Arsenal FC - The "Wright" way!

[ZamboUK]

Greetings all,

This is my first attempt at a Manager's Story. I had one up on here previously, but I kinda got bored of the save file and let it fall by the wayside.

This time around, I've chosen my supported team in real life, so I'm hoping that will keep me going and stop me quitting on this one half way through!!

I'm planning to try and keep this entertaining, so that it's not just a list of results and transfers. Also, it's worth noting that I'm not an FM God, so the likelihood is that you won't see me winning every match all the time!

 

[ZamboUK]

07 July 2012

Arsene Wenger resigns as Arsenal Manager.

After a long and prosperous career with Arsenal, longstanding manager Arsene Wenger formally tendered his resignation this afternoon. The board have reluctantly accepted his resignation and would like to take this opportunity to offer Arsene the best of luck with any future endeavours.
Steve Bould steps in temporarily as caretaker manager, to take charge of first team affairs in the interim as we look for a new permanent manager.

Arsene Wenger has been the club's most successful manager to date, leading the club to a total of 11 trophies since beginning his tenure in 1996. Football pundits have lauded Wenger since his arrival on our shores and some have even stated that Wenger's attacking philosophy and entertaining approach to football is responsible for the adaptation and evolution of the English Premier League itself.
Two years after his appointment, in 1998, Wenger lead the Gooners to a League and FA Cup double, the beginning of his quest to secure silverware for the club. In 2000, his Arsenal team made it to the UEFA Cup final and in 2001 the FA cup final, before a second league and cup double in 2002. Arsene lead the Gooners to a successful FA cup retention in 2003, before having arguably the most successful season at the helm the following year, clinching the league title without a single loss throughout the entire campaign with a team that are now known as 'The Invincibles'.

Arsene has been at the forefront of player development aswell, being responsible in no short measure for the development and emergence of some of the greatest names in European Football, including but not limited to Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira and Cesc Fabregas. Arsene's approach to training was revolutionary and has had far-reaching results, influencing the way coaches do business across the continent.

Arsene's continued commitment to ensuring the club remains financially independent has had an unprecedented effect on the way that club has, and will continue to do business, securing the move away from Highbury to the new Emirates Staidum and implementing many other fiscal policies that have completely re-written the way the club does business and continue to contribute to our ongoing financial development.

Arsene Wenger has been more than a manager to Arsenal. He has been the architect of a complete restructure of the club, effecting more than just the style of formation and player selection on match days. Arsene's contributions to Arsenal FC will continue to be evident for years to come and the club will strive to continue to build on the foundations he has laid as we look forward to our future successes.

 

[ZamboUK]

11 July 2012

Arsene Wenger has finally succumbed to months of fan pressure and tendered his resignation to the Arsenal board.

After a particularly barren spell, Wenger has found himself unable to recreate his early successes with the Gooners, currently sitting at a total of over seven years without winning a trophy at the club. Fans of the club have become concerned at the club's apparent reluctance to spend money at a time when it is becoming more and more apparent that the club is being eclipsed by the free spending likes of Chelsea and Man City.
A reluctance to spend money at the club has seen the departures of players such as Fabregas, Nasri, Clichy, Kolo Toure and of course, Robin van Persie and with the manager seemingly unwilling to splash the cash to replace them, the fans have become restless and the chants for Wenger's head to roll have increased season upon season.

Wenger heeded their chants this morning, officially tendering his resignation and leaving the board free-reign to scour the market to find a manager that they can hope will bring the successes the fans are screaming out for. We take a look at some of the rumoured favourites to land the coveted Arsenal job.

Steve Bould

Bould is a former Arsenal legend and the current No. 2 in the Arsenal camp following the recent retirement of Pat Rice. The appointment of Steve Bould would likely cause the least disruption to the Arsenal camp, but he's untested at this level and there are some doubts as to whether he would he bring about the kind of changes the Arsenal fans are crying out for.

Dennis Bergkamp

Bergkamp is a former Arsenal legend, still revered by fans of Arsenal and the Premier League alike. As a current understudy to Frank de Boer at Ajax, Bergkamp certainly has the professional credentials to lead the team and is likely to be a hugely popular choice amongst the fans. His footballing experience is unquestionable, but does he have the leadership to take on such a huge position?

