A fallacy quashed?

[budesonide]

I watched the AST meeting and this is what I gathered. AKBapologist has missed a lot and Gazidis was stressing a different point.



This quote has been misrepresented. For starters, the point in bold shows that Wenger is involved with the transfers and people can't keep making excuses for him as if when negotiations are taking place, he's out of the loop or off on holiday. The valuation of the player, how much of a priority it is to sign that player for that position is all discussed. That's what Gazidis was getting at when talking. At the meeting, a fan suggested Wenger shouldn't be involved in the negotiations because he ignores the market value of players and it's why we end up signing no one in most cases. He also said that the fans pay the going market rate for season tickets at Arsenal and have no choice but to pay, we can't dictate the price. Wenger should do the same and bite the bullet when it comes to transfers.

Gazidis replied with the above quote and also came back with an example. If Wenger had his eyes on a specific player and Gazidis went out and spent the whole budget on this one player, Wenger wouldn't be happy because there are other players we'd need to sign and budget for.

Can you see the problem? In most cases, we don't spend all the money and don't sign players. He did say we have money left over from unused resources. He also said it's up to Wenger to identify the key areas that need work and to set the priority on who to spend on, what position and how much. That makes sense and we shouldn't have a club where board members make decisions on who we buy. We have limits of course. We have to budget. But as seen with the goalkeeping situation at the start of the season, Wenger wouldn't budge on a couple of million because he didn't think it was worth it and the position wasn't a priority because he had faith in Almunia, Fabianski and Schezney. He won't be desperate to make certain signings if he believes we already have the quality in the club and that relates back to his quotes about signing 'super quality' players and killing talent.

When going for Alonso, I believe he had Whilshere and Ramsey in the back of his mind. It's no secret. We know his feelings on 'killing' talent and this is why we're not as active as we should be in the window. He could be thinking of Young Jack and Rambo now as we discuss Cesc and Nasri's futures. He did test them both out during the end of the season.

We all know we don't have unlimited resources and we've never thrown our hat in the ring to bid for players that would cost a fortune. Last winter, guys like Babel, Sessegnon, Steven Pienaar, Makoun, Sidwell, Curtis Davis went to other clubs for less than £10m. Snta Cruz, Ireland and Martins went to other clubs on loan. But the problem is, Wenger has too much faith in his current crop. I hope that changes this summer.

Top post mate!

Essentially the board cannot force wenger to spend a specific amount of money on any player because his valuation of the player in terms of cost and how important they will be to the team ultimately trumps all.

So, without a football man like DD in the picture, no-one can get wenger to reconsider paying "over-the-odds" for any given player, however absolutely necessary that signing for a specific position must be!

Hence the reason why wenger will dismiss any concerns about his sqaud going into a season by saying he knows what he is doing, he will do it his way, and my personal favorite "judge me in May".

The board, rightly or wrongly have ceded such authority to him because, after all, he is our most successful manager!

But at what point and at what cost will this be allowed to continue.