Your Vision

YourVision - The anti-Arsene media have lost their minds

By: Ole Gunner

The criticism of Arsene Wenger has gone too far. It’s about time this nonsense stopped.

Take this snippet from Kevin McCarra in the Guardian implying that Wenger is obstinate to the point of deafness or even stupidity:

“An inquiry about the shortage of firepower is met with the response that Nicklas Bendtner, 20, will be better next season. Avram Grant, Rafael Benítez and even Sir Alex Ferguson would hesitate to speak in such fashion.”

But what lack of firepower is McCarra talking about? The fact still remains that Arsenals strikers; Adebayor, Van Persie, Bendtner, Eduardo and Walcott have scored more goals than any strike force in the league except Tottenham’s. 56 goals from the Arsenal frontmen. United’s Tevez, Rooney and Saha have 39, Chelsea’s Drogba, Sheva, Pizarro, Kalou, and Anelka have 35. Even though Van Persie and Eduardo have missed significant portions of the season to injury.

Arsenal have scored more goals than every team in the league except a Ronaldo-propelled Manchester United. What Firepower is this moron talking about?

McMoron went ahead to write:

As Wenger will know, the true argument is that Arsenal need to be able to practise squad rotation so that key figures do not tire so noticeably.

Oh Jeeze, not the silly squad rotation argument again!! So noticeably tired are Arsenal that they are dominating games, outrunning their opposition in midfield and scoring late goals.

The Guardian and Muck-Curry have been at the forefront of anti-Benitez, anti-rotation stuff all season.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/News_Story/0,,2259381,00.html Now rotation is the best thing since the holy grail!

But do these fools ever even consider the facts? Every member of the Arsenal squad has missed at least 2 games to injury this season. If Wenger didn’t rotate, how did Arsenal get to be the team in Europe that has played the most games this season?

Can somebody explain this to me? Here are statistics about the number of players that have featured for top clubs this season-

Arsenal-29
Manchester United-29
Chelsea-27
Liverpool-27
Inter-28
Barcelona-24
Lyon-27
Bayern Munich-22
Real Madrid-23

Manchester United that is trumpeted by the media as that great paragon of rotation have players with the following number of appearances this season:

Ferdinand-43
Vidic-41
Carrick-42
Evra-41
Brown-44
Ronaldo-41

Arsenal’s most featured players are:

Clichy-44
Fabregas-42
Adebayor-44
Flamini-40
Hleb-40

SOURCE: soccerbase.com

Despite the fact that Arsenal have played 3 games (at least) more than United this season (Carling Cup games)!

Talking of which; how come nobody mentions that Arsenal teams consisting of second-stringers have won results against, Spurs (1-1 at home), Blackburn, Slavia Prague, Staeua Bucharest, Newcastle in the Champions League and domestic cups?

It’s also patently false that Arsenal have a smaller squad than is needed to win the title. Some stats that negate that oft-repeated bit of crap:

Squad size of Teams leading across Europe:

United: 28-but 2 players were added 3 weeks ago who haven’t featured.

Lyon-26
Bayern Munich-24
Inter-27
Real Madrid-25
Porto-27
PSV-26

Arsenal-28

Source: Club Websites

Squad size of Premiership winning teams since 2004:

2007-United-29
2006-Chesea-27
2005-Chelsea-30
2004-Arsenal-22

Source: ESPN

There are more idiots with pens though. I normally wouldn’t take up issue with anyone who writes for the Daily Mail. But this guy here has slagged my players. I won’t link to his column but his name’s Neil Ashton. He said Bendtner, Eboue and Senderos are not good enough to get into the Manchester United team. Oh really? The same Manchester United team that has on its books such illustrious players as O’Shea, Fletcher, Simpson, Eagles, Dong, none of which would make the Arsenal squad.

Jose Mourinho now runs the British media. They’re taking talking points from him. The Daily Mail guy actually quoted Moaninho’s jealous jibe about Arsene not facing pressure at Arsenal, a bid for Arsene’s job by the way. The Daily Mail guy I am sorry to say goes to cocktail parties and introduces himself as a journalist. Isn’t impersonation a crime?

This is why Newspapers are dying.

Comments

#1 - Passenal Says:

That is also why I haven't bought a newspaper for years!

Thanks for producing this piece but sadly there are a lot of Arsenal fans who have fallen for the media BS hook, line and sinker! even in the face of overwhelming facts to the contrary.

#2 - Leebo Says:

At last some facts to back up the reality. Thanks this is what ive been trying to tell people for ages.

