Atletico do it again to further push point of what are Arsenal doing? by KM
Hello everybody! Ah the Champions League we all so desperately fight for! Or At least Arsene does for that precious fourth spot! And when he gets it, next year we face up Bayern or Barcelona and exit the competition. But when the elusive (for Arsene) rounds of the champions league come you can clearly see why others can compete and we cannot.
Atletico de Madrid is one of the bigger clubs in Spain, but the gap between the bigger and smaller clubs over at the Iberian peninsula is much greater with Real Madrid and Barcelona earning almost half of the money if not even more, rather than it is in England where TV money is relatively equally distributed. This makes their success all the more astonishing.
So what is it down to? Hard work. They outran Bayern yesterday and despite having less of the ball they made the most of it! True their style isn’t the prettiest, but the Calderon is a place with boiling atmosphere where any team in the world would struggle. There are many talented players, but hard work beats talent alone and the Atletico players were amazing.
The moment the ball was lost, there were flying tackles, regrouping at the back, lots of running towards the person with the ball and no free spaces for opposition players to play. And the control on the ball was sublime. Did you see that goal? Niguez didn’t have anyone to pass the ball to, so he slipped past the entire Bayern defense and scored a beauty past Neuer. If Messi had done that there would be heaps of praise, but a 21 year old local academy boy did it for Atleti.
Will you ever see an Arsenal lad (with all my respect for them) do this against Bayern on the biggest stage? No way, but why is that? We don’t have the confidence. Atleti players may not match the quality of Bayern, but confidence wise they are flying! They have the belief they can do anything, and it comes from the manager.
Atleti lost Falcao (when he was actually good), then it was Felipe Luis, Cortouis and Costa to Chelsea (although Luis returned to Atleti), Miranda to Inter and still they are a major factor. Do you hear Simeone complain about how big Real and Barca and Bayern are? Complain about bad luck, injuries or money?
Truth is with recent examples of Borrussia Dortmund, Atletico and now Leicester it is living proof in front of our eyes that it’s not only money. We lack character, desire, passion, discipline and a little bit of quality, but it’s not something that money can buy and we do have enough of them. I saw a comment on this site that calculated how Wenger spend over 260 million in the past 5 years. Not that little of a sum don’t you think?
We need change! Hopefully the Norwich game will be start of one. Be part of it!
Konstantin
Can’t disagree, players attitude is a reflection of the managers. Good point about the loss of their top players, (Torres, Aguero too), yet they have always managed to bounce back. We definitely need a manager like Simeone, or even better, the man himself. It’s not like he has hundreds of millions at Atletico to spend on players? In that sense, he would fit right in at Arsenal, in fact have even more to spend on building a decent squad.
If we beat Norwich 4-0 is that change enough for you?
No
The Arsene of 12 years ago
could motivate his teams
to win titles because he
was hungry for success.
He also had an extraordinary array of talent.
Henry Bergkamp Pires Petit Lunjberg
Wiltord Wright Kanu Vieira Gilberto +
a rock solid defence.
But Chelsea and later Man City made the field
much tougher and whereas Ferguson kept pace
Wenger fell back. In recent years Kroenke has
encouraged a top 4 safe financial mantra
with the title winners mentality being placed on the back burner.
Arsene is no longer the hungry title seeker but the reserved accountant.
We have gone from Henri Wiltord Wright Pires Kanu Berkamp
to Bendtner Park Chamakh Podolski Girvinho Giroud and Wellbeck
How the heck did that happen?
So the club and the fans celebrate top 4 each season not titles.
Until the top 4 message from the top changes
I can’t see anything changing any time soon.
But do the majority of fans even want change?
I have my doubts.
The players that was bought is the difference, you listed them and didn’t make the obvious connection?
TH14, Bergkamp, Pires, Ljungberg, Wiltord(really?) Wright, Kanu, Vieira, Gilberto.. I’ll include Overmars and Anelka along Mad Jens to the list just cause I wanna 😛
They was bought by DAVID DEIN.
Bergkamp was Rioch and Dein.
Wenger told Dein to get Vieira if he was to manage Arsenal.
Dein has said that he and Wenger talked every day as friends, not just work colleges, the communication was top notch and we had a top guy to get the transfer done.
NB52, Park, ChamackAttack, Podolski, Girvinho, Giroud and Welbeck was bought by IVAN GAZIDIS.
Do I need to get the Vid clip AGAIN and prove AGAIN that Wenger said he didn’t want to buy Welbeck?
How did it happen? Because the board didn’t go all out, most of those players you listed was bought using the money of sales to fund them, have a look, I’ll show you;
http://www.transferleague.co.uk/arsenal/english-football-teams/arsenal-transfers
The quality of players bought in dropped when Gazidis took his role, how do you explain that if it is Wengers fault? Wenger woke up and thought “My god, I have a crazy idea that might just work… Ops my bad!”
