Admittedly it was a makeshift defence but our defending is just shocking, we are so amateurish in our organisation and decision-making.

The taste of the pill will be determined by your own level of grace.

I think there's more chance of me shagging Kylie Minogue than of Čech saving a pen.

I don't feel as strongly as you, but I share the overall feeling. His departure will be relief tinged with sadness...the sadness being that someone who was so brilliant, and still has some great managerial qualities, allowed time to pass him by through stubbornness, where a little more flexibility, delegation and expenditure augmented with his own positive qualities might have seen us win much more than we have.

But anyone angry that he gets a big pat on the back when he goes is just being a prick themselves. He may have served himself as much, but he has certainly served this club, just not always as effectively as it once appeared.

Here's a question.

Why doesn't Wenger buy a decent central defensive midfielder and a couple of kick-ass centre-halfs?

Haven't read Wenger's post match comments, but dreading them. Re refs, he's in danger of going all D-Fens, and that's coming from me.

The taste of the pill will be determined by your own level of grace.

So, does anyone subscribe to Wenger's view that the penalty was soft? He commented that there would be 10 penalties a game if all those types are given. I think it's the use of the word "farcical" that did sound a little embarrassing - but then Wenger has always liked a whinge and he's nicer about it than that arse Mourinho.

It's definitely a soft penalty.

It's definitely a soft penalty.

You're right to do so. You could perhaps say that it was harsh but it wasn't farcical. All the pundits concurred that it was a penalty, correctly in my opinion as Bellerin clearly kicks Hazard's foot instead of the ball. What annoys me so much about Wenger is that he tries to portray it as ludicrous and beyond belief just as he did with the Lacazette offside. It was marginal and had Bellerin got away with it I would have thought "bit lucky there but fair play". Wenger insisting it is a travesty of justice reveals how pathetic he has become.

What annoys me is how he always plays the persecution card (or in other words it's always someone else's fault) whilst refusing to acknowledge that the vast majority of our poor performances/results over the last decade has been a direct result of his own inability to address the alarming and very obvious deficiences in his own teams.

Do you honestly think the club were remotely prepped for him to leave? His self-indulgence was disappointing, but had he actually left last summer we would have had such a power vacuum, where we would have just created another Wenger power figure. Now we have specialists in sports science, scouting, negotiations and a Director of Football in waiting, and by the end of the season we are in, a structure will be in place that will make the manager expendable.

We needed him to stay as a club, even though the team suffered. Now we need him to either pull out a late season miraculous change or leave in the summer. The latter is rather more likely than the former. A one year contract would have been more honest, but that would have left him a lame duck.

I would say soft but correct. Bellerin makes no contact with the ball, and enough contact with Hazards heel to justify the decision. Ridiculous to call it farcical. The one against WBA was farcical, but not this one.

Like all the other managers do.

Not 100% of the time , other managers come out from time time admitting their teams weren't good enough. Mourinho, pep, sralex.

Wenger spins it 95% percent of the time

It wasn't a penalty Hazard conned the ref but Chelsea missed some absolute sitters so I don't really feel cheated, actually I'm not sure anybody gives a *%^@ anymore

I said earlier to expect such types of signing, and here it is. Very Arsenal. I guess pretty much everyone in this forum would have expected the same.

http://news.arseblog.com/2018/01/boss-c ... ws+site%29

Going to cost a lot of extra cash to get his name put on the back of a jersey.

I cannot let Wengers press conference pass without comment.

Farcical is a term that can be used in conjunction with Arsenal but in relation to the overall management of the team not referee decisions. If I put my key concerns.
Contracts expiring over the next 18 months of many key positions. Forget the next 6 months - look further ahead and start to worry.
Following from that of course is that Wenger will buy or promote players of his ilk. We will be stuck with more players being paid a *%^@ load of cash who will not want to move because they will never be paid that much again by even a chinese club. The USSR socialist experiment failed. it also failed at our club.
A defense that needs improvement in quality and training about their roles.
A failure to jettison the failures.
A failure to properly succession plan.
Wenger continually shifting blame away from the players. Players never taking responsibility.
Lack of strong leaders. He likes peace and tranquility and achieves it with finding and promoting placid players.

January 4 - 23 points behind the leading club in the EPL. Farcical

So, does anyone subscribe to Wenger's view that the penalty was soft? He commented that there would be 10 penalties a game if all those types are given. I think it's the use of the word "farcical" that did sound a little embarrassing - but then Wenger has always liked a whinge and he's nicer about it than that arse Mourinho.

It's definitely a soft penalty.

23 points ????
Did you miss a punctuation mark somewhere? Did you mean be 2 - 3 points, because it is only January

The game is alien to me these days. It seems contact now justifies a penalty kick. 5 or 6 years ago that was a dive, plain and simple. I couldn't understand the one Everton got against Liverpool a few weeks ago and this was worse. It has effectively got to the stage where you cannot touch a player in the box.

Having watched it again this morning I have changed my mind. There is no way the amount of contact from Bellerin on the sole of Hazard's foot was sufficient to bring Hazard down in the manner the Belgian collapsed to the ground, whilst holding another part of his body, yelling in agony. As football is a contact sport that should never have been given - as Bellerin's contact was not enough to have felled the player w/o the exaggerated dive.