The Bitter Truth?

[BlindFaith_8]

Danny Fiszman (RIP) was a true legend. He supported the club financially with is own hard earned money while the other rich cunts were all in hiding. It's a real sad shame that he lost his life so early as he would have been the perfectfit as Chairman of Arsenal. Its a crying shame that the club didnt even name a restuarant or stand after the great man. Now we have a bunch of blood sucking parasites just taking every cent out the club and prostituting the club for their own personal gain.

[Power n Glory]

They've named a Bridge after him. They're not that bad.

[Dein-machine]

If we go back to our Highbury days, regular 30,000+ watching every week with 8 year waiting list for season tickets. A good team that suddenly turned into an "invincible" team that looked like we could rule Europe. This would ofcourse attract investors all wanting to have their names associated with the success of Arsenal. We had this before the move, we weren't the richest club in the world but we certainly weren't skint.
When the financials of the move to the Emirates were questioned by minor shareholders the obvious question was " how can we afford this & still buy to compete ". The answer was that only needed 34,000 seats sold every week at the Emitrates to cover Stadium repayments, the other 30,000 ( if stadium was full ) was in the bank to add to the massive increase in matchday reveune in Arsenal store, burger bars,corporate hospitality, big increase in TV money at that time, increase in money from the P.L & ofcourse these wonderful sponsorship deals flowing though the doors, inc the one that lead to our stadium being named. When you deduct our running costs we were still down to make huge profits.
Not once in any of the stadium discussions were we told that this would mean a decade of struggle financially. I heard certain posters say "ofcourse we knew we were going to struggle in order to pay back the Stadium - NO WE DIDN'T - all the financials provided by the club led us to believe we would be better of financially every year even taking into account stadium repayments. That is why the stadium excuse for Wenger's decade of nothing is not an excuse. It suited him to not discuss our financial position in too much detail, it sorted him to have rumours of lack of money because he was hell bent on showing the world he could rule with his youth poilicy & buying cheap. We've had money all along if we'd wanted it.
In his early years he looked at Man Utd as the team to beat. The only real mega money team in England at the time but obviously not in the same league financially compared to Chelski & City nowadays. We played United those days with a real chance to win. They had youngsters, home grown lads mixed in with experience & quality. It was what Wenger craved but the United team at that time was one in a million, where such a good crop of youngsters were unearthed. Not being able to compete short term on that score we bought in our own French foreign legion of quality youngsters who could compete with Beckham, Scholes, Giggs, Keane etc. Over these next few years the only thing that threatened the Man Utd/Arsenal domination was MONEY. Leeds had a go by overstretching themselves financially, Blackburn proved that money could buy you the title & then MR Abramovich arrived on the scene. The idea of buying success was proven - Wenger didn't like it, not many of us do but we don't get paid millons of pounds every year in order to deliver AFC the success that that salary requires.
His stubborn refusal to think that he can compete today with City, Chelsea & the big boys in Europe without spending big money on quality players shows him stuck in a time warp, back to the days when he did prove he could build a team to compete with Utd. Every year it gets harder & in the next few years we may have the Spuds, Everton, Newcastle all owned by Sheiks & Oligarchs - its the way football is now, most of us don't like it but its happening. These teams will one day form a European Super league where the financial rewards will be even more fruitful. Do we want to be part of that or playing in a newly formed Premier League competing for the title with West Ham & Stoke. Surely that's not what we built the Emirates for.
Wenger doesn't like the fact that money rules these days & as we all know is too stubborn to change his

[Globalgunner]

If this hasn't been posted before, please read. I suggest Letters should read it too and quit with the delusion that we've been poor and incapable of spending because of the incredible burden of a mortgage of 20m a year. Anything that interferes with his worldview of poor Wenger, hampered by the odds is made up.
http://swissramble.blogspot.co.uk/20...r-2-night.html

[Özim]

Got to agree about the stadium, we were told it wouldn't affect transfer funds and that "what would be the point of having a world class stadium without a world class team playing in it?", at no point were we told "oh listen we're going to build a big new shiny stadium so we can make lots of money, the only thing is there won't be any investment in the team and we won't have a chance of winning anything and we might have to sell all our best plays, bummer eh ?".

The repayments were 20 odd million or so which were reasonable for a club of our size and which we should have been able to pay off without a problem, we did sell players but we also spent some of that money and I'm sure we could have spent more if we'd wanted to.

Why wouldn't the board members be thrilled with Wenger, from a business point of view things were rosy, money rolling in, a manager happy to keep spending to a minimum, if I owned a business and this happened I'd be over the moon. Problem is this isn't just some other business, it's a football club where people fork out huge amounts to support their club only to be rewarded with 4th place and be told it's a "major trophy" and you should think yourselves lucky.

[Niall_Quinn]

Hypersonic inflation in football caused by huge amounts of cash being dumped, a Great Depression style financial crash and the property market sliding into the shitter probably changed the equations a bit. Or entirely.

[Özim]

That didn't change our repayments, nor did it affect football attendances.

As for the property crash, there was some impact but we seem to sell all of our properties, in addition London wasn't affected in the same way, it's in its own bubble where there's so many rich people wanting to buy prices just get driven up further and further.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

Hypersonic inflation in football caused by huge amounts of cash being dumped, a Great Depression style financial crash and the property market sliding into the shitter probably changed the equations a bit. Or entirely.

