Summer Transfer Misery 2017/18

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Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie

Again I think if finances were at the top of his agenda we wouldn't be running such a massive wage bill

Wenger is obsessed with proving that he can do it without spending loads. And the irony is that he's failed so badly at that, that another club (Leicester City) managed to adopt his blueprint sucessfully.

I think being given more power over the day to day running of the football club than any other manager has at any other club has made him hyper sensitive to financial considerations, simply because he has been lauded as someone who has achieved great things on very little spend.

He does things constrained by a set of rules only he understands which he frequently bends anyway. He is obsessed with this total football model, you saw the article by Keown where he refused to show a player defensive mistakes he was making because it might interfere with the technical aspects of his game.

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There's a big difference between the wage bill and transfer activity. The former is a known quantity that can be projected into the future. The latter is a gamble that can either add benefits for an outlay and protracted costs or add nothing significant for that same outlay and costs. I'm pretty sure which Wenger prefers, the stability of the payroll compared to the casino of the transfer market. He's told us this enough times with his irrelevant speeches about his version of value.

If you want stability you want your players to stay, so you pay them to stay. Even the shit ones. Everything becomes quantifiable and predictable (where have we heard that before?). And you have a nice little FFP excuse to play with, we can't gamble because we have to account for the wages. We have to get rid of players (take profit) before we can spend. Furthermore, how do you keep a squad of professionals content with mediocrity? By paying them to shut up and get on with it.

I heard the cost of player wages has dropped from over 70% to around 60% of earnings. In the big picture this is another long term benefit. Everything is being run in a way you'd run an investment fund. The mitigation of risk wherever possible and with the goal of stability. You want a mixed basket but one tending towards the conservative so unexpected outcomes can be smoothed out. Admirable if you are running a bank (not that bankers are anywhere near as conservative s Arsenal Football Club), disastrous in the modern game if your aim is to compete at the top.

The 92 million bid for Lemar has all sorts of rumours swirling around it. Some say the player pulled out. Others say we pulled out. Some say Liverpool were never interested at all and it was Lemar's representatives that were putting all the rumours out there, thus driving up the fee to a ridiculous level at the last minute to deter a (possibly and probably phantom) Liverpool bid. When you consider Liverpool did hang on to Coutinho then it's not outrageous to suggest Arsenal were spun a line and they bought it. So why bid 92 million at all? The question becomes, why not bid 50 or 60 million when the players was eager to come here? Why leave it until the very last minute when Lemar was getting ready for a major International match? I think the answer is fairly obvious. This was a cynical ploy to give the appearance we were ready to compete at the top, managed in such a way that failure was inevitable. Even if Lemar had said yes, there remained many ways to scupper the deal. So I write that off as a con-job, much like the pre-season Mbappe con-artistry. Yes, I do consider them to be that cynical. They are using a football club as a front for their activities so they need to keep the public relations in at least some working order.

Anyway, they can now set sail again in the sturdy ship. The wage bill is under control, no 300k for Alexis or Ozil now. The transfer window has replaced the lost revenues from failure to qualify for the CL. All that remains to be done is claim a victory for keeping 2 or the 3 players that can soon walk on a free and, oh look, Ivan just did that this morning. Well played. Some will believe it. Many perhaps. Enough, for sure, And the rest won't care and the good ship Kroenke will sail on.

The true intent of this club became clear when Wenger was awarded his contract. Nothing logical can explain that decision if our real focus as a club is football.

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Originally Posted by Delusions of Grandeur

There is not one coach that has had a chance to build team after team with one of the top European clubs and not won the Champs League. We're talking two decades with Arsenal and he's only ever progressed beyond the last 16 on a handful of occasions. He's in a league of his own for this one.

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We aren't one of the top European clubs. We aren't in the realm of Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. And we don't have the spending power of City, Chelsea, United or PSG

PSG has spent £200 million on closing that gap because they've not got past the quarter finals once.

Jurgen Klopp is a better coach than Wenger, him winning the European cup is not on the horizon unless he joins one of the clubs I've mentioned.

Same with Diego Simeone, he might get there with the likes of Chelsea but there is only a certain level he can reach with Atletico Madrid (by far in fact he has massively over achieved)

Wenger has had the chance to do better in the competition for sure and he's wasted it.....we definitely probably should have won it in 03/04. It's unacceptable that we have been knocked out by the likes of PSV and Monaco.

But looking at it now, the Champions League is currently a prize for elite clubs and clubs whose spending is relative to the GDP of countries like Luxembourg.

It is to put it simply a closed shop

For a manager like Klopp just qualifying for it is a big achievement, does he have the ambition to win it? Yeah of course but it doesn't make it anymore likely to happen.