“But do the majority of fans even want change?
I have my doubts.”
Yes they do.
Either you are being ignorant on purpose to sell your idea or you are just really really slow on the uptake.
If fans do not want Wenger out then they want Silent Stan out, majority of the fans are split into 2 brackets from what I can see, Anti-Wenger and Anti-Establishment.
1 of them focuses on the red flag waved infront of them while the other is looking at the matador thinking WTF are you doing?
you are right, the quality of david dein buys are incredible, not much invested but top quality players
their heart desire attitude and passion is mesmerizing.
But most of all is their professianalism.
How they maintain their discipline and maintain focus is so wonderful and we lack that dearly.
We have seen how our defence easily gets caught out of position and how they allow very easy goals something which is almost impossible to see in an atleti side.
They have a midfield full of steel and enthusiasm always ready to tackle,make some mazy runs and destroy other teams with their physicality.
And their attack is about people of desire passion and who are always willing to try and never afraid to do anything .
Their workrate speed and acceleration is always a worry for defences.
They always push the team foward.
They always take the chances they have to shoot and always keep their heads straight for passes crosses and through balls unlike our lamppost giroud.
if you watch football. then how could you say ozil is better than coutinho Wenger brainwash. keep going on on. we fan are not thinking any more. it it’s all down to Wenger brainwash
Lots of comparisons here about how well athletico at home played bayern compared to Arsenal. Article needs to explain why athletico only won by one goal compared to the pathetic Arsenal who played bayern earlier this year and won 2-0.
Basically this article is jumping on the bash arsenal bandwagon. Perhaps after the next bayern/athletico match a comparison between how well athletico plated bayern compared to arsenal can be made. At the moment, the results are in Arsenals favour.
The results are in
Arsenals favour?
Then why is Arsenal
not in the semi final?
Davidnz, we are all disappointed (to put it mildly) with arsenals performance this year. Many of us think that radical change is required. However we still need to be objective,
This article compared athletico performance against bayern with arsenals performance. Seems to me that the results are important, athletico at home beat bayern 1-0. When we played bayern this season at the emirates, we won 2-0. The article makes no mention of this.
Perhaps because unlike us, they beat Bayern at HOME, with a clean sheet, in a SEMIFINAL {speaking of which, when was the last time WE were there? 10 years ago, was it?}, and now, have progressed to their SECOND UCL final in what? Two or three years? Add the fact that they only conceded TWO goals at the Allianz – while scoring ONE – again, unlike us, meaning that they didn’t need some impossible three or four away goals to qualify, and you have the reason why our 2-0 victory last year means next to nothing in the bigger picture now.
The results? Atletico are in their SECOND final in what? Two or three years? They’re also tied with BARCA on head-to-head in the La Liga having won the trophy two seasons or so ago. We, on the other hand, are… Need I say more? We haven’t gone past Bayern at any stage of the UCL in the last 10 years – or past the round of 16 more than once or twice in that same period. I wonder what you’ll have to comment now.
Let’s put it this way if u think they r going to lose 5 1 then you have been drinking more wenger cool aid than most of his deluded followers … At it’s not just effort and cohesion … Other than Torres there are no players on their team of the low level of Walcott Ramsey giroud flamini mert etc
Rkw, my comment said “Perhaps after the next bayern/athletico match a comparison between how well athletico plated bayern compared to arsenal can be made”. I do not know whether they will lose 5-1 but to sugest I have been drinking coolade and am more deluded …… is personal abuse and unacceptable language. I merely pointed out that arsenals home result against Bayern was better than athletico.
Atletico play thug football. I do admire that they roll as a unit defensively, from the midfield on back.
Funny how most of you complain about the physicality of Flame and Gabe, yet praise Atletico for their 90% physical style as well as the man who pushes it…
@sam-afc
Change the record dude. It’s gettin old…
Na, Wenger is the one gettin old my friend ?
Yes. Simione, Greizmann, Godin, Gabi, Koke
Arsenal’s decline has been due to lack of physical players in the squad. Arsenal were successful when we had big strong players like Vieira, Petit, Gilberto,Adams, Keown. Now look at our squad not one player is physically strong in midfield or in defense. Neither do we have world class forwards. Add to that we have a manager who plays one dimesional football with no tactics. We are doomed to be failures unless we bring new players needed and work on new tactics.
Next season we should sign 2 new strikers one world class and another striker with potential to be world class. We used to sign young strikers like V. Persie, Anelka,
Henry and look at the past 6 or 7 years we have signed terrible strikers like Giroud, Chamakh, Park and Gervinho. Giroud is just a striker with no mentality. He will never improve since he every season bottles in 2-3 months which has cost us the league due to scoring 0 in last 14 league games. He is also 29 now and he lacks, pace, creativity, shooting, positioning is poor.