp, and he just gave it to Henry".

Football is a simple game, Barcelona's tiki taka was so successful because they were so quick at it. This Arsenal side does click and produce beautiful passages of play similar to that style, but it's simply too intermittent to ever be our primary gameplan.

If Wenger wants to save this season, he needs to tear up our 4-2-3-1, go back to 4-4-2 and get us scoring again. Ranieri has already proven that 4-4-2, even with a mediocre team (and let's be honest, Leicester are mediocre despite their results) by placing the focus on getting results instead of getting possession stats.

He won't do that though, and that's why this has to be the end.

EDIT: Ix blocked off my triple post. ANGER.

Alexis has come out and said we don't have the mentality to become Champions.

Pretty much goes against everything Arsene has said in the last week. A shame really.

Alexis has come out and said we don't have the mentality to become Champions. Pretty much goes against everything Arsene has said in the last week. A shame really.

Finally someone speaks the truth.

I don't understand how you can still defend Wenger when he's being outclassed by not just one other mid-table team, but two.

I donno if i want or need to repeat my self. I said Arsene should leave, win or lose the title. For the progress of the club, because he lost the players he brought and tutor.

About the other points all i see is your opinion that i dont share.

Alexis has come out and said we don't have the mentality to become Champions. Pretty much goes against everything Arsene has said in the last week. A shame really.

And here we go again. Same shit that Per was doing with years. The player that is shit and make mistakes, come out and blame others. Alexis the main guy in our team, the player that should carry us, the savior, is awful whole season, even Gervinho who most fans hate was better then him then Alexis this season.

If Alexis was half good then what he showed last year we would have been champions with 10 games to go. Should other step up if he didnt do good ? Sure, and Ozil did, but nothing can filled the void he left. It piss me off when players as shiting all over the place but compline about bad odor coming from next door.

Key word in Alexis' statement is 'We'.

He includes himself in that.

About the other points all i see is your opinion that i dont share.

Ok, care to elaborate why you believe them to be false observations?

Wenger is garbage.

I really hope they drop out of FA cup, and do not get a champions league place.

I'd rather see an Arsenal that actually sets winning the league as their goal, tries to achieve that goal, and fails instead of this current trash where they go for 4th place and cast aspersions upon any club with enough ambition to actually do what it takes to win.

Ok, care to elaborate why you believe them to be false observations?

Every point is made how you feel its your opinion, i said i dont agree with it.

You think we play bad and boring football, i think we play one of best for last 20 years.

Arsene want 4-2-3-1/4-2-1-3 you want 4-4-2, how is that even valid point? I want 4-6-0 and if manager dont use it he should be fired.

You keep pointing out Arsene want to emulate Barcelona and fail, invalid statment, because he never do that. He is just inspired from total football. IF you want to compare something that Arsene is close too, its Heynckes Bayern.

You took specific moments from hunderds club sitiatons in 10 years. Picked 1 in 10 years situation with Ranieri /Liecester and Spurs/MC. MC fo years has core of players, that is the spine from GK to attacker, they are club that in last 10 years have spend most money in the world for playes, awful example to take.

Spurs with years spend more money then us still are shit and chaos, changing players and manager. And even now they dont do good, their best in years is just better then the shit the rest of the big clubs are.

We are shit, bad form, bad management, bad player respond, bad club situation, i agree. But you are giving emotional respond taking situation that are valid only at this moment and picture them as fact for last 10 years. Or as if they are successful for last 10 years.And i dont agree.

Our football is absolutely terrible. We haven't played consistently good football since before Cesc left. Could argue van Persie's period was good football, but it was more of Robin's magic than anything else.

Only two games I can remember in recent years where it's been up to scratch compared to say 07/08 was against Napoli & against United at home. We have no set style, our attacking play is awful & our midfield is always non-existent.

Wengerball is long gone.

Arsene want 4-2-3-1/4-2-1-3 you want 4-4-2, how is that even valid point? I want 4-6-0 and if manager dont use it he should be fired.

