Wenger Referendum: Yes Or No

[The Emirates Gallactico]

The assertions being made here are too simplistic. We have not been competing with the aforementioned clubs for fourth place. In the time period mentioned we have been the only one of those clubs to have been consistently in a position to be competitive for fourth while being successful in that respect every single time.

Everton have popped up very sporadically while never making the Group stage, Tottenham managed it once and coukdnt sustain it, Liverpool have returned from a few years in the wilderness. Not once have any of those Clubs achieved CL qualification at our expense.

I think that over large periods of the past 10 years it has actually been quite an achievement by the Club to qualify for the CL while successfully completing the largest capital expenditure project ever undertaken by any club in world football, and it's aftermath which coincided completely with the global financial crisis.

Anyone with a sensible outlook would have anticipated, no matter what contrary assurances had been made that this would impact on the clubs ability to compete given the level of change that occurred, which also included a seismic change in the economic landscape of the sport.

I think Wenger was the right guy to take us through all the pain. But it is clearly evident to me that as time has moved on and we now have the funds to compete, that he is not the right man for now. He hasn't the tactical nous to make the best of what he has nor is he using the resources we have as a club now to anything like it's full potential.

That said. Wenger has been the most important and influential person at the club in my lifetime, and his legacy should be one that is felt for many years after he is gone.

Best post on this thread tbh.

[Power n Glory]

So wait a minute…..without the stadium move, we’d have dropped out of the Top 4? Which teams were good enough from 2006 onwards to take our spot and push us down to 5th?

[Dein-machine]

So wait a minute…..without the stadium move, we’d have dropped out of the Top 4? Which teams were good enough from 2006 onwards to take our spot and push us down to 5th?

i imagine you will get your answer this year

[WMUG]

So wait a minute…..without the stadium move, we’d have dropped out of the Top 4? Which teams were good enough from 2006 onwards to take our spot and push us down to 5th?

Spurs, mostly. They were very nearly good enough to do it with the move, let alone without.

Everton have also been fairly close, City might've done it when the effects of their doping started presenting themselves. There have been teams that have been snapping at our ankles, it's not like that's controversial. Nobody knows how big an effect the stadium move had, but it can't have hurt.

[The Emirates Gallactico]

So wait a minute…..without the stadium move, we’d have dropped out of the Top 4? Which teams were good enough from 2006 onwards to take our spot and push us down to 5th?

Maybe not in the immediate years there after but you certainly would have seen it's impact around about now, especially with the emergence of the two oil giants who have basically sown up two spots between themselves.

No new stadium means no Sanchez & Ozil and lower wage bill with less established players right now. Also we certainly wouldn't be in the position we're in right now, where we have a massive opportunity and platform to push for major honours with a few minor tweaks in right now.

At the moment we're at the same level as Chelsea/Man City/Man Utd (it's only one year) as the top clubs in the league. Without the new stadium we're be in the tier just below right now with Spurs, Liverpool and Everton who as Steve French points out, only make the odd CL appearance and don't have the same consistency that we do.

The stadium move will be imperative to any future success at the club.

[LDG]

So wait a minute…..without the stadium move, we’d have dropped out of the Top 4? Which teams were good enough from 2006 onwards to take our spot and push us down to 5th?

That's pretty difficult to say, even though I think it's true. Why on earth would Liverpool and Spurs be trying to do the same if there wasn't a huge need to do so?

What someone needs to do is substitute the income received since the stadium move, for an estimate of what we would have received from Highbury over the same period.

Then you would see a massive loss given current wages, and player purchases. I.e. We would have had shitter quality players, and be relying even more on Wenger's ability to buy cheap and get results. See Fabregas, Nasri, Adebayor etc....these were the cheapo guys who kept us there....now we're buying Ozils and Sanchez to (try and) compete....we wouldn't be able to do that if we were still at Highbury.

Of course, when the move was conceived as a way of putting us on a par with Utd...it wasn't anticipated that a load of criminals would come in and make it impossible to compete (on a monetary front) under your own steam. Luckily we "almost" can, but for on the pitch inadequacies....which is really why it's time for Wenger to go, as eloquently put by Gary a few posts back.

