Arsenal

[H. Pedersen]

Out of three competitions in two weeks.  Ouch.

Wenger can bitch all he wants about the van Persie sending off but the real problem is he's put together a team that has zero steel and zero guts.  He can't strengthen the team in the areas that everyone knows need to be improved.   He can complain about a lack of funds but £9 million man Koscielny was directly responsible for the defeats by Birmingham and Barca.

[azreal88]

The Utd result was about neither guts nor steele.....it was about finishing.  Arsenal had great chances in that game and failed to put any of them in the net.  Utd invited them forward and then hit them on the counter, just like they always do.  Wenger is tactically naive and puts philosophy before pragmatism. 

[H. Pedersen]

True.  He needs to learn there is no such thing as a "moral victory" in football.

[Chris Rabz]

I hate United and obviously would rather Arsenal beat them, but there's something very satisfying about watching Arsene Wenger go through the same failures every season. They show their quality against smaller sides all the time, they are a huge club, but when it comes to the crunch they just aren't good enough to win things. They don't have a spine and they can't hack adversity. It could be the refs fault, the pitch's fault or Colonol Gaddafi's fault, but the bottom line is they just aren't good enough!

[ReebokTrotter]

 I have a grudging respect for Wenger because he doesn't just go out and splash the cash at over inflated prices. He likes his teams to play with Gallic flair but since Adams, Keown, Dixon, Bould and Merson retired, he has always gone for foreign imports. His current squad of players are all foreigners apart from Wilshere. He hasn't got any good old British  steel in the team. If I was a Gooner I would be mightily hacked off at the lack of English players at Arsenal.

[Chris Rabz]

They really do miss their defensive solidity. That backline you mentioned when added with Seaman in goal and Vieira in the hole it was almost impenetrable, and when you have players like Overmars, Anelka, Wright, Bergkamp at the other end, it's not hard to see why they won the league in 1998. Add in Henry, Ljungberg, Pires and it was a fearsome side in the early 00s aswell.

But when the backline retired they never replaced them, they never replaced Seaman, and when Vieira and Henry left they lost that extra 'something' that gave them the edge over their rivals. Now they are strong still, but they are some way off being good enough to consistently win silverware.