:doh: So that's your contribution for today? You've come back on GW to tell others to stop moaning? Great stuff, you've been missed.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
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:doh: So that's your contribution for today? You've come back on GW to tell others to stop moaning? Great stuff, you've been missed.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
This story proves so much about "journalism" and how the public perceive the story's the print. Essentially they can make up anything and people will believe. Very few people ever question the facts.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Emirates Gallactico
This is especially true for us Arsenal fans because we're all so disillusioned anyway that we'll believe anything they print about Wenger and Arsenal. Which then feeds into the negativity and makes us more desperate for stories so we keep clicking/reading them etc
It's sickening.
Really interested to know if you actually believe this?Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
Wenger get's a lot of stick for missing out on Suarez/Higuain but I actually don't think you can blame him or the club.
We had an offer accepted for Higuain and then we thought Suarez was available. We met his release clause (supposedly it was disrespectful but that's rubbish) and the bid was rejected. Liverpool called our bluff that we wouldn't push it and take them through legal proceedings. As someone has already mentioned Suarez wasn't that bothered about coming to us so he didn't push it either. Had he really wanted to come to us, I think the deal would have been done. The real issue is that we lost out on Higuain in the meantime as Napoli took their chance while we were concentrating on Suarez.
Is he? His scoring record is pretty similar to Giroud's. About 1 goal every 3 games. Not really an upgrade in my eyes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
You looks like an idiot now. See above :) You could also try contributing yourself. And by contributing I mean not crying like a 9 year old girl with a skinned knee.Quote:
Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory
We added £1 to the buyout clause. One pound. If we were determined to open up meaningful meaningful discussions with a club that didn't want to sell then that was the absolute worst way to kick things off. It's a smart arse move and all it served to do was reinforce the idea the club is cheap. If we were serious - and we certainly needed to be very serious indeed given the shite we've had playing up top for us these past few seasons - we'd have slapped £50mill on the table and said we wanted the player. Instead we did the £1 thing and it all descended to recrimination and farce. In a nutshell, we fucked it up. That's because we're one of the least competent clubs in the transfer window and if you don't believe that's true then take a look at Wenger's, "almost signed him", list - another comedy item that much amuses opposition fans. If we really did miss out on all those players then we must be seriously fucking incompetent, don't you think?Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
The stupid one quid fiasco aside, we should have had Higuain on the go too. Keep both channels open until you get a result from one of them. Where's the rule that says you have to shut down one deal as soon as you open another? More incompetence.
And here we are, still looking for that striker. It beggars belief. How anyone can defend these bastards is a complete mystery.
You're right about this.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kano
However I would like us to put in a big bid for him and test Dortmund's resolve. If we bid 50 or 60m then would they be able to turn that down? It's unlikely to work out but let's at least try.
The Mkhitaryan thing annoyed me. It seems like from media reports were were interested, Dortmund told us he wasn't for sale and we just said "thanks, bye". Utd enquire, again they're told he's not for sale and their response is "What about if we offer 26m?" They sign him. Now i'm pretty sure we would have paid that to get him if we had to the chance but we didn't test their resolve. We're too nice in the transfer market for our own good.
I'm quite surprised we didn't go for Jansson. He seemed like a Wenger signing. Young, decent and let's face it cheap. Spurs have signed him.
In fact as much as it pains me to say, Spurs are doing what we should be doing if we're not willing to spend big money. They're signing young, upcoming players for relatively cheap prices. They've signed Wanyama for 12m! We paid three times that for Xaka. In fact they got Jansson and Wanyama for less combined than Xaka.
I'm pretty sure no club in the history of football has willingly paid £10m over a player's release clause for no reason other than to show we're not cheap. His release clause was anything over £40m and we met that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
The problem is we were naive to believe he really wanted to join us. I suspect his agent misled us because Suarez wanted out of Liverpool and we fell for it.
The Wenger "almost" signed him list is another misnomer I think. I suspect most top managers have one of those lists. The difference is Wenger talks about it when he shouldn't. He's specifically asked about it now which makes it worse. It's all "news" and the fans are so desperate for it we'll read this crap.
I'm not "defending" Wenger or the board, they have a lot to answer for. However i'm also not one of the fans who believe he's a twat or a cunt or whatever you want to call him, or that he's a crap manager that's lost the plot. Neither of those things are true.
What is true is that the transfer market has evolved and Wenger hasn't. That doesn't automatically make him the worst person in existence. It does mean he should be (carefully) replaced if we want to move forward as a club. That leads us on to our second problem. The board.
The board won't sack Wenger because from their point of view he pulls a rabbit out the hat every season. We always finish top four and we always make a profit. That's all they care about. As fans we care about winning and little else.
