Gooners have been spoilt

[Olivier's xmas twist]

It's true, Wenger has developed a lot of talent. And then that talent has been sold on. So we get the top 4 finish (CL money), the club gets the sell on fee. Rinse and repeat. But you don't build a team doing it that way. If you want to build a team you don't set yourself up as a selling club as we have done. Every problem stems from that policy and has a cumulative effect. Other clubs know we will sell, the players know we will sell, the fans are only too aware we'll sell. So we are a waypoint for talented players, a shop window. The fans get cheated and the board cashes out. Wenger makes it all tick, either willingly (which realistically you have to say is the case) or resignedly but without the actual resignation. And the con got played off the back of a time when we did have a team, stuffed with talent. The sting run by the last batch of shareholders was built on inertia, the hangover period where the past fuelled the hope of the future. But as we have seen, it was a giant scam operated for the benefit of the few. All this bullshit about financial prudence, developing teams and infrastructure for the future. Now if the previous shareholders were still in this with us and their investment was on the line, maybe you could believe their bullshit. But their pay day tells the real story. And what about this Kroenke guy. From his own mouth - nothing will change. The objective is not success on the pitch, at least not beyond the level required to keep the financial agenda producing. This is why we look at the direction of the club and wonder WTF? We want one thing, the board wants something entirely different.

Spot on.

[LDG]

We are a profitable club, yes. But how certain are we that these profits are not being re-invested on the playing side? Does anybody, anyware, have any proof of this? Yes, we have cash reserves. But we also have a hell of a wage bill.

I think a fair chunk of it does

Problem with the football side (as N_Q is saying) is that if you keep selling, and never having a settled team, you won't win things...hence the football side is so frustrating....especially when you know we have a manager who is capable of developing a team.

But now we can't even keep them if we wanted to, as the players have now sniffed out the way to use the club. And the club are happy for them to do so (behind the scenes).

And the bigger players won't come to us in return, because we can't compete with the wages the big clubs are offering.

It's nowt to do with re-investing in the squad. We do reinvest, but the quality is slowing draining away.

Not sure who we'll be selling next summer....

[Niall_Quinn]

I'm hearing ya - but I'm still not sure it all adds up.

If you are saying that you want the owners to put their hands in their pockets to fund player purchases, or to match the transfer fees/wages available elsewhere then that's one thing - and at least I follow an argument that people are up in arms because while the Chavs and Citeh have "altruistic" billionaires who will supplement/provide their clubs' incomes and we don't, then our billionaires are wankers.

If not, then I don't understand what we could do to avoid being a selling club. We are not as rich as the 3 clubs above us. Fact. We have not been as successful as they have over the past 7/8 years. Fact. What can we do to stop our players wanting to leave for them; or AC Milan; or Real Madrid, or Barca? We either settle for players who aren't good enough to be wanted by them, and do worse than we are now, or we accept that the bigger boys will always steal our pocket money.

Your approach suggests that the board/owners are hoovering up any profit that the club makes. I don't follow this. There is a potential profit to be made via a share increase, yes, and board members in the past have sold out to Kroenke and Usmanov. But currently, no dividend is paid. How are profits reaching the owners' pockets, exactly?

And if this is the model, how is it to be sustained. You don't increase the value of a company merely by ploughing modest profits into its cash reserves. OK if football clubs are commodities, it may be that with more money coming into the game the value of a solvent club like Arsenal will increase without any input - but the best way to achieve this is by upping the club's profile and support base. And the best way to do that is to win things.

Second - I simply don't think that AW wants to sell the players he has developed, out of choice. And I smply don't believe that his best players are being sold under him - he could walk into a place like PSG and be paid just as much as he is now. The only thing that makes logical sense to me is that he knows, and the board knows that there are more tempting destinations out there for mercernary players and that once a player and his agent have decided that they are going, there is very little AFC cn do about it.

Might it just be that the board see AW as the best way to achieve success - and are prepared to give him more time to do this while being careful to keep the club solvent? This would make more sense to me - even if even I feel that manager and therefore board are being over cautious in their approach.

The idea of us being a selling club by design just doesn't add up, to me.

The last thing Kroenke wants to do is put money in anyone's pocket right now. It's all about building the value of the asset, he's not a football fan so why would he want to do that? For the cash out. What are the key attributes of a sound investment - at least for an acquisition you want to work with over the mide to long term rather than fire sale? It needs to be a going concern (tick) and have healthy prospects for growth (tick, tick, tick and keep ticking). Arsenal is the ultimate football investment, undervalued all over the shop. But a picture paints it better.

http://investing.businessweek.com/re...?ticker=AFC:PZ

Do the 5 years chart and tick off the major financial landmarks. See how that chart is the inverse of our strength on the pitch? There's the evidence right there. In fact we have been winning the league, year after year, just not the league the fans want to win.

[Niall_Quinn]

Also, what's Usmanov REALLY pissed about? The lack of trophies? Or the rising share price? After all, it'll be coming out of his pocket when Stan is finished. The team becomes the metaphorical football to kick around, Stan is the bad guy (for doing what the shareholders before him did and what Usmanov can't wait to do), Alisher is our mate because he says he'll buy all the big star names and the fans can be bought easily that way. Anyone really buy that though? Or is this a parade of sharks looking to get rich and gutting our football team to do it?

