Wenger to Blame?

[wws]

far be it from me to engage in a bit of pointless whataboutery - I leave that to the garda killers thread....but case in point - Kenny Cunningham - Birmingham City v Arsenal - i saw this on RTE's excellent "The Premiership" in highlight form

Now ive the utmost respect for the office of Irish Captain but Kenny wot in the name off fcuk are you doing two yards in front of ON-ray as a cross is about to be shipped in???

in the continent they know one simple thing - space dont score goals - dont mark space mark the man -it doesnt matter a fck where the ball is - once youre in ON-rays way he doesnt score a tap in header from two yards. gotttit? simple. astro park stuff really. I see examples of this so often on RTE's THE Premiership that it does my nut.

now class dismissed, for lessons tomorrow read the collected works of liam brady in the sunday tribune

[Karlos]

no team outside the top three know how to defend or retain possession in a consistent, intentional and organised manner. FACT

very good point of the defensive capabilities of teams in the premiership, I'd even go as far as to say this season I have only seen one team who have looked very good defensively on a regular basis and that being Chelski. It's hard to believe looking at how Arsenal have been defending recently that they had the best defensive and goalkeeper stats in the league last year.

Ahh, Macy, must be hard for you watching football when your only big games in the champions league knock out stages! It's an interesting concept though to judge players becuase in effect it also means that the following players are not world class having not performed well in the C.L. Knockout stages -

Shearer
Duff
Vieria
Bergkamp
Owen
Ronaldinho
Kaka
Cantona etc etc etc.........................

and in return Nicolas Anelka and Steve McManaman are better than all of the above beause both scored and performed in European Cup Semi Finals and Finals.

so there you have it folks Manchester City have possibly more World Class Players than certainly Arsenal, Chelsea and Liverpool but probably not United because Keane, Giggs and Soslkjaer all played well in one competition almost 6 years ago now that's if you follows the Macy procedure for World Class Players! Your havin a laff mate

What next, they'll be singing 'You'll never walk alone' at Old Trafford!!!

[Pat O' Banton]

I cant exactly remember him setting the world alight in Euro 2000 either and Im not even going to bother bringing up Euro 2004.

Didn't he get the Man of the Match awad in the final?

[Troy.McClure]

Thought that was Trezaguet?

Eitherway, I stand by my point about the tournament as a whole, not just the final.

PS He cant head the ball either, I think his goal against Bermingham was his 2nd headed premiership goal.

[Coltron]

Here is an opinionated article from soccernet regarding the whole 'Onray big-game player?' issue:

try it again

My opinion on the matter for what its worth is that the criticism leveled at players not perfroming in big games is that they go hiding and the occasion gets the better of them, this argument is not justified in Onray's case and what he does is the opposite. I sided with the big game flop theroists for a long while but have changed my view. Arsenals style of play is catered to his talents, i.e. give him the ball in good positions and he can do the rest - beat a man or two and finish it. But what he does in big games all too often is take on two much responsibility. This may seem a strange answer, buts its what Santini cited as the problem. He is against better players and he tries to do more against them, therein lies the problem. So it would seem that he should delegate more and farm out responsibility to others like Pires but when or if they actucally go hiding them he is fighting an uphill battle.

I'm not paying that much attention myself to the blip in the CL this year, they have qualifed and when the time for prizes is being handed out this year I think they will be there or there abouts. Atleast the semi finals this year if not all the way, for me anyway.

[Risteard]

Nothing there Coltron. Try again.

[fergalr]

There you go .... I start a thread about how Wenger never gets the blame and it turns into a debate about Theirry Henry!

Point proven?

[Coltron]

She b up and runin now.

[Pat O' Banton]

Thought that was Trezaguet?

Eitherway, I stand by my point about the tournament as a whole, not just the final.

PS He cant head the ball either, I think his goal against Bermingham was his 2nd headed premiership goal.

Don't think so, Trezaguet only came on as sub, Henry scored a beauty against Denmark in France's firse game at a time when the Danes were really putting France under pressure, he also scored the equalizer in the semi's against Portugal (don't forget he wouldn't have played against Holland in the grouup stages again.)