#3 - prasoon chalkanty Says:

that was the best article that i have read in the whole year, so soothing when u need it the most. well done.

#4 - Harry_Lon Says:

Sorry mate, your missing the point, totally agree with what the media are saying.

Its not about numbers as in quantity, its quality and availability that counts. Whats the point of having the squad numbers if they are continually crocked (RvP and Rosicky and others) or the quality is poor so that even Arsene would rather play other players out of position rather than use then ie. Justin Hoyte. Dont tell me you dont recognise our inability to keep a clean sheet, shut up shop after we score for even 5 mins??? Wake up and smell the coffee, stop being an ostritch!

#5 - Leebo Says:

Does anyone believe that the negative publicity that followed the Birmingham game, contributed to the apparent shortage of beleive when it really mattered?

#6 - Leebo Says:

Harry, you cant legislate for injuries, Manu Chelsea Liverpool could have missed 3 of their first team front line just as likely as we have, it just wasnt so. Dont forget Manu Chelsea and Liverpool were all full strenght against us in recent weeks, and we were never outclassed, just unlucky. And regarding quality, firstly Hoyte and Traore started the season well, I think they were adversly affected by the Suds and Manu games but they as with many of the other players inthe squad are still young and id rather see them flourish than bring in another player. For example senderos, how good was Cannavaro, or Adams at 21 judge him when hes 26, not to mention the fact that he is part of the defence with the record no of clean sheets in CL. We suffered this season more from bad lucjk, and a mental weakness that came from inexperience than a lack of quality in our squad.

#7 - michael Says:

Before the season started all these cunts were saying We would lose 4th, the spuds would take our place and Liverpool with the mighty Torres would challenge for the title. They and all the gooners who chose to beleive them were wrong. Now they have to make up more shite to cover up the shite they wrote last year and sadly, people like Harry fall for it. Last year we finished 21 points behind United in 4th. In the summer united spent £52 million (Nani, Anderson and Hargreaves) AND loaned Tevez. and we have closed the gap between us and them. Why should I believe worthless anti arsenal scum ie most of the media over the opinoin of Arsene Wenger?

#8 - GOONER4EVER Says:

Leebo,I said many,many times in other fora that Birmingham's Taylor is the one and only culprit of Arsenal downfall this season and I strongly beleive that he should be banned for life

#9 - Harry_Lon Says:

Leebo, your right you cant legislate for injuries, BUT it does not take a genius to realise that RvP was injured for a large part of last season and a reasonable part of the season before, and Rosicky was in and out of the team like a jack-in-the box with injuries as well, so to start the season without making contigences for this and then doing nothing in Jan apart from selling a class midfielder like Diarra is nothing short of incompetence, NOT bad luck! Arsene is the only manager that all you have to say is 'Boss I want to go' and he'll oblige, this would never happen with Ferguson or any other manager, AND in Jan!!!?? WTF

Bad luck is Eduardo getting injured, bad luck is drawing Liverpool in the CL and playing them 3 times in the space of a week and then pos Chelesea.

As for Hoyte dont get me started, he has never been good enough for Arsenal and that wouldnt change if he played every match! Traoe needs to get experience, should be loaned out rather than compromise the team in the meantime. As for this transition that we have been in for the past few years, we will almost be back to square one if Flamini goes (which is highly likely) and Hleb follows him out as well....wake up!!!!

#10 - Ole Gunner Says:

Leebo

Absolutely. I think that really contributed to our season going the way it went. It was just too much. Wenger, Gallas and Arsenal were slammed to no end, while some came out and implied it was all Eduardo's fault for being too quick for poor Martin Taylor. The press reported it as Arsenal bottling the league. After one draw. Nobody mentioned the dreadful performance of the referee. It was surreal.



Harry-Lon

How do we measure quality? Do you want to do a player for player comparison? Or is it the value of the team? Or just because Alan Wanker Hansen said so?

Availability> That's you missing the point mate> YOU CAN NOT CONTROL FOR INJURIES. I don't know why we have so many of them but we do. Yes Chelsea had injury problems as bad at one point and their squad of 200 (or so it seems) tided them true. But Chelsea is an anomaly in world football. And even beyond that Chelsea proves the lie of the "squad depth" argument. They have by far the biggest squad with 80 players bought for 30 M quid each. Yet they won't win.

It's not like there's some magic number at which your squad is suddenly big enough. Get real, Arsene knows how many players he needs.

