Random Arsenal Shit (When it's not worth starting a thread)

Not for me. Even if you could mentally distance yourself from the moral side of it, I just find the billionaire- / state-backed ownership model utterly boring.

For me, the best season we’ve seen in the last 15 years was the year Leicester won it, and that wasn’t because everyone was super-brilliant and packed full of the world’s best players slugging it out - it was actually because everyone was a little bit shit and a little bit shambolic that year, and that blew it wide open.

Part of the fun of football is the chaos and unpredictability of it - how you manage the unexpected and whether you can find clever workarounds to problems. With these owners, there is never any unpredictability or unexpected - their pockets and the squads they buy are so deep that they never have to worry about problems. Technically it’s perfect on the pitch… but there’s no excitement there. Not really. The excitement all comes from there being genuine risk and jeopardy involved (which is why nobody wants the comfort of the closed shop that is the European Super League) - when there’s never anything to worry about and you’re always comfortably in control the game just loses something.

The big question for me right now (and this is something that’s been discussed on a few podcasts this week) is how do the rest of us define success going forward?

And also how and where do the rest of us look for happiness and draw satisfaction from following our clubs?

Because in both cases it’s unlikely to come from seriously challenging for titles. Maybe once a decade one of the also-rans might put together a squad that might be able to put up a fight for a couple of years, but mostly it’s going to be City, Chelsea and now Newcastle, year after year after year.

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Originally Posted by I am invisible

The big question for me right now (and this is something that’s been discussed on a few podcasts this week) is how do the rest of us define success going forward?

And also how and where do the rest of us look for happiness and draw satisfaction from following our clubs?

Because in both cases it’s unlikely to come from seriously challenging for titles. Maybe once a decade one of the also-rans might put together a squad that might be able to put up a fight for a couple of years, but mostly it’s going to be City, Chelsea and now Newcastle, year after year after year.

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Success is going to be defined as luring billionaires into the game who are prepared to splash cash and inflate everything into orbit. The natural progression of this is all 20 PL clubs having to "compete" in the only way they realistically can, by welcoming in deep pockets with no questions asked (or allowed). Eventually everyone will be back on a level playing field but the football won't have improved, the entertainment won't be raised, all that will happen is everything will become wildly expensive and exclusive. No place for "legacy fans", as the very people who built the game through their unconditional support through thick and thin are now called.

We'll be back to where we were before the first billionaire scumbag pitched up and tipped the table, in terms of competition. The difference being highly dubious individuals will be viewed as respectable, the fantasy gap between the players and the fans will have widened by galactic proportions and the corrupt individuals who run the whole show will be putting bigger envelopes in their back pockets.

On the bright side, we do have a World Cup in Qatar to look forward to.

The game's not dead yet, its last gasp will come when the last PL club excitedly announces its new billionaire war criminal owner.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

Success is going to be defined as luring billionaires into the game who are prepared to splash cash and inflate everything into orbit. The natural progression of this is all 20 PL clubs having to "compete" in the only way they realistically can, by welcoming in deep pockets with no questions asked (or allowed). Eventually everyone will be back on a level playing field but the football won't have improved, the entertainment won't be raised, all that will happen is everything will become wildly expensive and exclusive. No place for "legacy fans", as the very people who built the game through their unconditional support through thick and thin are now called.

We'll be back to where we were before the first billionaire scumbag pitched up and tipped the table, in terms of competition. The difference being highly dubious individuals will be viewed as respectable, the fantasy gap between the players and the fans will have widened by galactic proportions and the corrupt individuals who run the whole show will be putting bigger envelopes in their back pockets.

On the bright side, we do have a World Cup in Qatar to look forward to.

The game's not dead yet, its last gasp will come when the last PL club excitedly announces its new billionaire war criminal owner.

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It’ll be a World Cup in Qatar every 2 years soon! Good times.

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Originally Posted by Chippy

Yep!
If the Champions League trophy came to the Emirates via a Saudi owner, none of you would give a fuck :lol:

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A lot of Arsenal fans wouldn’t - that’s proven by the fact that Chelsea and City fans strut around crowing about their “achievements”. Personally, it would bother me for the same reason that a lot of things about the modern game bother me.

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Originally Posted by Chippy

Yep!
If the Champions League trophy came to the Emirates via a Saudi owner, none of you would give a fuck :lol:

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Speak for yourself.

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Originally Posted by Chippy

Yep!
If the Champions League trophy came to the Emirates via a Saudi owner, none of you would give a fuck :lol:

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My interest in what this sport has become has resulted in me just about checking out.

If it happens at Arsenal, that would be the final nail in the coffin.

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Originally Posted by Xhaka Can’t

My interest in what this sport has become has resulted in me just about checking out.

If it happens at Arsenal, that would be the final nail in the coffin.

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Says a lot (all of it bad) about the PL when the Kroenke family appear virtuous compared to the opposition.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

Says a lot (all of it bad) about the PL when the Kroenke family appear virtuous compared to the opposition.

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That’s a good point. I hate our ownership and their lack of interest in the Club (it isn’t really a Club anymore). But they are marginally preferable to a bunch of crooks robbing petro-states.

What type of evil cunt must you be to fail a PL fit and proper test?

Maybe one day all the clubs will be owned by evil billionaires and the advantages that confers will be cancelled out.
All it'll do is just mean all the players will be getting a million pounds a week and none of them will be able to take a corner.