Jose Mourinho

With every top level managerial vacancy, there's a link to Jose Mourinho. Rumours are running rife across Spain that Jose and Real Madrid are well and truly out of their honeymoon period and that his lack of recent success has put him in the firing line for the chop. Would Jose's style be transferrable to this current crop of Arsenal stars? More importantly, as a previous Chelsea hero, would Jose betray the Blue portion of London to sign for the Red portion?

Pep Guardiola

The hugely talented Spanish mastermind behind the recent success of the Barcelona team has declared that he is taking a "hiatus" from football and seeking some time away from the sport. Recent speculation is that Pep himself delcared that he would like to manage the Arsenal team, and as his Barcelona team have played a similar (albeit more successful) brand of attacking football, could the spaniard be tempted out of hiatus to lead the Gooners?

Ian Wright

Another former Arsenal legend and current TV pundit, Ian Wright is amongst some of the rank outsiders to land the job. Wright would be hugely popular with the fans as his passion for the club has never dwindled in all the years that have passed since his retirement. His lack of managerial experience is likely to count against him and SkySports cannot even confirm if Wright has completed the relevant FA coaching badges to allow him to work at such a high level.

The Arsenal fans have finally got what they wanted, but can they be sure they've made the right decision? Wenger was a manager of unquestionable quality and there's no guarantee that whoever the board appoint to take over will be able to perform at the same level, let alone make any improvements.​

 

[ZamboUK]

Arsenal confirm Ian Wright as their new manager!

14 July 2012

Arsenal.com can officially reveal that earlier this morning, the Arsenal board made the decision to appoint former Arsenal legend Ian Wright as the new manager of Arsenal FC.
After a short period of time hammering out the terms and conditions of his contract, Ian Wright has accepted an offer from the Arsenal board and takes over as Manager of the club, effective immediately.

Arsenal.com were able to speak with Wright shortly after he had signed his contract and he had the following to say:

"This is a club that I have loved ever since I got here. I think the fans know that I've loved this club ever since I left and I want to be responsible for bringing back the kind of success that this club is used to.

Arsene is a hugely talented manager and it is daunting to step in to his shoes and try and carry on with his great work here, but I'm confident that I have the ability and the team behind me to continue developing this club and turn it back in to one of Europe's biggest.

One thing is for sure, I won't be afraid to spend the money I have and if there's a player out there that I think will benefit this team, I'll be sure to spend every penny I have in order to bring them in!"

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[ZamboUK]

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Wright to lead the Gooners

14 July 2012

Arsenal have wasted little time in appointing their successor to former manager Arsene Wenger and have announced earlier today, via their official website, that Ian Wright would be taking over as manager effective immediately.

The former TV pundit has been signed on a one year contract, reported to be worth somewhere in the region of £86,000 per week, which is a great deal more than some of their better players get paid.
The board have reportedly made very few demands of Wright, other than to stipulate that the club must continue to play the same kind of attacking, possession based style that has become synonomous with Arsenal and that there must be a continued emphasis on developing the club's youth players through their existing youth systems.

After his first meeting with the board, Wright revealed that upon setting out his ambitions to challenge for a Champions League qualification spot this season, the board have provided him with a transfer kitty of around £35 million pounds and a wage budget of approximately £1.6 million per week.

Despite earlier promises to spend where it has been needed, Wright's first pieces of transfer related business has been with regards to trying to get rid of some of the 'dead wood' in the Arsenal team, having transfer listed and circulated the details of a whole host of players that he considers to be surplus to requirements. Sky Sports understands that the following players have been transfer listed and told by Wright that they are no longer needed by the club.

Andrey Arshavin
Tomas Rosicky
Andre Santos
Marouane Chamakh
Sebastien Squillaci
Denílson
Park Chu Young
Nicklas Bendtner

As their Pre-Season looks set to kick off, the Arsenal team are sure to be caused some major unrest in light of the wholesale changes being made at the club by Ian Wright. With some potentially tricky fixtures away from home, it will be interesting to see how the squad respond with the growing pressure to perform placed on them by the new manager.

