Caporegime
- Joined
- 18 Oct 2002
- Posts
- 33,188
Jesus Arsenal fans can go over the top, there is no one out there as good as Flamini? Firstly, Flamini is now the best DM in the world because... he's looked fairly good against bottom half teams? Notice how Ozil wasn't even half as good against Dortmund as he was against Norwich, that is natural, but lets not overplay how good Flamini is. Secondly, there is no trouble in trying to buy better than Flamini, if you want to win titles or challenge consistently you need as good quality in depth, not significantly worse. You WILL get injuries and you have to rotate.
Honestly I'd forgotten that this game was this week, so I personally wasn't considering it with Norwich, but should we have played our absolutely best 11 against a pretty crap Norwich a few days before Dortmund? Would Ozil have played better( a player who is pretty notorious for running out of energy) just before a huge game. Should Wilshere, who ended up injured, have been played so much recently, was it required we risk him against Norwich(though we would have missed a great goal).
Giroud looked meh for much of the game, some very good work, lots of misplaced passes and poor control.
Dortmund had a game plan and came away with a win, Wenger never has a game plan, as such we usually lose the big games when it's important. Squad quality isn't going to change everything when the manager still consistently makes the same mistakes over and over, which is what I've said for 4-5 years, I don't much care about the squad because with the best squad in the world Wenger will still play people out of position, run them into the ground with crap rotation and not focus on big games at all.
WE looked woeful in the first 25 mins of that game with in particular Ramsey, Sagna and Giroud looking absolutely awful. Ramsey has got into "I can pull a cruyff turn against Norwich so I'll try to showboat against the best in the world" mentality on. He was holding on to it when he shouldn't, thinking he could blast it from 30 yards and score , confidence is useful, great even, but when you get overconfident, it becomes a problem.
Sagna, yes he got a cross that resulted in a goal(more for bad keeping than anything, he shouldn't have come out in a million years for it), but his previous 4-5 crosses were awful, his passing down the wing was embarrassing, and as per usual his laziness in getting back cost us the second goal.
Sagna shouldn't be at Arsenal, Gibbs is still highly questionable defensively, Flamini hasn't been tested against a single top team yet, Arteta is seeming less and less good in central mid. Ramsey can not play the deeper role, with the squad that started Wilshire in the middle helping defensively and Ramsey further forward would have worked a hell of a lot better.
That entire game was a showcase of Wenger's inability in 15 years to learn a single lesson in football, tactics, rotation, protecting players from injury, how to play against big teams. We've had significantly better squads than this with much stronger rotation and depth and won nothing because of this same mistakes Wenger makes. From 2005-2008 or maybe 09 we had a great squad that was messed around by stupid mistakes, stupid rotation, stupid injuries and Wenger cost us any shot at titles. It's only been the last few years the squad has fallen to pieces, more in depth than first team, just because the first team improved doesn't change the reason that we don't win things, Wenger. The problems from 2005-2009 lets say are still here, Wenger. The team got significantly weaker and has improved this year for various reasons(ozil, Ramsey's form/being pushed forward/Wilshere actually playing more than a couple games... Walcott being injured), but the original and BIGGER problem is still there for everyone to see.
Every single problem with last nights game could have been avoided through rotation/resting in the last game, playing people in the right position, tactics and having longer term fixed the glaring problem at fullback(particularly RB).
Why is it AVB a year into his job can sense a counter attacking threat and tell his fullbacks to stay back and defend, but Wenger is incapable of this, Walker actually attempts to get back(even if he is useless) but Sagna consistently fails to get back in these situations, the cure, tell him against a great team like Dortmund to NOT go forward... would we have drawn/won because of that single decision, maybe, maybe not, but it's still a fixable problem Wenger can't even recognise as a problem. That is Arsenal's biggest weakness.
