If you want to criticise Wenger, please do it here « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

By Tony Attwood

As everyone who reads the mast head knows, this is a pro-Wenger site – a site set up to balance the very anti-Wenger approach of some other blogs.

The site has had a little difficulty over the past 18 months as readers who are against Wenger have used the site to express their point of view.   No one has stopped such commentaries, although I have occasionally removed comments which clearly have nothing to do with the original article.

What’s been frustrating (for me as the editor of this site) is that knocking Wenger on this site seems to have become something of a sport – a way of knocking the manager, and of disrupting the putting forward of a point of view.

Furthermore it has also been the case that very few people have decided to debate the often complex points raised on this site by those who write articles for the site – but perhaps that is another matter.  A well-argued 1000 word article is dismissed by a reader who says, “if you think Denilson is a good player who are a cretin”.  There seems to be little point in subjecting the readers who come here for a serious debate of the major issues from a pro-Wengerian stance to this sort of prattle.

Anyway, what I have decided to do is offer this space for those who think that a pro-Wenger site such as Untold should be carrying comments which criticise him.  I will however continue to look out for comments which are simply abusive either towards the manager, players or others in the club, or correspondents.  Anything that is pure abuse will be removed as and when I find it.

All articles published after this will be written by and for those of us who believe that Wenger is doing an excellent job in the face of wholesale ref fixing, corruption and an economic system which itself distorts quality management, and thus commentaries which are simply attacks on Wenger and his staff without taking into account and debating the arguments developed on this site over time, will simply be deleted.  So if (for example) you wish to excuse the ref fixing, or if despite the evidence presented here in the last year you don’t believe it exists, then you can write about it here.

In answer to any argument that says, “that proves you are wrong about Wenger, you won’t even allow an open debate” my point is that we don’t have an open debate here.  Writers on this site present a mountain of evidence about (to take the same example) ref fixing, and then we get lots of commentaries about how such and such a player should be axed, or how if we can’t be [slot in the name of one or two teams] we are clearly useless.    There is no debate going on about the validity of the ref fixing claims, save by the occasional reference to an individual incident or two.  No one is seriously challenging Dogface’s pre-match analysis of statistics, nor Walter’s post-match analysis, over a set of games.

So, here’s the space if you want to criticise Wenger and ignore all the evidence about financial matters and the fixed nature of the league.  Normal service will be resumed in the next article.