:good: You're trying at least.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
As said to Letters the other day, if you want a sensible debate, push the debate elsewhere instead of constantly moaning about what others are saying.
I post on a regular and talk to most people on here about whatever.
:lol: I contribute a lot. You've been away for too long.
The release clause was meaningless, as we found out. Suarez DID want to join us, he went on strike t try to force the move. It was Liverpool that said they wouldn't sell under any circumstances. When they agreed that release clause it would have seemed a high figure, but then when he became virtually priceless in terms of his importance on the pitch (I think we can now see he carried the likes of Sturridge and certainly the ordinary Sterling) £40mill must have seemed small consolation. Small enough for Liverpool to say sod the buyout clause, we're keeping him and we don't care what the agreement says. So in that context, our smart arse £1 bid just served to get the heels dug in deeper. Would £50mill have tested their resolve? Who knows? But one quid certainly moved their resolve in the wrong way. Deal over. We fucked it.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
In a way I'm glad the deal for Suarez never went through because he'd have been gone like shit off a shovel had Barca come knocking, which was highly likely. Then again, under Wenger's tutelage for a season you never know, maybe he wouldn't have scored a goal, maybe he'd have been injured all season. The point is, the way we do things in the transfer market is obnoxious. Miserable cheapskates always turning up with lowball offers and then dithering around instead of acting decisively to get the players we need. There have been strange exceptions, like the last minute Ozil deal and the trend bucking signing of Alexis. But in the main you get the impression of a bunch of hapless, out of touch economy shoppers browsing and tutting while everyone else fills their trolley. One season, two seasons, maybe three. Okay, maybe you can call it bad luck, strange circumstances. But here we are on the verge of season five since RvC pissed off. And fast approaching the kick-off. Yet again we aren't prepared, we aren't properly stocked and we are talking about where we are short rather than approaching the season with confidence.
It's negligence, incompetence and it's caused because the priorities of this club lie somewhere other than the football pitch.
He really isn't. :lol:Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
A journeyman striker who's only kind of come good recently right in the tail of his career, who's league goal record isn't any better than Giroud's and who couldn't even get ahead of Giroud and Gignac in the French squad for the Euros.
This is where we are on the same page and we go into 'moaning' territory. Janssen looks like a decent player and can find the back of the net. Intetelligent finishing. No idea why we didn't move for him. Then we have that fee for Xhaka. Is he that special that special? It just seems like we could have bought a player for a fraction of that price and focused on buying a striker after.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
I couldn't see Aubameyang going for anything less than £80m in this current market. Just into his peak years, his profile at his highest, a new contract signed last year and of course UK clubs are ripe for the money. I could be completely wrong of course about the value but comparing him to Higuain, or Lukaku, Morata, Lacazette - his value would surely have to be far higher.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
I don't know what happened, if anything at all, with Mkhitaryan. As with a lot of transfers, especially in the quiet early stages of the window, they throw up conflicting story after story pumped out online, without any hint of verification. I read that he was going to happen, he wanted to come etc and you were reading the opposite - which is the usual bullshit approach from 'writers' covering every eventuality so they can pat themselves on the back in the end.
Jansson I'm not to worried about. He had a great season last year but very unproven and still a lot of question marks over whether he can adapt or just how good he really is. No one over here has really seen him beyond YT clips so who knows? Could be £18m bargain in years to come or a huge waste of money for a team watching their pennies while they build a stadium. Wanyama was in his last year of his contract so I get that price and Xhaka's price makes sense in the current market, especially has he had a good chunk of his contract left at BM too.
Our secrecy, seemingly ponderous approach and Wenger's apparent reluctance to fix flaws in the squad for years is easily exploited and manipulated in the transfer window. So far we've shown interest in every striker in Europe if the bullshit written online is to be believed and too many fans lap it right up. To a degree I can understand why because of the growing frustration most of us share but people do need to get a grip of themselves in the main.
It's been done a million times now and I tend to be in a minority on it but our real cock up with Suarez was trusting the veracity of the dodgy clause rather than the pound in excess offer.
Xhaka's price is a surprise but ultimately of little concern to me. If anything it encourages the belief that he is actually quite good as I cannot imagine we were thrilled to pay that price for a player still something of a unknown quantity in the sphere of world or 'popular' football culture.
We are actually guilty of serious short mindedness (that which we purport to be highly resistant to) and lacking conviction in paying high prices for forwards of obvious quality.
Higuain, Suarez and he wasn't one of ours that got away but, Aguero was one of the most obvious signings of quality with a high price tag I can remember in my lifetime. Picking them out isn't always the work of a genius but there are very few of them left these days belonging to clubs where your money will really talk.
