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Dr Naysay, on 27 April 2011 - 10:35 AM, said:
Finally I have been ragging on Wenger for a while and I 100% believe he is to blame for the current malaise, he is too loyal to his players and whilst it is noble of him to defend his players as a lot of other managers do, it has taken him a long time to admit they just have not been good enough. I really believe that he has too often given his teams a pass in the press by blaming every one but his players for big losses. If Man Utd stink up a game Alex Ferguson has no qualms sticking it to his whole team in his interviews, up until recently what we have been hearing from Arsenal is "Other teams are too defensive.", "Ref linesman ref" or "Pitch was not right." or "Other team were thugs"
I think there's two things here. One, the Arsenal players admit he says very different things to them behind closed doors than he does in public. We don't know for sure what's going on there, but I agree to a certain extent that he would get more loyalty from the fans and more of a reaction if he admitted when things obviously were going wrong.
Two, like hell does Ferguson come out usually in public to slate his players. I mean, come on - he's just picked up a 5-game ban for blaming officals for his teams abject performances, and he often says something ludicrous to take the heat off his team and avoid criticising them directly.
Ben Foster had a stinker? He blames Alan Whiley for not being fit enough.
Wenger is far from alone in saying one thing in public and one thing behind closed doors. While I agree with you that he needs to stop it and admit the failings (if he wants respect from the fans and more backing in the stadium), by the same token it's silly to think that "100%" of the team's problems come because his players read the papers but don't talk to him on the training ground.
We just don't know how what he admits to himself compares to what he admits in public. This summer may give some clues.
