Match reaction vs Pool

[Power n Glory]

Letters - you are becoming a bit obsessed by the spending power of Citeh and Chelsea. No one can deny that hey have a massive edge - but if you look at the points we've dropped, most of these are against teams less bankrolled than we are. If we finish 3rd - in principle sure you can say that we only lost out to billionaires who bought their title places but IMHO failure to finish higher will have more to do with our own team's shortcomings and the manager's failure to make the best of the club's resources.

Yep. Also, what's moving in the 'right' direction if we're unable to compete with clubs that have more resources?

[Niall_Quinn]

Lads have a duty to ram Starfish's shit right back down his throat when we meet them in the FA Cup. Just pin up all the shit that's being chatted and study every word before we go on the pitch.

[Power n Glory]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...gers-team.html

Some key points I agree with on this.

Our midfield balance needs addressing and we badly miss Ramsey. We miss his work rate and tackles. Wilshere is off form and despite getting up and down the pitch, he made one unsuccessful attempt of a tackle against Liverpool. Arteta and Ozil have rightly taken stick for either being lazy or not mobile enough, but Wilshere's petulance gets mistaken for passion when we need productivity.

We need to draft in Rosicky for Man Utd and I wouldn't mind seeing Cazorla playing in Ozil's place. I highly doubt Wenger will make those changes and may give the team a chance to respond if they're physically capable of playing. I wouldn't object to that given the manner of our defeat at Anfield. I expect an immediate response. But if these guys are still looking toothless in the first 45 minutes then Wenger needs to haul them off. No exceptions.

[Letters]

Yep. Also, what's moving in the 'right' direction if we're unable to compete with clubs that have more resources?

We're never going to be able to completely compete with them unless FFP has any teeth, but the closer we get the more chance we have of getting one over them.

[Fist of Lehmann]

I remember posting at the start of the season that Ozil was a great start, but that we needed at least 2 more Ozil level signings to properly compete. My thinking was based on some simple maths. Overall we've done very well to date but the Premiership is an asymmetrical race, everyone plays everyone else at different times so it can take some time before the results start to even out.

What we saw on Saturday may have been the start of our evening.

So to a degree I understand the reaction. For years we've been sold the vision of cake tomorrow instead of cake today. This year we've outperformed expectations, people started to believe that the cake had finally arrived. But for me cake this year would be ahead of schedule.

When you make structural changes to a business, or social reforms, or in fact any fundamental change to a large complex system, often those changes take time, months or even years, for their effects to filter down. Chelsea won nothing in their 1st year of Russian mafia money, Man City didn't win the league until their 4th year of obscene oil money spending.

The change is there, definitely. We culled deadwood ruthlessly, even when cancelling contracts or allowing free transfer cost us money. We sold no first teamers (unless you count Gervinho). We broke our transfer record on a single player by more than 2.5 times and signed the second most expensive player in Premier League history.

Whether this is sustained change though remains to be seen. Our last 5 transfers were Ozil + 2 frees (Flamini and Sanogo) and 2 loans (Viviano and Kallstrom). The difficulties aside, signing Count Draxula could have been the marker put down, a clear sign of intent. Aside from whatever he did on the pitch it would have given encouragement to a tiring squad, and renewed faith that the management was as motivated to win things as they were.

As things are now, people are starting to wonder whether the cake was illusionary.

[Marc Overmars]

The cake is a lie.

[Niall_Quinn]

I remember posting at the start of the season that Ozil was a great start, but that we needed at least 2 more Ozil level signings to properly compete. My thinking was based on some simple maths. Overall we've done very well to date but the Premiership is an asymmetrical race, everyone plays everyone else at different times so it can take some time before the results start to even out.

What we saw on Saturday may have been the start of our evening.

So to a degree I understand the reaction. For years we've been sold the vision of cake tomorrow instead of cake today. This year we've outperformed expectations, people started to believe that the cake had finally arrived. But for me cake this year would be ahead of schedule.

