Rival Watch

Spurs will talk with Frank De Boer at the end of the season, apparently. Pochenttino also set for talks with them.

Spurs actually getting a decent manager

noooooooooooooo

Quotes from De Boer.

De Boer: 'I see a perspective at Tottenham Hotspur, just as Liverpool and Newcastle United sometimes are, they are sleeping giants'.

Ashley needs to do the right thing and save the tradition of St Totteringham's day IMO

Does Bergkamp follow De Boer to Spurs?

So who are WE left, should Wenger go?

Martinez
Hynckes
Spaletti
Trapattoni
Allegri
Stramacheroni
Seedorf
Cesc

Even in the managers transfer market we're getting *bleep*

I think this point has been made in the past, but if you take the most impatient and transfer-happy of the WOBs, the ideal Arsenal manager would be ...

Harry Redknapp. Wheeler-dealer, lots of shiny new players. Sort of a gooner.

But on a (slightly) more serious note: guys, Dragan Stojkovic will come take over when he's good and ready.

Hope we sign a manager who no one has ever heard of

To honour Wenger's legacy

Dat butthurt

De Boer: "Spurs have indicated that they would like to talk after the season if necessary for them. I told them that I first want to focus on a good end of the season with Ajax, then I would be happy to listen.”

De Boer continued: “And let’s be clear: it is not my intention to leave Ajax. We have a great group of players and I’m thrilled with my time at Ajax."

Surely he'd want a step up? Going from winning four leagues in a row and playing in the Champions League the entire time while building a fantastic project to Spuds? They must be prepared to throw insane cash his way.

Spurs interested in the two mentioned above, Pochettino and De Boer and also Rafa Benitez according to 101greatgoals

Wenger will not leave Arsenal for another 10 years, why are we looking for replacement so soon?  

I hope Hans ok after today Bayer mauling, we know how you feel bro. Also Mandzui urban getting closer to the truth, i totally forgot back then Bayer actually did want Giroud upfront for Mandzui. Possession football this year got outplayed hard when it matters, even the master Pep lost it.

Wenger: Changing managers affects league

Arsène Wenger believes the Premier League is suffering due to the amount of managerial casualties this season.

A record nine teams have parted company with their coaches during the 2013/14 campaign and only six managers have been in charge since before the start of the season.

Wenger, who is the longest-serving manager in the England, thinks the unstable environment in the Premier League could prove to be detrimental to the development of younger players.

"I believe that technical stability is important," he said. "If you change managers too many times, football will suffer for it.

"The young players will suffer for it because no one will give any chance to [them] if he knows that the next game he loses, he will be out.

"Therefore one of the characteristics of the 2013/14 season in the Premier League is that it is the first time since I have been in England that so many managers have been changed.

"It will be interesting at the start of next season to see who started the Premier League in 2013, and who will start in 2014/15. We might be amazed by how many managers have changed. That is not good for the quality of our game."

Wenger would make a great ambassador for the sport.
Next job calling Arsene. Better get on it.

Wenger would be a good Ambassador of Football. Ideally when he leaves Arsenal he'll have won a big handful of recent trophies, and won't manage any other clubs ...

I do agree, generally, with the boss' take on managerial musical chairs. There's kind of a schizoid quality these days, where long-term "projects" are en vogue, but so are snap judgment sackings as soon as a team underperforms for a little string of matches. I'm not saying managers should never be sacked or contracts cut short, and I'm not saying stability & continuity are the ultimate goals to which everything else is subordinate, but even still ... stability & continuity are presently undervalued a lot IMO.

As much as I like to see a good, radical squad overhaul (like Fiorentina's a couple summers ago), I also think the importance of continuity and long-term persistence applies to players in general too. So many players jump up and leave a good thing at a team for a somewhat better team as soon as they get the hype and their agents get an itch. Occasionally this proves to be a good decision. But so many other players just flounder or plateau. Alex Song got a big head, now he's just a scrub bit part player at Barca who may move elsewhere. Kagawa and Sahin left Dortmund for frustration ... now Sahin is back there (but no longer the central player on the team) and who knows where Kagawa's future will lead him. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Wenger has been speaking quite a lot against sacking managers this season. I think he both has got a point and hasn't.

