The case of Wenger’s transfers and tactics by Briantole
Wenger has a long story to tell about his 19 years in charge of Arsenal. Facing a rift of opinions and reactions among players, fans and pundits alike. On his stay here we fans have witnessed a change of character from him over the years. So where did it all start?
When he first came here he was brought to bring success to Arsenal Football club. David Dein saw he was the man to do just that. At the beginning he was what we could call an old school manager. His tactics and mode of transfers were just simple: Have a solely defensive minded back line; a completely dominant midfield; and a pacey/clinical forward line. He became a very successful manager for the next ten seasons guiding the team to three Premier league titles, four FA Cups, an unbeaten “Invincible” season, and a UEFA Champions League finalists season.
He had a team capable of achieving all that, using ‘ugly’ tactics; playing a highly productive counter attacking football, protecting dodgy one nil leads. An early goal from the clinical forwards, aggression from the midfielders and defenders, with a fabulous goalkeeper making an array of wonder saves, were all involved in this kind of team setup, most notably Henry, Vieira, Kolo Toure and Lehmann creating the platform for this kind of tactical setup.
But Wenger saw the need for a change in football. He started to tinker with the mode of play on the pitch causing commotion among the fans. He started creating overlapping fullbacks, intelligent central defenders who read and interpret the game and introduced all rounded midfielders with fine movement and great vision, capable of scoring, assisting and defending. We started seeing the likes of van Persie, Fabregas, Ashley Cole, Clichy, Sagna, Hleb, Song and Adebayor taking over the pitch. Now to be fair to him this threatened to be a successful tactic until injuries came and destroyed the success that-was-to-be that never came. Then due to finances players decided to jump ship to go elsewhere to get better deals that suited them.
This became a problem for him and he could not re-live the success he once brought to the club. But fans only want to see success no matter how possible or impossible the circumstances could be. We all wanted him to buy players that we and the media wanted to see in an Arsenal shirt, but he was never convinced. Honestly the likes of Kondogbia, Schneiderlin and Pedro aren’t doing what we expected to see from them anyway. Wenger has put trust in his own judgement and his own players. He has assembled an exceptional team even though some fans are still saying that “if there was a top class manager in charge of this club he could have brought greater success without a doubt.”
But seriously does anyone really believe that ANYONE could have done a better job than Wenger during these circumstances?
Briantole