I mentioned Norway in connection with zonal defending, you know the way they consistently humiliated England both home and away during the 90's. When you speak about resorting to cheap tricks when "losing a discussion" I would call what you did there exactly that. Taking parts of what I say and twist it to seem like I was saying something different.
I'm not sure they consistently humiliated England home and away during the 1990s. I don't really follow either team, I'm neither English nor Norweigian, but a cursory glance at results between the two nations in the 1990s gives the following:
14 Oct 1992 England v Norway 1-1 WC Q
02 Jun 1993 Norway v England 2-0 WC Q
22 May 1994 England v Norway 0-0 Int
11 Oct 1995 Norway v England 0-0 Int
One win and three turgid draws is doesnt really equate to "complete humiliation". What exactly are you trying to say about Norwegian football anyway, and what is the relevance of it anyway? That their zonal defending was excellent? Well getting to one tournament (and exiting at the first stage) in the mid 1990s suggests otherwisel, after a decent opening game they were tactically "found out" in USA 94. Are we to laud Greek and Scottish football in the mid 1990s as they also had defences that got to them to one tournament in that timeframe?
Since you're such an expert on Norway and one dimensional football, how come statistics say they used an average of three long passes per half when they used Jostein Flo as a target man? Does it smell an awful lot like "long ball" strategy to you? In that first generation of Egil Olsen, Norway played counter attacking football and very much with success for a team that is comprised of players from a nation with only 5% of the player pool that England has.
I'm not an expert on Norwegian football at all and would never wish to be. But it's pretty easy for someone to challenge your assertion that Norway were highly sucessfull in the early-to-mid 1990s as you can see this simply isn't borne out in the results, but you'll have to read my "long post" to see this. It's very interesting that you bring up Jostein Flo as a crucible of dyanmic short passing attacking football. He is one of the few footballers to had a term coined about him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jostein_Flo The "Flo Pass" is described as:
Playing a characteristic 4-5-1 formation, the left back would often hit long crosses to Flo, who in turn would head the ball to either one of the central midfielders or to the striker. This was known as the Flo Pass, and the Norwegian national team garnered much criticism for its perceived long-ball approach.
Norway might have a smaller playing pool than England, but other countries with far, far smaller playing pools have done at least as well as, if not better than Norway. Croatia and Slovenia have smaller populations than Norway, and have been independant football teams for around 20 years. Croatia, which has a population about 10% smaller than Norway has been to 3 World Cups (2006, 2002, 1998) and 4 Euros (96, 04, 08, 12). Slovenia have well under half the population of Norway and have been to two World Cups (02, 10) and one Euros (2000). Again I'm not sure what your point is going off on this Norwegian tangent, yes they've done well for a fairly small country, but then other smaller countries have done much better, either way I dont see how Norway is relevant to the discussion about Arsenal in the early/mid 1990s.
Back to Arsenal, you all got what I meant by saying what I said. I didn't explain in detail how Arsenal played because I figured you all already knew that. The point is, that the phrase "boring Arsenal" came from somewhere and it was hard to shake. Graham's records after Arsenal more or less proves that he mainly won football matches due to superior squads and cynical tactics, as his cynical tactics alone brought him next to nothing with other clubs. His only achievement was a League Cup trophy with Spurs, and he didn't even lead us to the final..
All this stuff about "boring Arsenal", well when exactly were Arsenal boring? I've already shown how this "1-0" stuff isnt borne out by statistics under Graham. People have said it was from before Graham's time? When exactly ? Because in the 1980s and 1970s they had creative skillfull players like Liam Brady, Charlie Nicholas
and Charlie George at the center of the team. And if you go back before that you had the Herbert Chapman era with players like Cliff Bastien, Ted Drake and Alex James.
You seem to assert that George Graham did nothing post Arsenal, yet he got Spurs their only trophy in almost a 20 year spell (1991-2009). You say he "didnt lead Spurs to the final", which is pretty misleading. He joined on 1st/2nd October 1998, so apart from Round two win over Brentford (Spurs as a PL club skipped Round 1) which had David Pleat as a caretaker, Graham was in charge for all the other matches. It was Graham's team who beat Liverpool (away) and Man Utd (home) 3-1 both times, and then won the semi and the final.
Lastly, Ian Wright may have been small but Campbell were very much a power striker with his stature at 188cm and full of muscles.
He's hardly a "power striker" (I assume you mean some sort of target man) suited to the long ball game and calling him muscular is an exaguration, he doesnt even look that muscular next to Ashley Cole
188cm is hardly a huge target man, he'd be pretty small compared to Andy Carroll, Nial Quinn, Carsten Jancker, Jan Koller, Peter Crouch and also Jostein Flo.