[IBK]

I think a fair chunk of it does

Problem with the football side (as N_Q is saying) is that if you keep selling, and never having a settled team, you won't win things...hence the football side is so frustrating....especially when you know we have a manager who is capable of developing a team.

But now we can't even keep them if we wanted to, as the players have now sniffed out the way to use the club. And the club are happy for them to do so (behind the scenes).

And the bigger players won't come to us in return, because we can't compete with the wages the big clubs are offering.

It's nowt to do with re-investing in the squad. We do reinvest, but the quality is slowing draining away.

Not sure who we'll be selling next summer....

Precisely (the bit in bold).

Where I differ from you is that IMO this is not a situation AFC is to blame for creating. Had the club sustained the Invincibles miomentum, yes it would be different - but remember that the club became a developmental team principally because of the stadium project. It was an attempt to remaion competetive without having to pay huge transfer fees. By the time we had come out of the other end, the rot had already set in as we were no longer perceived as a winning club.

I really, really don't think anyone at the club is happy that we are doomed to lose our best assets - but I think manager and board are convinced that this is inevitable for the forseeable future, and have decided that if there is nothing that they can do about it, which there isn't, we may as well at least get value for our assets. Not really sure what people think we can do as an alternative

[Niall_Quinn]

Had the club sustained the Invincibles miomentum, yes it would be different - but remember that the club became a developmental team principally because of the stadium project.

If that's where you stop the analysis you might be right. But what if that was only the public face of the agenda? The means to an end (again very much asset focused) and an ideal way to placate the fans over the long term? Even if not, it certainly had an "accidentally" very useful outcome for certain individuals. I just don't accept that businessmen who engineer their way to the top "luck in" to their pay days. I think they plan and execute very carefully. We don't know, all we can do is look at things and ask the question - who won, who lost. Inevitably the answer is always the same.

[IBK]

If that's where you stop the analysis you might be right. But what if that was only the public face of the agenda? The means to an end (again very much asset focused) and an ideal way to placate the fans over the long term? Even if not, it certainly had an "accidentally" very useful outcome for certain individuals. I just don't accept that businessmen who engineer their way to the top "luck in" to their pay days. I think they plan and execute very carefully. We don't know, all we can do is look at things and ask the question - who won, who lost. Inevitably the answer is always the same.

I don't follow the conspiracy theory. It is common knowledge that the club decided that it would be able to compete with the very best if it increased its stadium capacity, and decided to indulge in property development to boost the coffers further. It is common sense that in having to borrow the money to achieve this, the club had to be cautious on the transfer/playing side while retaining CL football. By the time things started off, Abramovich had come along. The decision was taken to use AW's stregths to develop a winning side. The principal reasons why this failed were a) the manager discovered that you can have as much talent as you want, but to win a league takes balls and experience, b) Citeh took up what the Chavs had started and vastly inflated the market, making it much more difficult for AFC to compete via the more traditional route of buying talent, and c) the property crash meant that the property development that was supposed to elevate the club to super status didn't work out.

I am not saying that Kroenke and Usmanov have not been opportunist in grabbing their assets. I am not saying that in hindsight, committing so heavily to a doomed development project was folly. But I am saying that the way the club started off down this route was fully justified, even laudable, and its not fair to castigate the club entirely for the fact that times have changed, and we are now in this seemingly unending situation of treading water.

[Niall_Quinn]

I don't follow the conspiracy theory. It is common knowledge that the club decided that it would be able to compete with the very best if it increased its stadium capacity, and decided to indulge in property development to boost the coffers further. It is common sense that in having to borrow the money to achieve this, the club had to be cautious on the transfer/playing side while retaining CL football. By the time things started off, Abramovich had come along. The decision was taken to use AW's stregths to develop a winning side. The principal reasons why this failed were a) the manager discovered that you can have as much talent as you want, but to win a league takes balls and experience, b) Citeh took up what the Chavs had started and vastly inflated the market, making it much more difficult for AFC to compete via the more traditional route of buying talent, and c) the property crash meant that the property development that was supposed to elevate the club to super status didn't work out.

I am not saying that Kroenke and Usmanov have not been opportunist in grabbing their assets. I am not saying that in hindsight, committing so heavily to a doomed development project was folly. But I am saying that the way the club started off down this route was fully justified, even laudable, and its not fair to castigate the club entirely for the fact that times have changed, and we are now in this seemingly unending situation of treading water.

Yep, two possibilities. Profit by accident, profit through planning. You are less cynical than I am. I am more realistic than you are.

[IBK]

Yep, two possibilities. Profit by accident, profit through planning. You are less cynical than I am. I am more realistic than you are.

I'd like to think I'm logical, but like I say I understand where you are coming from.

[Xhaka Can’t]

I'd like to think I'm logical, but like I say I understand where you are coming from.

I don't always agree with you.

But when I do, I think you're logical.