re: Mourinho: Wenger a specialist in failure

we should probably take this to the dictionary board, but i've never thought of the distinction of bravery and cowardice as the absence/presence of fear, but rather the response to said fear. the absence of any fear in fearful situations isn't bravery, it's insanity

as for winning a trophy, I guess he should have from the sheer probability sense of opportunities over the course of 8 years, particularly in the Capital One Cup.

kos

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we've never had the best squad in England any of these past 8 seasons.

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I don't know how anyone can say that we should have won trophies the last 8 years and then look at the squads we've had in that time frame. The fact we made only 3 cup finals, two league cups and a CL with our worst team in the Wenger era (seriously the 05-06 team was bad) speaks to how poor we actually were. We developed a lot of great players, but they buzzed off as soon as they started producing. Adebayor, Nasri, Fabregas, Song, and RvP. Adebayor was a cancer as soon as he had that twenty goal season. Nasri was amazing for three months when he finally listened to Wenger and stopped trying to play like Zidane. Fabregas became really good, and then was constantly injured because he had to carry the team on his back. RvP was injured for his first 7 years here and then when Wenger converts him into a central striker, something people forget, he remains mostly healthy, scores a ton of goals, and fricks off to United. Song was so bad as a 17 year old, but in 2011 led the team in assists.

Even when we had borderline teams that could compete for the title, we had bad luck. RvP injured for the 07-08 season, along with Eduardo and Rosicky. I could go on and I would be right. To further add to my point, every year from 2005 on every god damn pundit picked Arsenal to fall out of the top four. Every year. So how is it any surprise if we didn't win a title? We had teams that were basically shite that punched above their weight only because of Wenger. The last 8 years he's done the most amazing coaching job considering how we were restricted. As soon as those restrictions were lifted he spent.

Mourinho isn't wrong here, but let's not pretend like he's making some astute and nuanced point. He's basically reiterating the main talking point of everyone this past 8 years.

I concede we could have won the CL final with better luck, I concede we should have taken the League Cup final in 07 more seriously instead of putting out our youth team, I concede we could have won the LC in '11 if not for some laughable defending and miscommunication by our D.

I just find it exceedingly laughable to say we "should" have won a trophy.

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i guess you could say we should have won one like other clubs of similar or lesser quality have, but those things are much more up to luck than a league title. tough for me to really say he should have won something. (especially since we've had real shite luck in multiple years: eduardo's gruesome injury, rvp's red v. barca, 07-08 Pool CL tie come to mind for us excuse makers)

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Nobody said Arsenal should have won a title. They shouldn't have. But Wenger should have been able to win one of the, what, 27 knockout tournaments in those 8 years?

I'm using titles and trophies synonmously FWIW. We should have won something but Wen gers focus was completely on making the CL. Cup games were sacrificed. When we did make finals we lost to better teams except for the 2011 LC final which we lost in hilarious fashion. If Fibre gas and Walcott didn't get hurt against stoke the week earlier I think we would have destroyed them which might have convinced some players to stay.

Again we didn't take cups seriously and we weren't good enough to take that on. José isn't wrong here.

Here comes Crazy, dropping the logic bomb.

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Nobody said Arsenal should have won a title.

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I'm pretty sure that Mou is implying it.

If that's all you got out of that, especially with your analytical nature, that's pretty sad. We've never had a title winning quality team, and hardly had one at times that deserved to finish top 4. Now if we get to a cup final and shite the bed again, well, yeah, I wouldn't blame luck.

I don't think Wenger has anyone to blame but himself and the board for that, though.

He has built his teams to only finish top 4. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe he has overachieved a couple of seasons, but no "top" manager who has had CL revenue for 16 straight seasons should win nothing over 8-year periods of time. Have Arsenal had to deal with injuries? Yes, but which club hasn't? I'm sure they have nothing to do with Wenger building a shallow squad and then running his young starlets into the ground. Have Arsenal lost players? Yes, but again, whose fault is that? Did he expect Cesc to refuse his childhood club? Or that count Nasri to turn down money? Or RVP to finish his career winning nothing?

The thing is, we hear the same. exact. shite. every. single. season from Gooners. At some point the excuses have to end, and Wenger has to win something.

I don't think Wenger has been a failure at Arsenal. But I do think great managers find ways to win silverware with what they have.

Was Mourinho's Porto the best side in 03/04? Doubtful. Was Rafa's Liverpool the best side in 04/05? frick no. Was Chelsea the best side a couple seasons ago? No, absolutely not. They won with an interim manager.

My point is that you don't always need the best team on the planet to win something. Therefore the excuse "we didn't have the best side in England" shouldn't apply to "winning nothing in 8 years." Again, 0/27 in knockout tournaments the past 8 years is very, very poor.

(again, not only talking about the title, which 99% of the time the best side in the league wins)

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Really the only logic I took from that is "we have bad luck." What will be the excuse when Arsenal don't win it this year? Bad luck.

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Saying we should have won something out of 27 tournaments isn't an argument either. There's literally no justification behind that other than probability, nor is there any reasoning that actually looks at and analyzes whether a trophy was possible or not. I look back at some of the squads we had and just laugh. Wenger took on a lot of projects for extremely cheap prices and gave them lots of chances. A lot were failures.

Wenger absolutely does not care about winning the FA Cup or the Carling Cup. His team selections in those games indicate as such. Hell he sat an in-form Arshavin in the FA Cup semi-final versus Chelsea when Fabianski screwed up to give Drogba an empty net. Here is the order of importance for every season:

1. PL title
2. CL qualification
3. CL campaign




4. Finding obscure French youngsters
5. Playing youngsters out of position
6. Finding old players from previous teams to fill roster spots





7. FA Cup


8-100-Every random cliche about Wenger







101. League Cup

Wenger only cares about winning the CL and PL. He really doesn't care about any other competition. The fans want to win any trophy but everyone would rather those two titles. For Wenger an FA Cup and a League Cup don't mean all that much. I can't say I disagree with him. I'm not saying that winning a trophy won't be awesome, but I understand why he's obsessed with the PL and the CL.