He may be stubborn, he may have the complete courage of his convictions and he may have put way too much trust in players who subsequently turned out to be c#nts, but there is no better manager at finding talent and playing football in a breath taking fashion……it is sad that we may not have the finances or a manager who is comfortable paying huge sums for household names, but if you truly are a Arsenal supporter, then you should demonstrate that support, stop the poison and TRUST

Mean Lean’s Response

There is the saying that a team can only beat what is in front of them and the way I see it, the manager can only work within the constraints of his club. This is an ongoing debate that unfortunately will continue until we win a trophy, that said, I suspect that even that will not put off some from jumping around blog’s with the sole objective of denigrating the man in charge.

Regular readers of Arsenal Vision will know my feelings of the Arsenal FC trophy situation. The club has always stuck to its beliefs, stuck to a rigid wage structure way before the day when Arsene Wenger walked into the club. While transfer fees and player wages have soared, Arsenal have resisted the temptation to push the boat out to compete with ‘market value’

A market value that has been distorted by clubs who might as well throw the balance sheets in their shredders without even having a glance at the details.

Some choose to insist that it is the manager who has full control of this department, some believe that the club are begging him to compete with Manchester City’s transfer fees but the crazy old French man is treating the money as his own and refuses to spend the hundreds of millions sitting in the safe, the ink fading on the notes, the pound coins gathering dust.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, my opinion is that opinion is ludicrous. Arsene Wenger like George Graham before him has to work within a financial structure and he can only do the best that he can. He won trophies in the past because finances were not as destorted as they are today. We could keep hold and build upon teams. This is not the case today.

Arsene’s flat wage policy has come back to bite us on the Arsenal as the richer just keep getting richer, therefore they are able to pay their top players absorbent weekly wages. This might not have been such an issue back when the flattish wage structure was being implemented as the Chelsea’s and Manchester City’s of the league did not yet exist or at least not to this extent. So we were paying our players as good as the next team.

This is being addressed today as Ivan Gazidis has publicly spoken about but this is something that will take time as players come in and out of the club, it cannot be done immediately as players will not accept wage declines just because the club have decided to do so.

Going back to the manager and his work since we left the famous Highbury, I think his work in the transfer market when he has so obviously been restricted financially, has been massively underestimated by people who have let a lack of trophies blind them from the task he had when the Emirates project was in motion.

The manager can be criticised for not getting us over the line at certain points when his teams have come close to trophies, he can be criticised for not fixing certain issues that needed to be addressed at various times or/and seasons. Every manager can rightly be criticised for isolated incidents but his work over the bigger picture has been exceptional in my opinion.

If it was so easy to take a self financing club who had moved to a new stadium to then continue winning top trophies against richer clubs then you have to ask why the need for the board to stick with our current manager. Why not bring in (do you remember the laughable suggestion) Owen Coyle or whoever was flavour of the month at the time?

Winning would generate more money for the board, so why not click on ‘get winning manager’ to complete the job that Arsene was trying to do?

I suspect that given the framework, he is one of the best managers for the job. If the job description was ‘Unlimited funds, style of play not necessary but trophies wanted short term’ then I would give the job to Jose Mourinho. Arsenal’s job description is somewhat different.

I understand and join the chorus of frustration at seeing our best players leave the club for higher wag…ambition. I am fed up with the constant catch 22 of building a nearly team only to see its best parts ripped out and replaced with unpolished gems. The club have been running on a treadmill but during this massive transition I believe that the treadmill would have been set a damn sight higher and we would be a lot further back.

I hope that in the next few years with new commercial deals, FFP *chuckles* and the new Sky television windfall, we can lift Arsene Wenger to a level playing field or near to Manchester United because our manager deserves to prove how good he really is.

Exclaimer: I appreciate this is a very divided subject so if you are to comment on the piece, please can we (for once) be a little civil and mature. If you can’t then please opt to scream into your pillow instead.

Thanks in advance.