When you make structural changes to a business, or social reforms, or in fact any fundamental change to a large complex system, often those changes take time, months or even years, for their effects to filter down. Chelsea won nothing in their 1st year of Russian mafia money, Man City didn't win the league until their 4th year of obscene oil money spending.

The change is there, definitely. We culled deadwood ruthlessly, even when cancelling contracts or allowing free transfer cost us money. We sold no first teamers (unless you count Gervinho). We broke our transfer record on a single player by more than 2.5 times and signed the second most expensive player in Premier League history.

Whether this is sustained change though remains to be seen. Our last 5 transfers were Ozil + 2 frees (Flamini and Sanogo) and 2 loans (Viviano and Kallstrom). The difficulties aside, signing Count Draxula could have been the marker put down, a clear sign of intent. Aside from whatever he did on the pitch it would have given encouragement to a tiring squad, and renewed faith that the management was as motivated to win things as they were.

As things are now, people are starting to wonder whether the cake was illusionary.

By all accounts the financial plan winds out in the summer of 2014. If we see nothing happening then we know we've been had. But a lot of what the board and manager have said would happen has now happened on the financial side. It's on them now to follow through and certainly the fans will be watching closely. I expect at least a couple of big names to be brought in this summer.

[Power n Glory]

I remember posting at the start of the season that Ozil was a great start, but that we needed at least 2 more Ozil level signings to properly compete. My thinking was based on some simple maths. Overall we've done very well to date but the Premiership is an asymmetrical race, everyone plays everyone else at different times so it can take some time before the results start to even out.

What we saw on Saturday may have been the start of our evening.

So to a degree I understand the reaction. For years we've been sold the vision of cake tomorrow instead of cake today. This year we've outperformed expectations, people started to believe that the cake had finally arrived. But for me cake this year would be ahead of schedule.

When you make structural changes to a business, or social reforms, or in fact any fundamental change to a large complex system, often those changes take time, months or even years, for their effects to filter down. Chelsea won nothing in their 1st year of Russian mafia money, Man City didn't win the league until their 4th year of obscene oil money spending.

The change is there, definitely. We culled deadwood ruthlessly, even when cancelling contracts or allowing free transfer cost us money. We sold no first teamers (unless you count Gervinho). We broke our transfer record on a single player by more than 2.5 times and signed the second most expensive player in Premier League history.

Whether this is sustained change though remains to be seen. Our last 5 transfers were Ozil + 2 frees (Flamini and Sanogo) and 2 loans (Viviano and Kallstrom). The difficulties aside, signing Count Draxula could have been the marker put down, a clear sign of intent. Aside from whatever he did on the pitch it would have given encouragement to a tiring squad, and renewed faith that the management was as motivated to win things as they were.

As things are now, people are starting to wonder whether the cake was illusionary.

[fakeyank]

I'd rather see my club heading in the right direction. For the first time in years I see that now.
If we collapse horribly then we won't have made much progress at all, if any. That remains to be seen.

I think that statement is a bit premature. We seem to be heading in the right direction quite a few times every season. Some things that are common to Arsenal's season in the last 7-8 years:

- Go on unbeaten runs of 10-11 matches where we it seems like we made improvement from previous seasons
- Be the leader or there abouts the top 1-2 and then completely have a car crash Feb/March
- On the occasions we are close to the top, we sure as hell make sure we dont sign the needed players
- Finish above Spurs by the end of the season and it feels like we did something worthwhile
- Fuck around all through the transfer window making shit bids and/or not making a bid at all

The only reason I see that there is some progress this season is Ozil and the money we paid for him. I am now sure that the board is no longer holding AW back in terms of transfer funds (not that I ever felt like that before either but this just proves it). There really is no other reason why I feel that we have made progress so far.. We have all seen these false dawns! I hope all the skeptics are wrong though!

[Özim]

The cake is a lie.

Nothing worse than fake cake.