So what do we do to improve our prospects of mounting a challenge for the league and other competitions.

Another similarly titled thread as so many others has moved from it's original and interesting topic to the 'lets all whinge at why there is no point doing anything because Man City spend hundreds of millions of pounds' topic.

Even if you think we face an insurmountable object, surely there are things we as a Club can do to improve our lot, unless you think we have become as competitive as possible with no room for improving our:

-management
-coaching
-players
-tactics
-approach to investment
-utilisation of resources
-ownership structure
-competition prioritisation
-salary structure
-star player retention

Or any of another multitude of things we should be considering. Just whinging at other Clubs spending hundreds of millions will get us nowhere and has become drearily repetitive on far too many potentially good topics on this board.

Utilisation of resources is the main one IMO. The frustrating thing for me in the last few years is that Wenger has done brilliantly to keep us 'up there' but really poorly in terms of finishing the job or delivering trophies. Too many times we've had promising sides who didn't need £100m spent on them to push them to the next level, just some sensible investment and instead we've sold our best players and gone backwards or sideways. We're in the same position now. After last summer's car crash we got it together and finished strongly (well, we didn't finish that strongly but we got ourselves in a position where we could stumble over the line). Do the right things in the summer and while I don't think we can win the league next year we can at least push the top 2 harder and maybe challenge more strongly in the cups. The early signing of Podolski gives me some hope that maybe, just maybe, we're going to get it right this year. But we need to sign up RvP too and maybe the signings are as much for him as for the club, to show that we are trying to go somewhere. If Podolski is a replacement for RvP then we might as well all go home.

Look at the Chavs for example, the Old Boys may be on their last legs but you cannot deny there are some incredibly driven players in that squad.

We don't have enough players with the right "minerals" so to speak. The truth is, a lot of our squad has minimal experience of winning trophies and their naiveity always bites them in the arse when it's business time. As I mentioned in the other thread, we need to start getting some hungry players into the squad, ones with a point to prove. Podolski is most certainly a step in the right direction but we need more. Keeping our core players together would also be a good idea this time, Fabregas has stated many times since he joined Barca how hard it was to gain some continuity at Arsenal because everyone kept leaving around him.

Also, it would be nice if we stopped handing out hefty contracts to players who haven't achieved anything with the club - although I guess this is more a football problem than Arsenal specific.

Personally I think it's unrealistic to expect Arsenal under Wenger to challenge for the title again, and I mean really challenge, none of this fall away in March shit.

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Management

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This would be a start, but will never happen. If we get someone in with fresh ideas and a fresh approach could they really improve on 3rd with our board? Better the devil you know seems to be our boards approach. Also how much of a shit do they give about trophies? We finished in the money for 15 years in a row while building a global brand and moving stadiums to increase the revenue even further, Wenger is a god to them without a trophy.

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Coaching

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They can only do so much, i take it from the staffs reaction on the sidelines that the players are not doing what they ought to, i think we have world class coaching and training and development facilities we just dont have the application or tactical prowess to utilise it properly.

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Players

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Only 2 issues for me here,
1.get rid of the overpaid and underachieving shite in the squad and we free up over half a mil a week in wages
2. Sort the injuries out, its beyond a joke.

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tactics

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Useless, absolutely useless. Pay no attention to the opposition, don't adapt and rely on individual talent to get us through, its always been this way.

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utilisation of resources/Ownership structure/Salary structure

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Yes this needs its own thread tbh, where does all the money go?

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Competition prioritisation

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1. The league 2. The champs league. 3 The FA cup. 4. The league cup 5. The morality cup

In that order

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Star player retention

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This isn't just us, this is a symptom of the sugar daddy era as a whole. The influence of agents and advisor's combined with the fucking Bosman rule have pretty much ruined football in that every time a player emerges as stand out from a team without a sugar daddy that player will be taken away by a team with one. Look at Man Citeh's team, they are about 80% full of these kinds of players. The divide between the rich teams (not the big teams) and the rest will just get bigger and bigger and the FA do nothing about it, the FFPR was a joke at best.

Just on the star player retention thing, are there any players who have left who we should really have kept? Seems to me they (or at least their "people") had already decided they were going and they did all they could to engineer a move away.

Ade, Nasri, Clichy, Toure, Fabregas and so on all wanted out so i don't see it as a loss. If they are lured away with money there is nothing we can do but get rid.

Oh yes, ooooh, ooooh, I know, lets just replace the manager...

What another pointless thread.

Are we allowed to have a laugh in this thread or is it only for very serious discussion that, in the grand scheme of things, we have absolutetly no control over what-so-ever?

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Originally Posted by AKBapologist

Oh yes, ooooh, ooooh, I know, lets just replace the manager...

What another pointless thread.

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yes, let’s just cry about the money being spent by the big bad boys and sit on our arse complaining why we never win anything and nothing can ever be done about it

dropping a manager that doesn’t give a shit about cups would at least increase our chances of winning something, or giving them a realistic shot

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Originally Posted by AKBapologist

Oh yes, ooooh, ooooh, I know, lets just replace the manager...

What another pointless thread.

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You didn't read it - the only thing pointless is you and your reply.

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Originally Posted by AKBapologist

Oh yes, ooooh, ooooh, I know, lets just replace the manager...

What another pointless thread.

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Fail.