The MASSIVE difference, is going to be whether a Rogers or a Pochettino(sp) can do the same job Wenger did in keeping us relatively competitive....assuming they have the same financial constraints we did when building our gaff.

But it's different times now. Because those two seem to have backers who will front the money. So maybe they won't have to do it the hard way.

[Bumble]

I think had we not moved, Wenger wouldn't have taken on the youngsters approach as he wouldn't have had the excuse of hiding behind lack of money for doing it.

Perhaps they would have kept the more experienced players had we stayed at Highbury and therefore kept some of the winners instead of dismantling everything.

I do think ultimately the move was necessary as like people have said, other clubs wouldn't be doing it if it was a total disaster. It has given us buying power but we still have an imbalanced squad and that the manager and boards problem and not the stadium.

[Niall_Quinn]

But then why can Athletico have success without big stadium revenue.
Answer is good tactical manager who is able to get the most from his players & by having quality players in every position - all this with a stadium that brings in 25% of what the Emirates does for us.

They won't sustain it. Anomalies can always happen and absolutely a good manager and a good squad can buck the odds every once in a while. But you won't see the second tier clubs at the top season after season. Same with Liverpool, they could have won it last year. But they could also end up outside the top 4 this year having lost a key player who wanted to go to a "bigger club". Hanging on to your players, attracting top talent, being able to afford the runaway inflation wages, attracting bigger sponsors, building the fan base, expanding the merchandising operations, getting a bigger share of the media pie, and so on. Money attracts money and is a decisive factor in achieving sustained "success". It's shitty it works that way but it does. Seems to me Southampton have a great set up and a more than competent manager but money is their glass ceiling. Next summer the big clubs will be back to take their pick again and it's back to the drawing board for them, albeit a very competent drawing board. With a more tactically astute manager we might have won the title last season, but we'd have been punching above our weight had we done so. Slowly we are adding to that weight and unfortunately it's all based on cash. Football is more business and finance than sport these days, the football is almost the by-product. It's what happens when something has mass appeal and the money men find an angle. We either play the game or we accept second tier status for the long term.

[Dein-machine]

On purely football issues, the Emirates move has allowed more Arsenal fans to watch their team & reduce the 8 year waiting list that we had - albeit to 7 years!!. On another footballing issue is has meant us becoming virtually non-competitive in our own league & in Europe which wasn't the case in Highbury's later years.
On financial issues the move is obviously a success but by how much. If you look at the table NQ posted above, I would imagine we could expect the same level as match day income as Chelsea had we stayed at Highbury but commercially we are way behind. The Emirates figure suggest we are £22 mill better off than Chelsea on match day revenue over the year, our commercial teams have been weak & ofcourse the TV money would be better if we were more successful in Europe. So the additional £20 mill + revenue from the Emirates could be found with better commercial deals & a more competitive team. Bearing in mind we would go into a game with Athletico Madrid as underdogs but with total revenue well over double of theirs, it would suggest that reasons for our lack of success & competitiveness in the last decade cannot be blamed on stadium repayments but by what is happening on & off the pitch. Commercial Director & Wenger OUT.

[Power n Glory]

I think had we not moved, Wenger wouldn't have taken on the youngsters approach as he wouldn't have had the excuse of hiding behind lack of money for doing it.

Perhaps they would have kept the more experienced players had we stayed at Highbury and therefore kept some of the winners instead of dismantling everything.

I do think ultimately the move was necessary as like people have said, other clubs wouldn't be doing it if it was a total disaster. It has given us buying power but we still have an imbalanced squad and that the manager and boards problem and not the stadium.

I was just about to say something similar. The stadium move altered our transfer policy and we went for youth and development over international experience. We were title contenders and it's hard to imagine us dropping out of the Top 4 in a few season to the likes of Spurs and Everton.

The stadium move was necessary for this current period. When you make such moves, your projecting change over a 10-20 year period. Not a few seasons. We'll see the benefits of the move now, we were hamstrung when we first moved into the stadium and made bad sponsorship deals just to fund the project.