Pre-Season Friendly Fixtures:

Teplice (Away)
Sporting Kansas City (Away)
Toronto FC (Away)
River Plate (Away)

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[ZamboUK]

Pre-Season Update

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8 Aug 2012

Having been a follower of the club since as long as I can remember, I didn't need as much time as I thought I would need in order to complete my evaluation of the playing staff. My intial concern is that, although Wenger was renowned for his stringent wage policies and reluctance to over pay any particular player, there were quite a lot of players on the books getting paid for being fringe players and not much else. So, with that in mind I set about transfer listing and offering out the following players:

Nicklas Bendtner - £6 million
Park Chu Young - £3.5 million
Denílson - £3 million
Sebastien Squillaci - £1.5 million
Marouane Chamakh - £6.5 million
Andrey Arshavin - £4 million
Tomas Rosicky - £4.5 milliion
André Santos - £4.5 million


Tactics

After completing my business with the transfers, I set about implementing my own take on the Arsenal tactics. I intend to play a simple variation on a 4-3-3 system, utilising player shouts during the match to make any adjustments and tweaks depending on what I see during the match.

With this formation, I intend to use Podolski / Gervinho (until I replace him) on the left hand side and Walcott / Chamberlain on the right playing as Inside Forwards. I hope they'll be able to use their combined skill and trickery to penetrate the opposition defence and bag a few goals, or lay off a few easy finishes for Giroud.

In the middle, I'm playing two Deep Lying Midfielders with a Defend duty that I hope will not only be comfortable and competent on the ball, but will be sufficiently defence minded to apply my pressing game and force the opposing midfield / forwards in to making enough errors that they can capitalise on.

The rest of the team is pretty much as standard.


Training

I've never really been a big fan of the training section of the game (Because I don't know what I'm doing!) so I've asked Steve Bould to take over the training responsibilities. For the beginning of the pre-season I set my focus to Tactics with a High Intensity and after I had finished the game with River Plate, I switched to Fitness on an Average intensity.

Transfers

This is what you're all no doubt interested in, who did I buy and sell?

After evaluating the squad, I decided that I would need to focus on the following areas: GK, LB, DM and AML.

GK: I think that Szczesny is a great GK, but not quite the finished product, so I want someone else of at least equal quality to challenge him and spur him on to better performances to aid his development.

LB: I think Gibbs has bags of potential, and he will definitely feature for me this season, but he's not good enough for a Champion's League team just yet. André Santos is just André Santos.

DM: Arteta is probably my first choice for a DLP role, but he's getting on a bit and it's about time we had someone else to cover this position. Frimpong and Coquelin both have potential, but they're not yet good enough to fill in this position....plus I don't think Frimpong will develop the on-the-ball skills that I would like him to possess.

AML: Podolski is my first choice for this position, with Gervinho in second. I don't think Gervinho is quite good enough. He lacks any real end product and doesn't possess the kind of Finishing I'd like for an Inside Forward.

Players In:
Cristian Ansaldi (From Rubin) for £17.5 million
Albin Ekdal (From Cagliari) for £2.8 million
Marc-Andre ter Stegen (From Gladbach) for £15 million

Players Out:
Andrey Arshavin (To Man City) for £4 million
Marouane Chamakh (To Fulham) for £7 million

Also, unlike Wenger, I managed to secure Theo Walcott to a long term commitment to the club without letting him run his contract down to the last few months before we risk losing him on a free transfer!

Results

Unfortunately we didn't manage to complete our transfer deals before finalising the squad for the american training camp matches, so none of the new guys managed to feature in the first three friendlies, but they all had a run out in the final game against River Plate.

Teplice 0 - 3 Arsenal

Walcott (27)

Giroud (73)

Mertesacker (90+1)

Sporting Kansas City 1 - 2 Arsenal

Vermaelen (27)

Arteta (Pen 78)

Toronto FC 0 - 2 Arsenal

Oxlade Chamberlain (34)

Djourou (54)

River Plate 0 - 1 Arsenal

Ekdal (Pen 76)

All in all, a great pre-season! We only conceded one goal and we managed to win all our other matches, maintaining the high possession and passing stats that we are renowned for. The team is in high spirits and the Premier League kicks off with an Away fixture to Aston Villa!

Updates to follow soon!