Nah it was the other way around Blink.Quote:
Originally Posted by Blink 1nce Quince 2wice
John Henry has confirmed that the clause did exist in Suarez's contract however he gambled that we (and Suarez) wouldn't take it all the way to the courts to really force the issue. He was ultimately right of course.
We were right to try and activate the clause but the +£1 was pretty insulting and made Liverpool indignant which in turn caused them to circle the wagons and refuse to play ball, whereas a straight up £50 million as alluded by Rodgers may have done the trick.
Would have done the trick in terms of them agreeing to sell Suarez, but i still don't think we would have ended up signing him.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Emirates Gallactico
The buy out clause we met would have been enough on it's own if Suarez had pushed for the move, don't get me wrong i thought the plus one pound thing was a piss take and would have been enough to get anyone's backs up but it would have sufficed had Suarez wanted to come to us
I initially thought as you did but I now say this on the basis of the fact that the FA chief whatshisface said that the makeup of the clause itself was questionable. I surmise from that that it was anything but a standard buyout clause covering the party of the player for all eventualities and on that basis a legal grey area. I guess it was a bespoke/rewritten clause but poorly done or at least poorly selected.
Never before has the meeting of a 'cause' been met with such brazen refute, resistance and stubbornness from a club as it was Liverpool and that was basically because the clause itself was not water tight. Liverpool played on that fact brilliantly whilst defecting with being insulted at our supposed derisory offer of a pound in excess.
Theoretically, I am a tight arse so I see no need why if a buyout is met, why the offerer should offer a penny more if he doesn't want to....just as I don't feel obliged to tip as a matter of course American style or go into Waitrose and pay more for their finest cut of lamb than is necessary.
My understanding, and the same of the PFA guy, was that it was a good faith clause written on the basis that should a bid come in, we would sit down and negotiate nudge wink we'll let you go. Instead, we just told him and his agent to fuck off.
Which doesn't really sound like a buyout clause at all. Kind of thing you include in a letter of intent rather than a formal contract so is it any wonder Liverpool mugged us off. I'd have been pretty unhappy with my agent in his shoes.
Why didn't we bid extra after the clause nonsense?
Think he'd made his peace with it by then and Liverpool had sufficiently muddied the waters.
The internal solution
Giroud
Ozil Sanchez Carzola
Xhaka Ramsey
Monreal Boss Gabriel Bellerin
Cech
......assuming no signing of significance is made, I think that should be our starting line up. But as usual injuries, tactical and selection buffoonery mean it can't happen
http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-arc...2jKTPvc9bM7.99Quote:
Arsène Wenger discussed transfers at his press conference at the Stubhub Center on Saturday.
on transfer approach
I buy players that I feel can strengthen our team. Today you have to be very strong inside the club when you are responsible, not just to buy [for the sake of buying]. Theres always a wave of opinions. I must say people are better informed today - they know all the players. They tell you always that you should buy but when you ask them who to buy, they become much shorter. If you look at the market in Europe, theres a lot of money available but not many players who really strengthen the teams. If you look at the teams that spend the most money in Europe, theyre not necessarily the teams that won the championships. The global investment of the clubs around us didnt stop Leicester winning the championship.
on transfers
We are still on the market for players. [Be it] at the front or at the back - we are on the market. Unfortunately we are not alone.
on Mahrez and Lacazette
The best way to conclude transfers is not to talk about them, which is very difficult in the press conference! We are on the market but I dont want to talk specifically about any player because that makes it more difficult for me - and its difficult enough.
on if he expects to sign defender before the season starts
Yes I do.
:coffee:
The Mirror are linking us with Johnny Evans now :lol:
Could actually see it happening!
Completely off the mark,much better finisher than Giroud and just franly Deschamps is clueless so it's no surprise he didn't pick him, had he they might have won the Euros, the fact he picked Giroud and Gignac tells you all you need to know.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Emirates Gallactico
It doesn't matter if the clause was valid or not, the real issue was our £1 nonsense. It showed we were opportunity shopping and bargain hunting rather than going full guns for the player we needed and still need. Forget the clause, bang £50mill on the table, we're serious! Instead, here is our coupon, can we have your player please? No? Merd! And extra 10 or even 20 mill could have been recouped in no time, just by using the extra firepower to advance further in the CL, for example. Our cheapskate, value for money bullshit ends up costing us in the end. We're stupid arse savers in an inflation ridden market - now how dumb is that?Quote:
Originally Posted by Blink 1nce Quince 2wice
Here we go again the BS excuses, the biggest embarassment in football today.Quote:
Originally Posted by Munchies
Yes I do, Wenger takes plenty of blame, he controls most things at the club and he is as has been proven over the years not willing to pay the market rate.Quote:
Originally Posted by bignev
You don't think bidding £1 over 40 million was disrespectful and didn't p*ss Liverpool off, in the end it did and they refused to sell and good on them to be honest, if you're going to be petty and cheap you deserve all you get, I've never seen any other club make such a nonsense bid, it's just us that embarrass ourselves with the low ball and ridiculous offers.