Undoubtedly, even without these factors the old guard knew that the stadium project was going to leave us brassic in the short term. The property collapse meant that the expected revenues from the Highbury square project never materialised. You can pretty much understand in retrospect David Deins outspoken reluctance to move away from Highbury. Even before the rise of the oligarchs it's abundantly clear that the vast amount of money a club generates is not from gate receipts so the Emirates move has not exactly done much for us in terms of finances.

[Dein-machine]

No - if you look at our cash reserves & interest/payments on the stadium over this period, none of what you mentioned has had any effect on our ability to spend. Its all relevant, you pay an extra £10 mill for Suaraz because of inflated price on previous year, you score more goals, you finish higher, you win something - you earn £10 mill more from TV/C.L. rights than you would have done the year before. The lower interest rates that always follow recession have helped us not hindered us. Read the financial report shown in the post from globalgooner regarding our finances.

[selassie]

There are a couple of 'truisms' - on here and amongst Gooners generally - that IMO need looking at.

The first is the automatic assumption that Wenger has remained a winning manager, despite nearly a decade now of winning nothing. The problem has been that there have been justifiable reasons for being also rans. The stadium, of course. The rise of the billionaire playboy clubs. The financial constraints that are so easy to hang the perennial losses of our best players on.

But I think that since the end of last season, a few things have happened to lay our belief in our manager bare.

The demonstration of world class management that SAF's league title showed, now that Moyes is at Manure...but also, in other ways - why his judgment was on the wane.

The progress made by the likes of Pochetino; Rogers and Benitez who are showing what asute tactical reading of the game; efficient football (see also Dortmund) and good man management can achieve on a lot less than Arsenal's budget.

Canny player deals (Sp*ds excepted of course) done by a number of clubs; and surprising player advances at others.

The press have scented our frailties for years. We have accused them of being anti Arsenal; or not appreciating the achievement of building a stadium and balancing the books. We have accepted the mantra of how financial self sufficiency is a trophy in itself - while we have 2 billionaire owners who have never put a penny into the club despite raping its share value.

But more importantly, we have continued to hope. While NONE of the clubs above us in the global pecking order, and many below would have taken steps to change things. Because Wenger is a safe pair of hands as regards CL status, and because of the above 'reasons' he needs to be given a chance to show that he is still great.

And that's why I think that even for those of us who would love Wenger to justify our faith in him now see this season as an ending. For once last Summer he had money to spend - but he ballsed it up and spunked a German record fee on, lets face facts, the wrong player. For once he kept all his best players. For once he seemed to have a defensive coach who had sorted a recurring problem. For once - no SAF; a Mourihno without his own choice players; and a Chilean who was to draw 4 and lose 5 this year to date even with his outrageous squad.

And at Christmas - the fact that we were finally regaining our strength as a club seemed to be there for all to see.

But in a way that we have never seen before under Wenger - his basic faults have been laid bare. He doesn't work in the transfer market without a David Dean alongside him - yet he remains 'the boss' in transfer affairs that he should simply not be involved in. He has clung to a watery 'tiki taka' style of play and players (even Giroud must surely have been chosen because he is adept at little flicks when supported in and around the box). He breeds no enduring confidence in his players. And most importantly - he has shown that whenever he is faced by players the equal of ours in ability, he does not have the tactical acumen to prevail. The fact that we have been thrashed away from home 4 times - more than ever under Wenger - has shown a man stubbornly, desperately, clinging on to a flawed system - and being, frankly, embarassed by those with the ability to analyse their enemies' weakness. It is almost shocking to see - and I have never before seen widespread reporting analysing how Wenger has been out thought and out executed. We were wrong; Wenger now seems to realise it - and our players look like they have lost confidence in Wenger's ability to win against decent opposition.

The second, nagging convention is that because the majority have held on to the dream, it is somehow 'disloyal' to criticise Wenger. There has been a fair degree of antipathy to those critical of a supposedly improving team - even when this was in the heat of the moment after a bad result, or intelligently argued.

I think that the truth is that Wenger has enjoyed an extraordinary degree of support from Arsenal fans and the broader football world. Even after this season was revealing itself to be yet another false dawn, there was dismay at Mourinho's 'specialist in failure' jibe (and look how Wenger put him in his place). He has become more than a football manager - almost an untouchable, because he allowed us to remain top 4 despite what (we accept) were financial constraints. He is paid more than any of his players other than Ozil. And while he has certainly been prudent - he has run the club like a personal fiefdom, answerable to noone, and arguably but his beliefs in front of our success and reputation. He has enjoyed every bit of the support that his historic, or off-field achievements have merited.

And for me, the truth finally seems clear enough to want Wenger to leave with fondness rather than adulation.

Thoughts?

Excellent post

My thoughts on this are that whilst it's not entirely Wenger's fault, he is largely to blame for the state of the current team, he built the team it's his mess. I personally don't feel he can achieve anything more than the annual 4th place scramble irrespective of whether he is given large funds or not. 4th place scrambles are not good enough for a club of our stature and financial muscle, we should be aggresively challenging for honours now.

My personal opinion on our financial situation having read up on it in the past is that we have always had a budget per say, but have choosen not to spend, we have been very sensible with the funds. We (Arsene) is cautious at the best of times, we were/are awash with money and he didn't spend much in the summer...with a limited budget, early Emirates years, Arsene didn't spend a penny.

Finally, I do believe a lot of these rules and policies have been self-enforced. Whether that is right or wrong is up for debate.