Crystal Palace swapping out-of-his-depth Holloway (who btw is unbeaten in 7 with Millwall in the Championship going into the final round and just might save them from what at one point looked like a certain relegation) for Sir Tony Pulis is an undoubted masterstroke. Sunderland sacking the lunatic and also out-of-his-depth Di Canio for the smarter Poyet was a good move, too.

Then there have been the pointless, even damaging, sackings. Clarke for Mel at West Brom. Swansea sacking Laudrup only to hand the job to one of their players was the most ridiculous decision, imo. Fulham replacing the hopeless Jol with Meulensteen was funny as well. Should have gone straight for Magahth, if he was available. Now it's probably been too late.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm even writing this long a post on this subject in the Arsenal section, but Wenger is looking at this thing quite one-sidedly, although I partially agree with him.

Is this an unique phenomena in EPL!!! Doesn't all Leagues have their share of managerial sackings!!!

This will probably depress most people, but if we beat Norwich and City win their final two games, we'll finish 7 points behind the title winners. That's not too far away, really.

Our consistency against weaker teams has been fantastic this season and we must keep that, I think we have the best record against these teams. Next season we need to make sure we win instead of drawing the big teams at home, like the 0-0 vs Chelsea, 0-0 against United, 1-1 against City and Everton. Combine that with a few draws away from home and you have the points needed to win the league.

Easier said than done though, we've struggled against the top teams for a while now.

GoonerJay29 wrote:This will probably depress most people, but if we beat Norwich and City win their final two games, we'll finish 7 points behind the title winners. That's not too far away, really.

I was looking at the table this morning and thinking the exact same thing. It's an improvement on our points tally from last season, and we're not 20 something points behind the table toppers.

Felt like a small trophy, before I remembered the 120-odd days that we were top of the league and those 4 soul crushing away defeats and random meaningless points dropped against mid table scrubs. Sucker punched that little happiness.

urbaNRoots wrote:Our consistency against weaker teams has been fantastic this season and we must keep that, I think we have the best record against these teams. Next season we need to make sure we win instead of drawing the big teams at home, like the 0-0 vs Chelsea, 0-0 against United, 1-1 against City and Everton. Combine that with a few draws away from home and you have the points needed to win the league.

Easier said than done though, we've struggled against the top teams for a while now.

Not always Urbi. I have a feeling that we alternate between dropping points against scrubs and dropping points against rival teams each season. I am confident we'll perform well in rival matches and lose easy points to lower table teams next season.   

3 points dropped at home to Villa
2 dropped at home to Chelsea where Girould should have won us the game
2 dropped when we couldn't defend against Deulofeu's equaliser against Everton at home
2 dropped against Swansea
3 dropped away to stoke where we should have done better
2 dropped against Southampton when we took the lead.

Like I said time and time again. It's all ifs and buts. If Theo,Ramsey,Ozil,Wilshere and Koscielny weren't injured when we needed them the most. League would be ours.

I'm working on a thread about this, so I won't talk about it too much here, but last season we finished 16 points behind United whereas this year we won't finish any more than 10 points behind whoever wins the title. Those games against Everton, Chelsea, Liverpool and City will be flagged up as where it all went wrong as far as a title challenge goes, but look at it this way: a win against Stoke, a win against Swansea, a win against West Brom away or Everon or Man Utd at home= an extra 9 points.

Obviously things go deeper than that; those results came off the back of the hidings against the bigger sides, and that obviously effected our confidence. But still, that's how small the margins are.

Doesn't depress me at all to see us in contention. Of course we're going to always feel like we could have done more but had we lost the thrashings by a one goal margin would we still feel we let the campaign slip away?

Chelsea lost 15 points to teams like West Ham, West Brom, Sunderland, Aston Villa and Palace. Liverpool just bottled it against Palace.

We can't point at the Stokes, Aston Villas and Swanseas and say "What if" because those are the games the champions don't lose control of. I believe next year we'll have the quality to win those games and, yes, there's been a huge improvement this season, we'll see it come to fruition next year hopefully.

This season was a great opportunity.
We all know where are faults were and we were a bit unlucky on the way with injuries.
Such a shame.
I hope we do good business this summer so that we stay in contention and hopefully this time cancel out those small margins and win it!