That is not what I said. I said that obviously 4-2-3-1 doesn't work. If you want evidence to that claim, look at our trophy cabinet since Wenger switched to that system. 4-4-2 is just one of many options, I don't really care what he uses as long as it works.

You keep pointing out Arsene want to emulate Barcelona and fail, invalid statment, because he never do that. He is just inspired from total football. IF you want to compare something that Arsene is close too, its Heynckes Bayern.

That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Heynckes' Bayern was an adaptive (but mainly def-counter) outfit who outclassed their opponents through organisational play and unit defending. This is the exact opposite of Wenger's football philosophy, which hasn't changed since the mid-90s.

We are shit, bad form, bad management, bad player respond, bad club situation, i agree. But you are giving emotional respond taking situation that are valid only at this moment and picture them as fact for last 10 years. Or as if they are successful for last 10 years.And i dont agree.

It's not about the last ten years. It's about this year. And this year Ranieri has come into English football and masterminded it with 10% of our resources and 5% of our player quality. Spurs aren't overperforming, they're just performing to their usual standards. We are handing them the title by not playing well...but there are no valid reasons as to why we aren't playing well (except for our manager not being good enough).

Our football is absolutely terrible. We haven't played consistently good football since before Cesc left. Could argue van Persie's period was good football, but it was more of Robin's magic than anything else.

That was about three months of Van Persie playing well, but I wouldn't call that entertaining football. We've been trying to pass sideways into the net since 2005. There have been a few brilliant moments, Wilshere's amazing goal comes to mind, but they are very rare. That Wilshere goal is what Barca does twice every week in La Liga. We can't pretend to be anywhere close to their level if we can only muster up one of those brilliant combinations twice a year.

The reality distortion field Wenger has created at Arsenal is mind-blowing. Here's a manager that constantly gets outperformed by amateurs and he's still able to convince us all that he's the correct man for the job. I'd love to hear what he has actually done at Arsenal since 2006. Before then he was innovative, fired up, experimental, gem-unearthing.

I'm just not buying this whole stadium-cost self-sustainable schtick we're being fed. Arsenal is an institution, we would have had zero problems financing ourselves in the last ten years to keep up with the world around us. Instead we have opted to stand still while everyone else move forward.

If FIFA changed the rules of the game so you could start 15 players instead of 11, Wenger would probably keep playing 11 men and then blame the stadium if we keep being outnumbered on the pitch.

Ooft right for the jugular there.

I don't think wenger has any sort of coherent tactical philosophy to speak of. He was ahead of his time in terms of training methodology and scouting when he first came onto the premier league scene, but he has not been able to stay ahead of everyone else in these departments, and is now employing outdated training methodology (which is why arsenal has so much trouble keeping fit) and outdated scouting methodology (which is why the valuable young prospects are coming up through Spain and Italy). Arsenal it's a stale outfit that has been riding in the coattails of the financial imbalance of the premier league to get their annual trip to the ucl round of 16.

Times have changed, and things are changing again in the premises. No longer are mistaken clubs handcuffed by finances. Those too 4 spots will become more than a foregone conclusion for the big clubs. Wenger is too sick in his own ivory tower to see any of this, and will certainly destroy this club is he's allowed to hold it back any longer.

And this is completely overlooking the absolute lack of any tactical wherewithal he has...

Yeah but...why aren't we exploiting the big club failures?

Lots of reasons, not all of them entirely on Arsene Wenger. Almost everything that could go against Arsenal these past few weeks has gone against them. Say what you will about the poor results and playing style, but Arsenal have been unfortunate these past couple of months.

Arsene Wenger cannot be held accountable for the injuries to most key players, the ridiculous referee decisions that have cost them so many points this season, players switching off for whatever reason in dangerous situation, players making stupid decisions in the middle of a match, and the absurdity that happened against Swansea where Arsenal players hit the woodwork 4 times and only scored once.

