I'm glad for him he doesn't go watch Arsenal regularly as the situation over Wenger is getting SO toxic among the fans this sort of 'defence' (term used VERY loosely) would doubtless lead him into quite a few dodgy situations to put it mildly.
I don't go to away games. Just some home games. I know some of the fanbase are divided. It seems you have misinterpreted what I think of Arsenal and last season.
Last season, we knew that we needed a striker before the end of the window. After Welbeck was injured for 6 months, there was no excuse for even getting a decent one after failing to sign our top targets. Until Christmas, we had an unsustainable hot streak with Giroud having half a season of an elite striker. After Christmas, there was a slight regression however we still created chances at a league high rate and conceded under a goal a game. Giroud went on a 14 game dry run and his confidence was show. With Welbeck out for 9 months and no alternatives up top we didn't score enough goals and nobody could hit a barn door. Wenger's failure to sign a decent striker backfired and there's no excuse for this. All the more disappointing because we played like a title winning team. Opta found amazingly that we were one of the only teams in Europe so see no regression in chance creation whether winning or losing. We clearly did something right. What we see is that is we'd finished properly, the season would have been better than many previous title winning teams in terms of quality. We undershot expected goals by 12. If we'd finished like we did the first half, we'd have scored as many if not more than Liverpool and City 13/14.
Up to next season. After the Xhaka signing, I expected the business to be wrapped up quickly. After the failure to get Vardy, we dithered and pontificated in getting striker and defender. We spent an
entire month in negotiating the £2.5 Million signing of Rob Holding then spent ages trying to beat down Lyon's asking price of £40 Million. After a bid of £60 Million. As a result of our dithering, Lyon doubled the asking price to £60 million!
It seems we had been targeting a defensive midfielder all summer and started negotiating in pre-season after the injury of Merteacker. We could have gotten him for 20-30 Million but dithered and then Gabriel got injured. Valencia then had us by the balls and wanted us to pay the £42 Million buyout clause. We ended up paying close to that.
Signing Lucas Perez is a risk. Averaged 1 in 2 in La Liga and assisted 10 for the not so great anymore Deportivo La Coruna. If we don't regress from last season then on the basis of the quality of our play, we should at least finish in the top 3 if our strikers are firing. A lot of it revolves on how well Perez adapts. I think that's a fair analysis.
I'm somewhere in the middle. The failure last year was all Wenger's fault. On the other hand, the negativity has been exaggerated in relation to our performances last season. Looking objectively, we were pretty good, We just didn't score enough. If we fail to push to the last day of the season, the only likely outcome will be due to our strikers misfiring. That would be as a result for Wenger dithering earlier in the summer where Lacazette was available at £40 Million. Therefore, our title hopes depend on how well Perez adapts. I think that's fair to say.
Before we signed a striker, I couldn't see us failing to make the top 4 unless we has a serious regression from last season. At the same time, I knew that we couldn't win it with
only Olivier Giroud. Therefore, I wasn't too optimistic. We know that the main area needed to win the title was a striker. We don't know how Perez will adapt so I have concluded that realistically, if he's bad then worst case top 4 and if he's as good as he was in La Liga last season then we should at least push for the title into the final games of the season.
