Dennis Bergkamp has revealed that Arsenal’s decline after winning the Premier League and reaching the Champions League final in 2006 under Arsene Wenger boils down to the Frenchman’s tactical changes.
Wenger was Arsenal’s manager for more than 20 years and the Frenchman enjoyed several successful campaigns winning the Premier League and other trophies in the first half of his reign.
However, in the latter part of his tenure, the Gunners struggled to compete with the other top teams and the Frenchman was forced to unceremoniously resign in 2018.
Arsenal is still struggling to win anything else apart from the FA Cup and the Emirates Cup and Bergkamp reckons that their struggles under Wenger before he left was because he changed his preferred formation.
The Frenchman enjoyed much success with a 4-4-2 formation, but he later changed that and started using a lone striker, Bergkamp claims that is why they have been struggling.
Martin Keown asked him why Wenger struggled to achieve success in the latter part of his reign, Bergkamp said as reported in the Mail: ‘Arsene started experimenting.
‘Arsenal after 2006, there was too much midfield play. There were no players going into attack, and only one striker who was lonely.’
misleading title……bergkamp did not mention decline or linked to decline
a number of clubs too do not have many strikers
We certainly had a few strikers on that period.
Chamack
Bendtner
Sonogo
Germinho
ALL signed by Wenger.
I think DB10 was being quite respectful in his comments by not saying that Wenger went through a period of signing CRAP STRIKERS
I thought the decline was more about getting the right players at minimal cost to make up for the new stadiums debt and we never got the right players corporately just individuals to please the crowd. It lead to team that only worked well together occasionally
Wenger had no money, forced to rely on kids, still managed to keep us in top4.
Mogunna, absolutely correct and even fa cup successes with strikers like:
Chamack.
Bendtner
Sonogo
Gervinho
Park Chu-young
Chuba Akpom
Emmanuel-Thomas
Perez
All signed by Wenger.
Oh and lest we forget for whatever reason:
Eduardo
Henry
Lacazette
Giroud
RVP
Wiltord
Reyes
Nketiah
Podolski
Adebayor
All signed by Wenger –
Perhaps the latter list is the reason for our top four finishes and fa cup successes, rather than the former list?
Being forced to sell your best players year after year probably didn’t help. Wenger did change the tactics too much to tiki taki football which made us predictable. A more balanced style with counter attacking and direct football may have been better. We never really had much height and strength in the team after 2006 either.