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Originally Posted by Özim

He could win it if he tried hard enough and did the right things, the fact he would think he can't suggest he should know he shouldn't even be here. We should be aiming to win the league and/or the CL, if we have a manager who doesn't believe he can surely that's a problem, maybe not to our club having said that.

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In the Q&A he was asked if he thought we could win the league and he said yes :shrug:


He's wrong, obviously, but he says he believes we can.

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Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie

We aren't one of the top European clubs. We aren't in the realm of Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. And we don't have the spending power of City, Chelsea, United or PSG

PSG has spent £200 million on closing that gap because they've not got past the quarter finals once.

Jurgen Klopp is a better coach than Wenger, him winning the European cup is not on the horizon unless he joins one of the clubs I've mentioned.

Same with Diego Simeone, he might get there with the likes of Chelsea but there is only a certain level he can reach with Atletico Madrid (by far in fact he has massively over achieved)

Wenger has had the chance to do better in the competition for sure and he's wasted it.....we definitely probably should have won it in 03/04. It's unacceptable that we have been knocked out by the likes of PSV and Monaco.

But looking at it now, the Champions League is currently a prize for elite clubs and clubs whose spending is relative to the GDP of countries like Luxembourg.

It is to put it simply a closed shop

For a manager like Klopp just qualifying for it is a big achievement, does he have the ambition to win it? Yeah of course but it doesn't make it anymore likely to happen.

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We most certainly do have the spending power of the elite clubs. Not on a sustained basis, but at least to the degree we could bring in some key players that we have needed for a long time. Perhaps the stadium did stunt our prospects in the transfer window, but it didn't seem to impact as harshly on the bank balance which has increased 500% since Kroenke arrived. And now, apparently, we have no money. They have been playing this trick season after season. Every Arsenal fan knows the old 2% away from greatness joke. A joke because we all know we are way more than 2% behind. But 2 key players, that could have made a difference in any number of transfer windows. There's a quarter of a billion quid in the bank and the nonsense about it not being available because it needs to go elsewhere can easily be dismissed because that balance keeps growing, season upon season. So where else does the cash need to go and why hasn't it gone there?

Lies, lies, lies, all lies. Success breeds success and we won't invest what's required to generate that initial spark. This is the reality we have seen. We'll spend when there's no competition and we mislead the fans when other clubs are taking the players we are all envious of. Well we've finally reached an inevitable destination, because even if we were willing to spend the money now I doubt the top players would want to come here. How sad and how convenient. Wasn't our fault guv, honest.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

The true intent of this club became clear when Wenger was awarded his contract. Nothing logical can explain that decision if our real focus as a club is football.

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That's clearly where you're going wrong

You've assumed there has to be a logical reason behind decision making

The reason for it was fear. Wenger was afraid because he has literally nothing going on in his life outside the club and the club are worried because everything has been done by Wenger for so long they can't conceive of anything being different

Kroenke gave Wenger the undiluted contract because it's easier for him to give Wenger the power and control he wants because he knows Wenger can't fuck up enough to have a detrimental effect on the club as an asset. So in Kroenkes case it's purely financial but there's hardly ever been any pretence of anything different.

Gazidis may be ambitious but he's too much of a gimp to do something about it or move on, and Wenger has an unshakeable belief in his own methodology.

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Originally Posted by Letters

In the Q&A he was asked if he thought we could win the league and he said yes :shrug:


He's wrong, obviously, but he says he believes we can.

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Placing any value on what comes out of Wenger's gob is obviously a mistake, what with him being a lying bastard an all. I think we can see from this thread, take whatever Wenger says, believe the opposite. Yes, of course, he does want to win the CL, much like I want to leap over the moon. Words are easy. And no, of course the incompetent cock can't win the title, but etiquette demands he makes the claim.

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Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie

That's clearly where you're going wrong

You've assumed there has to be a logical reason behind decision making

The reason for it was fear. Wenger was afraid because he has literally nothing going on in his life outside the club and the club are worried because everything has been done by Wenger for so long they can't conceive of anything being different

Kroenke gave Wenger the undiluted contract because it's easier for him to give Wenger the power and control he wants because he knows Wenger can't fuck up enough to have a detrimental effect on the club as an asset. So in Kroenkes case it's purely financial but there's hardly ever been any pretence of anything different.

Gazidis may be ambitious but he's too much of a gimp to do something about it or move on, and Wenger has an unshakeable belief in his own methodology.

