Originally Posted by Ice Berg Kamping
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
How ironic.
He means expensive.
I agree, and this is why questions need to be asked about the men upstairs. Of course it doesn't help when you have some Arsenal bloggers like Arseblogger who seems to act as chief propagandist for Gazidis and Kroenke; the most scrutiny he gives them is to put in a one line about how "Kroenke needs to make his vision clearer" and never critiquing all the BS that comes out of the mouths of Gazidis, PHW etc.One definition of irony from that website is incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs.
I think its incongrous that we have been in decline as a football force for the better part of a decade (and might be expected therefore to be less valuable than we were) yet in fact remain one of the world's most valuable clubs.
The board have placed financial needs over football needs, and are treating the club as a private sector enterprise, with the profit motive above all else. I can understand some people saying Wenger is a victim in this, and we can't know for sure, but I have had the impression over the last 5 years that Wenger has come round to their way of thinking, especially with his comments about needing to make the club a profit every year, criticising those who don't adhere to the dictats of the market, etc. I know I get ridiculed for calling Wenger a free market fundamentalist, but I'm not the only one who's said it:
http://gingers4limpar.com/?p=598
As in, a lot of Doe?
Haaaaaaaaaa!!
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
Admit it. You've never actually read arseblog have you?
Interesting question - why Wenger and the Board seem to have fallen into line - because I refuse to believe that Wenger's principal aim is not to win things, or that his principal aim is making money for the club. In fact I think that there are 3 players here.
Kroenke - he is in the business of making money, a lot of money, from his shares over the long term. He doesn't give a flying fuck about us winning silverware - not if doing so will mean that the club needs to borrow money, and not as long as the value of the club continues to increase. He probably cares about CL football because without that the value of the club (potential for sponsors etc) will inevitably start to diminish.
Board - do care about prestige/success - but care more about the long term stability of the club, and are conservative with a capital C. Thus borrowing to spend on transfers/wages - particularly at the level the club would need to do to have 3 Cesc/RVP quality players in the team - is not an option, and they have accepted that without this kind of investment, silverware is unlikely but Wenger will probably be able to keep the CL grevy train running.
Wenger - cares deeply about winning things, but is a slave to his philosophical beliefs which are that clubs should live within their means, and should not be beholden to over-inflated player prices and wages. To win while betraying these tenets is an empty win.
Strangely, all three approaches are served by the stagnation that now characterises our club. Another common thread is that none of the camps could give a toss about what the fans think. And all think either that we are simple commodities, fortunate with what we have.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
Wenger seemed to have got a decent captain (in RvP) more by accident, judging by his previous choices. Hopefully whoever replaces him will be forceful enough to be respected by the other players, as must have been the case with PV. Not sure who it should be. I thought Verm until this year but now I am not sure.
For a brief moment, GW was great again.
GW
The problem hasn't been the self-sufficiency model, it's that the club is run by incompetents....most namely Ivan Gazidis.
The club has allowed Wenger too much control, and like any manager given too much control he's going to make dreadful mistakes such as with wages, where he has allowed players to earn riduculous salaries based on potential and not much else.....he seems to believe in equality of wages at the club where when the matter was handled by Dein there was a clear hierarchical structure.
We make ourselves look like amateurs (such as the tapping up of a russian phone company owned by Usmanov, a mistake so embarassing that someone's head should have rolled) and we have brought the situation upon ourselves of players with one year left on their contract because Wenger or someone at the club has made the mistake of treating them as mature adults instead of forcing them to sit down and negotiate a new contract or being sold when the contract runs down to two years.
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