I’m a newer fan who only started watching the club over the past 2 seasons. I’ve been trying to learn the history of the club, and I’m confused why there was hate for Wenger at the end of his career. I learned that he lead the invincible’s, and that amazing squad from the early 2000s, he gave us the only champions league final appearance in club history, and even after that he seem to do an amazing job. Heck he even got a new Stadium that is really nice. He seemed to be loved. By all accounts he should be a Saint to the gooners but then I look forward a few years, and they were all these Wenger out protests. What led to such a fall from grace.
Wenger and the board did not modernize.
We should have been more acrive on the market.
We went from a perennial title contender to being a clear step below the rest of the big five. All of those clubs routinely hammered us toward the end of his reign. His ideas got a bit stale and he refused to transition to a more modern club model with more oversight/checks and balances. Still, he did not deserve the over the top displays of criticism and ridicule that were coming in. The flyover banners e.g. were embarrassing. He should have stepped down after one of the FA Cup wins but he was too proud.
Seemed like he’d lost the dressing room towards the end. Players looked uninspired and unwilling to put the graft in. They saw Ozil coasting and picking up £300k a week for sweet FA and collectively decided to put the bare minimum in.
Arteta knew this and started to clear out the dross to get us to his foggin estandards.
There was a lot of differences and disagreements within the fanbase, but I think generally most fans didn’t hate Wenger, we hated the slow and painful decline that ownership and upper management had allowed to go on year after year and recognised that Wenger was shielding them from criticism by working his magic and consistently finishing top 4 with a poor squad. He had to go so that the wound could be opened, because it wasn’t healing.
He is a club legend that revolutionised this club and English football as a whole. But around 2013 onwards he was just not the right person to take the club forward anymore.
His tactics were outdated and he had a terrible habit of standing by players that constantly let him down. And when the money became available he didn’t spend it properly.
He always believed in giving his players the freedom to express themselves but he failed to recognise that not only had the game changed but so had the standard of the players he had. The best teams In the world all had a clear structure and our players weren’t at the level to compete with them without it.
I’d argue there is too much hate and anger in football as a general principle.
The problem is that there were a bunch of new supporters who never knew how horrible life could be without Wenger. They watched AFTV and parroted what those cunts said. They had no idea how amazing he was, achieving success despite the financial doping by Chelsea and Man City. They were and are so jealous over oil money, wishing it could be us selling our soul.
They got exactly what they wanted when Emery took over, and look at how well that went.
The same people who are against Arteta now were against Wenger then. They are people whose opinions you should immediately disregard. Wenger outs were then and are now a disgrace.