He's had to use 3 fairly different first XI's in the season: i) the one that was balanced on a knife-edge and worked well last season with the Coquelin-Cazorla axis and Ramsey on the right acting as a 3rd CM (a 7.5?), right up until it fell off when Ramsey got injured and the whole thing had to be scraped due to our annual injury crisis

ii) the one that we all thought would be an unmitigated disaster which instead scraped by and took us to the top of the table with a Ramsey-Flamini axis and Campbell out wide and Sanchez missing for the entire run

iii) the Ramsey-Coquelin axis which has been an unmitigated disaster with Sanchez looking like a shadow of himself, and almost everyone in the forward line mis-firing.

Hell, he seems to have started on a 4th XI, with Elneny and Coquelin in the middle and DatGuy up top. What title winning teams have had to use 4 first XI's in the space of one season?

Meanwhile, Leicester have gotten incredibly fortunate this season, what with all of their penalty awards, and no injuries to key players, all on top of their playing style which is solid for the Premier League. Tottenham have themselves benefited from quite a few absurd decisions from referees.

But there are major things on Arsene Wenger's head though. For the past three seasons, his squad building and planning has been uncharacteristically poor. We've had holes in the squad that even blind people could see, and he has gambled on certain players like Wilshere, Arteta and so on. Those gambles have almost always backfired. He has utilised a system that had been balanced on a knife edge for the first third of the season, and he rushed back Alexis Sanchez after his Copa America exploits, even though he knew rushing back players would not end well from what had happened in the previous season. He failed to implement that pressing system he wanted, and Arsenal seem to have regressed in their ability to hold onto the ball and get past a press.

He keeps using two central midfielders instead of 3 which would work better for Arsenal with our current squad. He obviously keeps telling his players not to draw fouls from other team and to play 'nice', which has done f***-all for us. Obviously I do not want us to play dirty like some of the other teams, but a little more pragmatism wouldn't hurt, but would help us. He's taken steps towards being more pragmatic, but he needs to take more steps in that direction. He also needs to be more ruthless with his players. Some players have stalled in their development.

That said, we all know that he will not be sacked, and quite frankly, sacking him would be a disgraceful move. He's got one more year left on his contract. Arsenal should use that last year to find a suitable replacement and make the necessary steps to ensure that the change-over is as smooth as it can be.

~ Sorry, don't know why I could not include that small bit in my first post.

Little bit niggle

Sorry but I'm not buying misfortune and wonky decisions as the reasons this club is in an unacceptable state. We haven't won a game in almost a month now. That's just pure mismanagement.

When Mr. Wenger's only tactical approach is too hope for lucky goals, then bad luck does explain this teams failure. The managers failure, however is attributable to his lack of a coherent tactical approach.

Sorry but I'm not buying misfortune and wonky decisions as the reasons this club is in an unacceptable state. We haven't won a game in almost a month now. That's just pure mismanagement.

Fair enough, that's your prerogative. But if you're solely blaming Wenger for the crap that's happened in past month, you're kind of sticking your head in the sand about this shituation. He deserves a lot of blame, but not all of it.

When Mr. Wenger's only tactical approach is too hope for lucky goals, then bad luck does explain this teams failure. The managers failure, however is attributable to his lack of a coherent tactical approach.

Lucky goals would be the long-range deflected strikes or wonder-strikes from teenagers that happen once in two blue moons.

Getting the ball into the danger zones and trying to score from there is not 'hoping for a lucky goal'. It's where teams are most likely to score from. If you'd rather Arsenal score all or most of their goals from outside the box, we'd be looking at a very different team. I honestly don't know why Arsenal are so inefficient these days, but long range hopeful strikes are even more inefficient.

I agree, Arsenal's tactical approach and set-up needs a lot of work. Some players need a kick up their ass as well.

The manager instills the mentality into the team. It's his fault the players aren't performing. He's the one who buys them, plays them & motivates them.

As opposed to us fans and random, unplanned events on the pitch which definitely cannot play any sort of part into motivating or demotivating players.

There's a reason we're known as a confidence based side and why we sometimes tend to score goals within minutes of each other.

And also, these emojis annoy me. >_>

Ok mate