All these guys who form opinion in the press have never managed a pub team, and they're arrogant enough to claim to know better than a guy who's assembled 3 truly great teams.

#11 - Steve Says:

Ole; very good piece. I read some of your comments on ACLF and find myself agreeing with you. Unfortunately you will never change the mind of some fans no matter how many stats you produce. Keep up the good work as we all no those lazy hacks (an so called pundits) just hate the Arsenal and always have.

#12 - timao Says:

Nice work. It's just not worth looking at the back pages between now and August. I have decided to become like the wushu monks in crouch end tiger hidden dragon and let it all wash over and away. but obviously be prepared to severe the nads of any chelsea or utd fans that dare to mess with my zen. on a final point, (william gallas please take note) i do hope we go hard for second place as i'm sure all start of season each-way gamblers will agree?

#13 - Chengiskhan Says:

Harry-Lon,

Incompetence = 1998 double, 2002 double, 2004 undefeated season, with a fraction of the resources of his chief competitors.

Sure.

Look, I realize I'm not using these examples to refute any of the specific points you make, but my point is that AW is an incredible manager who knows how to develop great teams. When it comes to teambuilding there are key dynamics that come into play which make it incredibly difficult to just plug new people in and get instant results. Sagna and Eduardo were very much the exception.

People love to suggest that buying big names in the January window will yield instant results, but (1) the ratio of successes to flops is exceedingly low and (2) the ratio of /instant/ successes to flops is even lower. There is very much the danger of things getting worse before they get better. This is a significant--and potentially very expensive--risk. Sure there is the odd Vidic and Mascherano, but there are even more Boumsongs, Scott Parkers, and Sahas out there. I for one highly respect AW's prudent spending philosphy compared to others who have no respect for the concept of value.

Of course Wenger is not infallible, but he has forgotten more about football management than the rest of us will ever know.

#14 - Ole Gunner Says:

Harry/Lon,

If Diarra did what he did with Ferguson, Ferguson would have wrecked his career: Shipped him off to the reserves for the next 2 years. No top manager will tolerate a player refusing to play a cup game.

HE REFUSED TO PLAY A CUP GAME, AND U INSIST WENGER SHOULD HAVE KEPT A PLAYER LIKE THAT!!!

What are you talking about?

#15 - MeanLean Says:

Fantastic piece, I love the way it is broken down. You cannot argue against raw facts.

#16 - Man United Killa Says:

#4 Larry i agree with you..Good article but we are thearchitects of our own problems...we may have a lot of players in back up but the question is why Wenger wont use them and give others a rest...BECAUSE they are not good enough and he is not confident in them..he has ran all the firs team players down and they all look sooo tired..if we had someone like Van der Vaat to fill in for Fabregas and some one like Huntelaar to help Bayor then we would still have a strong backup..and then also a good defender as backup..if we had done that we wouldnt be suffering like this...wenger just failed to learn from expereience...he is def the best man for the job but he has to change some policies..and voila we will be there..

#17 - Man United Killa Says:

We practically had the title in our hands and we threw it away just like that...Honestly we could have won the title easily...I feel confident about next season as long as we make the right signings..Gooner till i die..

#18 - Wokich Says:

We have to accept that Arsenal was just not good enough this year and we're going to have to improve over the off-season.

#19 - gunner17 Says:

i think our second stringers have not really played much in the epl or cl. for these competitions we have depended too much on almunia, sagna, clichy, fabregas, hleb, flamini and adebayor, and they have all definitely dropped a few per cent in the last couple months. if they had played a bit less during the season, we might have been capable of better performances recently.

#20 - BILL GASS Says:

I believe the negative criticism of William Gallas at the ridiculous penalty decision at Birmingham was to take the severity of Martin Taylors Vicious maiming {attack} challenge on Eduardo away from the facts.After all the bottom line is that our players how talented they may be are at the end of the day just lads and anyone witnessing something so horrifying at their age would be affected.
goonerforlife yes I agree he should be banned for life , he has no place on any park!
Birmingham was the start of it ,that ref hadn't a clue what he was doing after Eduardos injury and semingly all the refs since !
oh yes bye the way ARSENE KNOWS so keep the faith.
Im ARSENAL till I die !