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Well you are agreeing with me. Kroenke's sole focus is financial. When you don't give a fuck about the football beyond confirming you can continue to get arses on seats and keep the spreadsheet projections rolling then hiring Wenger again actually des become logical. You know he'll play your game and play it well.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

We most certainly do have the spending power of the elite clubs. Not on a sustained basis, but at least to the degree we could bring in some key players that we have needed for a long time. Perhaps the stadium did stunt our prospects in the transfer window, but it didn't seem to impact as harshly on the bank balance which has increased 500% since Kroenke arrived. And now, apparently, we have no money. They have been playing this trick season after season. Every Arsenal fan knows the old 2% away from greatness joke. A joke because we all know we are way more than 2% behind. But 2 key players, that could have made a difference in any number of transfer windows. There's a quarter of a billion quid in the bank and the nonsense about it not being available because it needs to go elsewhere can easily be dismissed because that balance keeps growing, season upon season. So where else does the cash need to go and why hasn't it gone there?

Lies, lies, lies, all lies. Success breeds success and we won't invest what's required to generate that initial spark. This is the reality we have seen. We'll spend when there's no competition and we mislead the fans when other clubs are taking the players we are all envious of. Well we've finally reached an inevitable destination, because even if we were willing to spend the money now I doubt the top players would want to come here. How sad and how convenient. Wasn't our fault guv, honest.

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You're right in the sense that Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern Munich have become part of the elite through past success that has given them the reputation that makes them marketable qualities.

You're absolutely right we quite probably could match PSG, City and Chelsea in the market for One season, where they have the advantage is that they can do it every season and can up the ante anytime they choose.

You seem to be convinced that I'm mitigating for Wengers failings, I'm not. His failure is even when it's possible to compete he has completely failed to do so....that no matter what the season the same failings, the same excuses etc

What I am saying is look at Spurs and their points total last season, that would have been enough for them to win the title in years gone by. But last season Chelsea won 30 games (unprecedented in a 38 game season) and teams like that can reach that kind of level whenever they wish by just pouring their money into transfers.

We can claim it's because Antonio Conte is a genius but his tactical tweaks were quite obvious, and a lot of it came down to figurative dick stroking of individuals who Mourinho managed to piss off.

And will Conte win the champions league this season? No probably not.

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Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn

Well you are agreeing with me. Kroenke's sole focus is financial. When you don't give a fuck about the football beyond confirming you can continue to get arses on seats and keep the spreadsheet projections rolling then hiring Wenger again actually des become logical. You know he'll play your game and play it well.

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I'm merely saying that isn't Wengers focus, if it was hed clearly be doing it a lot better and more efficiently. For Kroenke it goes without saying.

Whilst it's helpful to have a coach who knows what they are doing and are young and tactically aware and hungry. If you have a ridiculous amount of money it doesn't always matter and that's why city won the title with Manuel Pellegrini.

And sometimes it's unhelpful. Pep Guardiola is trying to get players to gel into a very specific system and way of playing, when sometimes with a club like city it's easier just to put out your strongest team and know they will be good enough to win no matter how the opposistion sets up.

It's possibly why Wenger might have done better with City, he'd have been unconstrained by tactical considerations. The only drawback would be his bizarre insistence on putting players out of position.

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Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie

We aren't one of the top European clubs. We aren't in the realm of Real Madrid, Barcelona or Bayern Munich. And we don't have the spending power of City, Chelsea, United or PSG

PSG has spent £200 million on closing that gap because they've not got past the quarter finals once.

Jurgen Klopp is a better coach than Wenger, him winning the European cup is not on the horizon unless he joins one of the clubs I've mentioned.

Same with Diego Simeone, he might get there with the likes of Chelsea but there is only a certain level he can reach with Atletico Madrid (by far in fact he has massively over achieved)

Wenger has had the chance to do better in the competition for sure and he's wasted it.....we definitely probably should have won it in 03/04. It's unacceptable that we have been knocked out by the likes of PSV and Monaco.

But looking at it now, the Champions League is currently a prize for elite clubs and clubs whose spending is relative to the GDP of countries like Luxembourg.

It is to put it simply a closed shop

For a manager like Klopp just qualifying for it is a big achievement, does he have the ambition to win it? Yeah of course but it doesn't make it anymore likely to happen.

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Dortmund and Atletico are smaller clubs than Arsenal. Klopp and Simeone haven't had decades to build squad after squad with consistent qualification like Arsene has. That's the point.

Simeone has won the UEFA Cup with Atletico and reached the final of the CL twice along with a semi and quarter final place.

Also, bare in mind, these two coaches haven't had the sort of players Wenger has had. When we had Bergkamp, Henry, Vieira, Sol Campbell, Pires, Ljunberg, Wiltord, Gilberto....world cup winners and experienced internationals...he should have done better an especially when more teams were winning it.