Originally Posted by The_Sleeper:
“I remember a few years ago When Theo was coming of the bench, you're own support were booing (AW) for bringing him on, & dont tell me finishing 4th every year is a great achievement, for a club like that ?”
I have mentioned this previously in this thread (well, it might have been in part 12), but do you know what Arsenal did in the first season of the Premier League?
They finished 10th. They lost 16 games, more than they won. And they scored the least number of goals in the entire division!
Yes, they won the League and FA Cup that season, but that is now no longer good enough. Arsenal won back-to-back FA Cups, which would once have made a manager a total legend, but nowadays is deemed insignificant.
Arsenal have no divine right to win anything. Spurs haven't won the league since 1961. Liverpool used to completely dominate English football when I was growing up, they haven't won the league for quarter of a century. Everton haven't won the league since the mid-80s.
Villa won the European Cup and are now in the second flight, as are Nottingham Forest, as are Leeds, as are Sheffield Wednesday, as are Newcastle, and they haven't won a trophy since 1927!
Wenger has simply raised the bar of expectation, and it's been difficult to reach that expectation in the era of the oil clubs. The last time they won the league was in the first season that Abramovich had bought Chelsea. Next season Mourinho won Chelsea their first league, and the oil clubs and Man United, by far the richest clubs, have dominated since then.
The one aberration was last season when Arsenal did underperform and missed a golden chance to win the league, but they still finished above Spurs yet again, not to mention every other big club.
In this skewed economic order, the reality is that Arsenal may not win the league again in our lifetimes. It is far from guaranteed. I will be surprised if Liverpool win the league again in my lifetime because they're not a major financial force any more. It's not impossible because Leicester did it, but they required every big club to have monumentally dreadful seasons, which probably won't happen again.
Arsenal fans are extremely lucky to support a team that plays great football, in a fantastic stadium, always at the top table, always in the Champions League, attracting some absolute top drawer players, and in their entire history they've never even come close to being relegated. Yet I still hear many of them whinging about the fact that they haven't won the league for a while.
Big f*cking deal. The rabble I support lost 8-1 to Hartlepool once! We got relegated three times in about seven years. Arsenal fans are better off than 99% of football supporters, and if they don't realise that they must be extremely stupid.