If we did things properly in the transfer market we wouldn't have so many issues at the club.
:lol: It's just completely Pavlovian with you, isn't it? Literally knee-jerk.Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
That is fair comment. There is a responsibility on all of us if we want to make this place better and yes, new posters would help although it's telling that on occasions when new people join they don't hang around long.Quote:
Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory
Elsewhere you've said that the whole debt bubble will burst at some point, but here you're criticising us for having a sustainable model?Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
We are too frugal, we could spent more without putting ourselves in financial jeopardy, but in my view having a sustainable business model is absolutely the right thing to do, surely this whole spiral of debt and transfer fees can't last forever.
So you want us to sign players, but you think signing players will make no difference while Wenger is manager?Quote:
Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn
:blink:
And yet his goal scoring record is worse by pretty much every measure.Quote:
Originally Posted by Özim
15,8,16 in the last 3 league seasons for Gameiro vs 16,14,16 for Giroud.
Giroud had played more games in that period but Giroud's goals/games ratio is still better, 0.45 vs 0.42 for Gameiro.
So 'much better'? How do you work that out?
I'd go with that. But maybe Ox, Theo or Iwobi on the wing instead of Cazorla. We need a bit of pace.Quote:
Originally Posted by Maestro
This is one thing that does frustrate me about the way we play, in theory we've got loads of pace in the team but we're so ineffectual at breaking with pace. We move the ball forward at glacial speed and then wonder why we're struggling to break down the 10 men who have now had time to get behind the ball.Quote:
Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory
Robbie from AFTV said he spoke to Gazidis at the kit launch and Gazidis promised that hard work is being done behind the scenes, said Kroenke wants to win too, and that he's angry with the British press for misreporting how we're going after players.
Video : https://twitter.com/ArsenalFanTV/sta...75771552145408
Believe it when we see it :coffee:
I think I heard it said by Arseblog, or his mate on the podcast the other week that we have been conditioned to Wengers thinking when it comes to money, like we have some sort of vested interest in the money side of things. I think this is true for me. Im shocked at the money for transfers now. I really need to get into the thinking of `fcuk it, not my money, lets go big!`, and it really isnt my money. I dont contribute to arsenal at all, dont go to the games, dont by shirts or merch, wont pay for BT/Sky etc. If palace and West Ham are bidding £30+ million for players, we really need to be at the very least matching them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
We have masses of money, play in London, CL football, we really should be able to buy nearly anyone, although there are those top 10-15 players in the world that we couldnt get, but everyone else we could easily throw masses of cash at the club and player to get them here.
This is a place for a few old diehards to sound off and it's a clique. Flyby fans aren't going to stick around one at a time. If you want to get more people in then you need to get a lot in one hit and a few will stick. Is that what you want to do? If you are thinking there's a cadre of pro-Wenger supporters out there who could even up the score here then maybe there is, for a few more weeks. After that though, once yer man has evaded another transfer window and set his monotonous bullshit in motion for another season (because he's the real bore btw, not the fans who complain about him or the fans that have devoted themselves to him) it's going to get toxic. If we're sitting here with new signings onboard and looking forward to the season then of course you have a very different atmosphere. But that's not the case. What we are doing is trying to find ways to discuss the same old stuff that has been happening at the club for half a decade or longer. That's a tough sell. I think if most of the current posters were to join today, they wouldn't stick around either. Not because it's GW but because there's nothing left to talk about with this club. I bet all forums are seeing a drop off and suffering from the repetitiveness of it all.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
What do you think will happen to all of football if/ when that bubble bursts? It will all go down. You think our sponsors are going to say, wait, Arsenal has this sustainable model so let's keep pouring inflated sums into the club? It's the moneygoround that has attracted all the sharks, once that's gone then they'll be gone and all clubs will suffer the consequences. Our stupid sustainability bullshit will have counted for zero. All it will have done is hold us back. There are so many poor saps at this club, boasting about our balance sheet rather than our trophy cabinet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters
No. I'm saying Wenger's such a shit manager that maybe Suarez would have suffered a total loss of form under him or sustained a major injury. That way his rapid departure to Barca might not have been inevitable. But of course you have to refer to the whole paragraph to understand the context of what was a tongue in cheek sub comment. When you pull just the one sentence out so you can change the context and score Internet points then the actual point is lost.Quote:
Originally Posted by Letters