Wenger is the scapegoat for the Arsenal board.

[IBK]

Well it's all well and good moaning about that but it doesn't make a sound point at all. I'm only arguing against the silly comment that we are not performing according to our financial spend. We clearly are. I'm not interested in whether there's another £60m stashed away that we can spend to get us among the top 3 wage spenders and win something - because, unlike a lot that chuck their 2 pence worth - I try to think a bit. I don't know how much the club have stashed away and don't pretend to. Obviously I would love the club to spend more and for us to (properly) progress. There is still room to progress even with our current spend - e.g. by not having rubbish pre-planned substitutions and getting our organisation and tactics right. No doubt a more tactically astute manager would have us higher in the league than we are currently, but does he get the Cazorla's in for £14m odd as well? I don't know...but it's time to try something new.

Btw for those interested, Deloitte are the only official source for all premier league team wages. Each year they publish the wages for premier league clubs (with a year lag, of course). So far the latest figures we have published in 2012 are:



And then accounting for a very low net transfer spend (even profits, like last year) relative to other clubs, there is no doubt we are doing at least doing what supposed to do given what we spend. The issues are that we can probably do even better with better team management, and whether we do actually do need our net spend to be so little. Going the extra mile at times - a few million more for Alonso etc. can't hurt too much, can it?

As always, the issue is not straightforward. Wenger hasn't underperformed in terms of overall spend, relative to the richer teams. But he has arguably underperformed given the player resources at his disposal. In other words, there is good reason to believe that a better tactician, a more reactive manager who sets up his teams according to the opposition, and who doesn't seem to manage solely according to the training ground and the lap top would have done better with the players AW has. Of course, its Wenger himself who is responsible for bringing the technical talent that we have to the club, so the argument can easily become a little circular.

The main focus for criticism, IMO, is that the manager has squandered his financial resources by indulging experimental players. Without doubt, we pay untested and mediocre players too much - and they are millstones around the club's neck. There is good reason to suppose that had the manager behaved more judiciously, and had a more flexible wage structure (this wage parity has done nothing to foster togetherness and loyaly), funds would have been released to allow the club to keep its best performing players.

Anyways, for me the buck stops with the manager. The board and owners are not without blame, but the criticisms above are down to Wenger.