#21 - JJ Says:

you 've compared 5 ours with 3 of MU which is ridiculous and not to look biassed, take ade, RVR and edu (3) and compare with tevez, rooney and saha eg. then it will be more or less fair. once you have counted walcott’s why you're not counting ronaldo’s then?
guardian was in a right direction and you seem to be not. just because we play for ade and he’s not the 'firepower' finisher. he’s good to break defenses, right, he can score – right, but he’s not an outstanding 'firepower' man we probably need, an ever single one. after march 23 we’ve stopped scoring and lost our top place. it’s clear. bendtner will be doubtfully better next season. will see. and i will be glad i'm wrong.
we do need more firepower from midfield or we need another stiker.
and to be absolutely correct and unbias you’d better make the rates per player goals scored / matches played.
i do hate all those whore fans and glory hunters but i also do not accept an attitude like bend over, lube your ass and take it like a man. stop talking we’re great because we are great and wenger’s right because he’s right. stop making him god, he’s not. in arsene we trust and arsene knows. well… that makes us a great club of great excuses so far (in the past 3 seasons).
great number 1 – we are in the final of CL and we build new stadium
great number 2 – we’re rearranging and building the new team, no funds
great number 3 – we’re unlucky *with injuries, etc) and referees are c*nts, media as well
great number 4 - ? hope won’t need

Apps Goals rate
adebayor 26 37 0,7
RVP 8 18 0,4
eduardo 9 22 0,4
bendtner 7 14 0,5
AVG 50 91 0,55

rooney 19 34 0,6
tevez 17 33 0,5
saha 5 10 0,5
AVG 41 77 0,53
so, …in average on strikers both MU and we are more or less the same
now look and feel the difference
ronaldo 40 40 1,0
that’s all said. and who says that firepower comes only from strikers???...
we must break the spell and healthy criticism is our friend.
we do need some man scoring 1 goal each game aside from others. then all will be ok and we'll be as frightening side as MU is today or even more. arsene bless you.

#22 - JJ Says:

23 february, sorry. red army day and black day for eduardo. march 23 was chelski game and then my sad birtday:)

#23 - Edward Says:

Wenger is to blame, it's the only right thing to do. With his stubbornness, he has made big mistakes that we are able to prevent , because people have written too much about lack of depth from the beginning of the season

#24 - Ole Gunner Says:

JJ

Whichever way you slice it, our strike force is as good as any in the league. Mock/Curry was talking about strikers, hence his dig about Bendtner.

The question is what you do about Ronaldo.

If you add Ronaldo as a striker, (I added Walcott because he has played striker a lot of the time he's been on), then the United midfield have racked up 9 or 10 goals all season. Fewer than Cesc has in all competitions. They even have fewer goalscorers. And after all said and done, we're still second in the goalscoring charts. Then why do we get singled out for derision about lacking firepower?

The POINT: We have scored a lot of goals. We led the league in goascoring until 3 of our leading scorers were simultaneously missing/Ed, Tom, Robin. There's no lack of firepower, just a team which performance went down when missing key firepower and facing a hostile environment.

To blame Wenger for this is what is unfair, and in my opinion, stupid. Goals were coming from all over, why was he supposed to believe his team lacked firepower?

#25 - Ole Gunner Says:

Gunner17,

Our secondstringers were very much involved in the season until injury and ANC meant the team basically picked itself for weeks before Birminigham, and more or less since then. Sparta Prague, Staeua, Sevilla...

Everyone mentions the painful 1-5 loss to the Spuds, but don't forget a team of kids alone got a draw against the Spuds at the Emirates. The Spuds beat Chelsea in the final.

In any case, all teams have a core to their team that have played a lot of games. Why is this a sign of our own weakness and a sign of the strength of others?

#26 - clockendrider Says:

Great work OleGunner. It is a damning indictment on British journalism that this kind of analysis has to be produced by the likes of us rather than by people who are paid for it. Of course, such analysis takes a bit of effoprt and can't be dashed off in five minutes between coming out of the pub and booking your next free trip with Fat & Orange for a beer and whore fest in Moscow. Keep up the good work.

#27 - Gooner win the league Says:

The press dont pick Senderos and Eboue.The quality of the squad was not good enough.Against Man Utd and Liverpool Wenger would rather play a centre half at right back than a natural Right back(Hoyte) that sums up how weak our squad is, The biggest game of the season was Liverpool and the team selection was poor.Eboue should not be in the side for any game ever.Its not the quantity of the squad its the quality

#28 - Ole Gunner Says:

Gooner win the league. Manchester United played a central defender as full back all season.

#29 - Gooner win the league Says:

Ole Gunner

Man Utd dont have anyone as bad as Eboue in their side and unless Wenger ships him out to Siberia we ain"t Gonner win the league.

Please buy D.Villa. we have no excuses we have the money.Just buy him

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