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He may well be, but we in England haven't actually seen him that much and I myself didn't watch him in the CL this season so I'm a little neutral to it. We need a left back so I'm glad we're making the move in any case, but don't share the view of so of the media that our opening offer was insulting.Quote:
Originally Posted by selassie
Insulting to Celtic I suppose as he's a big asset of theirs but we don't have a pot to piss in so we didn't really have much choice but to lowball them.
At least now the player knows our interest is real so hopefully his head has been turned.
I’m not even sure we have insulted Celtic? Seems like everyone in the world is losing their shit over this except the club themselves, who have just gone about the talks quietly...
Off topic.....Quote:
Originally Posted by I am invisible
Where the fuck did the spuds get 65m from to sign Ndombele? Looks like they funded their new stadium properly. Unlike our shower! FFS
Not signing a player for 2 years and having a low wage bill helps. :lol:
Guessing they got a nice windfall for the CL run as well.
To be honest we had most of that, barely signing anyone of note, selling our best players and being in the CL every season, we still couldn't manage it.Quote:
Originally Posted by Marc Overmars
The stadium was supposed to be the golden goose, as it turns out it's been the opposite, we've seen very little benefit from it, in fact we were a better team when we were at Highbury.
Despite not signing a player for 2 years, they still ended up above us, got into the CL final and have managed to build a bigger stadium.
Different times mate. They’re lucky enough to have built theirs at a time when the PL pays out 150m/yr in prize money for finishing anywhere near the top - when we did it, it was probably closer to 1/3 of that (or less). Plus they’re paying about 100m a year less in wages - that helps!Quote:
Originally Posted by Chippy
Our stadium build was actually incredibly well financed and funded at the time, esp when you consider it was pre-recession / banking crisis, and interest rates were higher (and we then had to navigate through that financial shit storm too). We’re in this current mess purely because we’ve spent and sold poorly, handed out way too many undeserved, big contracts, and have missed out on CL income for 3 years running - we had everything we needed to make a success of this, but we fucked it up.
Fixed that for youQuote:
Originally Posted by I am invisible
They're stadium cost close to a billion I believe though, ours was £390 million I think, so a big difference in cost. Hard to believe it was opened 13 years ago now.Quote:
Originally Posted by I am invisible
IMO we tried to get greedy by building the flats and it backfired on us when we struggled to sell them. The reality is we were promised a competitive team in the new stadium, we never got that, we were told our aim was to compete with the very best, instead we're struggling to qualify for the top 4, we were suppose to go to toe toe with top clubs for the best players and instead we're scraping around for unknowns and cheap buys.
It wouldn't be an understatement to say it's been a disaster, again though I agree with you to some extent, our spending was terrible (but we also sold off our best players time and time again, Spurs have resisted doing this), we kept Wenger (and Gazidis) for far too long, both did a poor job after the stadium move, Wenger got obsessed with proving people wrong and refused to accept what people were saying was correct and waste money left, right and center when he spent it and Gazidis delivered very poor commercial deals, came out with empty promises and delivered nothing, then when he finally got rid of Wenger walked away!
It could have been so different, instead we could well be stuck as also rans for the foreseeable future, with no real investment, a coach who most likely isn't an elite coach and an owner who couldn't care less about us being successful so probably won't replace Emery with anyone decent if he doesn't work out.
I guess we can all hope for some kind of miracle turnaround, but I don't think too many really believe it's going to happen for us right now, our only hope I guess is that we stumble across some miracle worker of a manager, who proves to be top class and has an eye for talent, which in these days seems unlikely.