Clichy has left. And Nasri in talks with Citeh.

[Power n Glory]

Would Chelsea have done what they've done without all the money?
Would City be in the top 4 without it?

No, but Chelsea wouldn't be who they are now if it wasn't for Mourinho and City may not have won anything or qualified for the CL this season of they stuck with Mark Hughes.

During our invincible season, Chelsea spent a ton of money under Ranieri but won nothing. Did they win a cup? You can't just throw a team together and expect them to gel, football doesn't work like that and we see it all the time in club football and even on the International stage. This is why I'm worried about the amount of changes we're about to make to our first team.

We saw how two new CB's got on during the season and how exposed our left side was because Arshavin wasn't tracking back. If we ship out out a load of first team players we'll have this same cohesion problem all over the pitch.

[Niall_Quinn]

Great, now he's gone we can move to bring in another LB, preferably Baines but Enrique has good PL experience and is a decent player, rather them than Iziguerre or whatever from Celtic as Scotland is shit.

Sentimentally, it's a shame to see him go as he has always put the effort in and is a handy player for the way we play, not so sure he'll be as useful to City as they sit a little deeper (then again it means he'll be exposed less so ) but he's definitely a step-up from what they already have. Footballistically, he's been making a fair few fuck-ups, playing people onside and the little brainfarts we all know and love so probably a good time for him to move on, good time for us to sell and a good time for City to get him, everyone's got a decent deal.

Mostly true, except it was City so we should have got £15-£98mill for him. We must be the only club who settle for a sensible fee when dealing with a club with unlimited resources. Looks like Wenger's prudence extends even beyond the club. You can imagine him sitting there and beating their negotiators down, refusing to take a penny more that what Clichy is worth.

[Marc Overmars]

The "waiting period" is the new "lack a little bit of sharpness" and "spirit and togetherness"

You know, I think it has the potential to surpass those. Could be Wenger's best one yet.

[Letters]

No, but Chelsea wouldn't be who they are now if it wasn't for Mourinho and City may not have won anything or qualified for the CL this season of they stuck with Mark Hughes.

During our invincible season, Chelsea spent a ton of money under Ranieri but won nothing. Did they win a cup? You can't just throw a team together and expect them to gel, football doesn't work like that and we see it all the time in club football and even on the International stage. This is why I'm worried about the amount of changes we're about to make to our first team.

We saw how two new CB's got on during the season and how exposed our left side was because Arshavin wasn't tracking back. If we ship out out a load of first team players we'll have this same cohesion problem all over the pitch.

Thing is though Chelsea wouldn't have got Mourinho but for the money either, they were nowhere near high profile enough before they started to spend big and even un Ranieri they pushed harder than they ever had previously. You can't just throw money around, you have to throw it in the right places, but Chelsea and now City's success all comes down ultimately to the sugar daddy. Frustrating as things are right now, it's not how I'd want us to do things

[Darth Vela]

To be honest, I don't think Clichy is worth anymore than £7M, so although it would have been nice to receive more, I'm not surprised we didn't.
What's important is that we reinvest the transfer funds and sign a top quality replacement, however that's unlikely as Wenger's dogmatic commitment to his "youth project" demands that he sticks Gibbs into the first team, even if that has a detrimental effect on the team. This is the reason I call Wenger a free market fundamentalist. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, he will stick to his dogmatic belief in Project Youth™ despite its manifest failure. Margaret Thatcher was similar in her belief in Monetarism. Despite causing massive unemployment and failing to reduce Inflation as the policy was supposed to, she stuck to it, because she was ideologically commited to the policy despite its destructiveness.

He will buy a replacement, the more specific 'project youth' to bring us to this point was a failure in that it didn't bring us a title-winning team so now that we have a bit of money we'll splash out to get the team back on track for next year, the wider 'project youth' in that we take talent and develop it instead of constantly buying at the top end of the market will continue though.

[Niall_Quinn]

He will buy a replacement, the more specific 'project youth' to bring us to this point was a failure in that it didn't bring us a title-winning team so now that we have a bit of money we'll splash out to get the team back on track for next year, the wider 'project youth' in that we take talent and develop it instead of constantly buying at the top end of the market will continue though.

Much to Barcelona's delight.

[Özim]

so you belive if we had an offer accpeted for Aguero we could afford his wages? Clichy may want to win things, who forced him to stay at arsenal for 8 years why did he not leave after 3 if he did no think he could win more things at arsenal.

Its the wages that stops us getting big players.

Aguero would never sign for us, bigger better more ambitious clubs would be interested.

We paid Campbell 100k+ back in the day, we still could if we wanted to. I'm not saying we should sign the world's very best, but we could sign some top players, can we still attract though with our reputation of being bottlers and our 1st teamers leaving?

[Özim]

LOL the waiting period is such a load of nonsense. I'd prefer it if Wenger was honest with us, instead of treating us like idiots.

The guy is so full of sh*t, that's one of the things that really loses him respect. To be honest he is becoming a bit of a joke in many ways due to his inflexibility, ridiculous comments, petulant behaviour and overly frugal spending policy.

[Joker]

And I don't think many people on this board would want us to achieve success the way City have. However, the majority of fans would have liked a bit more investment into the team, strengthening in areas that we have been weak in for some time, supplementing the squad with quality so that injuries don't have such a negative effect on team performance and they would in particular have liked the dismantling of the invincibles squad to take place at a much slower pace, so instead of the young players being thrown into the deep end suddenly, we would have had a transition period in which the young players were introduced in a "staggered entry" way, so that they could be guided by the experienced players who knew how to win trophies. If we had restructured our squad in this manner, there's a good chance we wouldn't have suffered such a pathetic stagnation over the last 6 years, and the young players who have not improved at all since 2006 may have actually learnt some best practice tips from players like Pires, Edu, Campbell, and could have become better players. Instead, Wenger's ideological belief in his Youth Project has ended in abject failure, with many of the players in whom he had such firm belief in realising it's a dead end and wanting out.

[Darth Vela]

Mostly true, except it was City so we should have got £15-£98mill for him. We must be the only club who settle for a sensible fee when dealing with a club with unlimited resources. Looks like Wenger's prudence extends even beyond the club. You can imagine him sitting there and beating their negotiators down, refusing to take a penny more that what Clichy is worth.

That's a nice image.

Not so sure the price matters to us, much as it doesn't to them. They could go out and spend 15m on Baines instead and not bat an eyelid, maybe we figure giving them Clichy is a good way to stop 'em from going for any other, good, LBs.

Actually, why didn't City just buy Baines? That's stupid.