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*Official* English Football Season 2022/23

sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
It's kind of mad how quickly that invincibles squad just disappeared though.

Vieira and Edu left the summer after the invincibles title win.

Cole, Campbell, Lauren, Pires and Bergkamp the summer after.

Henry, Lehmann, Ljungberg and Gilberto (I think that's when he went anyway) the summer after that.

Only surviving members after that were Toure and Clichy (WAC).

So half the squad totally gone within two years,and more or less the whole squad basically gone within three.

Granted that some of these players aged/got worse and would have needed to be replaced anyway. But FMD it's no wonder the club fell away from where it was.

Edit: not helped by the fact that the replacements for some of the clubs best ever players were players like Eboue, Almunia, Senderos, Denilson and Bendtner of course. Dark days.
 
Uppercut

Uppercut

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sledger said:
It's kind of mad how quickly that invincibles squad just disappeared though.

Vieira and Edu left the summer after the invincibles title win.

Cole, Campbell, Lauren, Pires and Bergkamp the summer after.

Henry, Lehmann, Ljungberg and Gilberto (I think that's when he went anyway) the summer after that.

Only surviving members after that were Toure and Clichy (WAC).

So half the squad totally gone within two years,and more or less the whole squad basically gone within three.

Granted that some of these players aged/got worse and would have needed to be replaced anyway. But FMD it's no wonder the club fell away from where it was.

Edit: not helped by the fact that the replacements for some of the clubs best ever players were players like Eboue, Almunia, Senderos, Denilson and Bendtner of course. Dark days.
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IIRC Wenger had strict rules about the length of contract he would offer to players once they reached certain ages. He might have squeezed out another title if he’d worked harder to keep that core there. But tbf they mostly didn’t achieve much after leaving. And the rebuilt version of the team was really only a competent keeper away from a couple of titles.
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Uppercut said:
IIRC Wenger had strict rules about the length of contract he would offer to players once they reached certain ages. He might have squeezed out another title if he’d worked harder to keep that core there. But tbf they mostly didn’t achieve much after leaving. And the rebuilt version of the team was really only a competent keeper away from a couple of titles.
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Yeah. The policy was players over 30 only got 1 year deals, which seems pretty silly in hindsight (though it also did at the time). But like you say the majority of players who left never really achieved much/bettered what they did at Arsenal.

It's a testament to Wenger that the sides that followed were as competitive as they were as well tbf, because however you slice it they were considerably worse than what came before them. Though of course what came before them was a team that contained literally 7 to 8 of Arsenal's greatest ever players, so this might not be an entireyfair criticism.
 
GIMH

GIMH

Norwood's on Fire
Could have won a few titles post-invincible but seemed to have annual February collapses as I recall

They had the good grace to wait until April this year
 
Uppercut

Uppercut

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GIMH said:
Could have won a few titles post-invincible but seemed to have annual February collapses as I recall

They had the good grace to wait until April this year
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It was such a strange team. They played beautiful football and massively overperformed based on how much they were spending. But OTOH they lost big games with such remarkable consistency that they’d reach a CL quarter final and their fans could barely be bothered to watch.
 
Furball

Furball

Evil Scotsman
Uppercut said:
It was such a strange team. They played beautiful football and massively overperformed based on how much they were spending. But OTOH they lost big games with such remarkable consistency that they’d reach a CL quarter final and their fans could barely be bothered to watch.
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Cliche claxon will be going off here but Wenger allowed a mentality to develop amongst his squad which meant they weren't battle hardened winners.

His early sides were a great mixture of beauty mixed in with violence, which he failed to replace when the likes of Vieira, Gilberto and even Bergkamp moved on.
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
Some of those teams were also absolutely carried (at times anyway) by individual players as well. E.g. Cesc, Van Persie etc
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
And were repeatedly let down by the incompetence of other individuals who were persisted with despite obviously being crap. Most notably in goal, but there were other serious offenders too.
 
sledger

sledger

Spanish_Vicente
There was one crazy story Pothas and I read in a newspaper we found on a train which claimed Wenger backed out of a deal to sign Schwarzer because he was worried it would affect Almunia's confidence. I really really hope it was false, and yet and I could easily believe it to be true.
 
Molehill

Molehill

Cricketer Of The Year
Furball said:
Chucked the last 20 minutes on and I've no idea who the **** half these Chelsea players are.
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I watched the whole game, if Chelsea had a striker (Havertz is clearly not one) they'd have had a half decent chance of winning. The scoreline was a bit bizarre. But it's not hard to see which ones will be on their way. Felix looked quality when he came on, but Arsenal must be delighted Mudryk went elsewhere, he looks over-priced pony.
 
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