Quote Originally Posted by Letters View Post
Oh behave. You look at the money they've spent over a sustained period. City won the title last season after a sustained period of spending way beyond their means. You answer me this: would they have won the title without the billionaire owner spunking money around over the last few years? The answer to that is obvious so yes, yes they did buy the title. Were they a business who had to play by business rules they'd have gone bust. Were FFP to have any bite they'd be docked so many points they'd have no hope of winning the league. As it is they just had to pay a bribe/fine and on they go.
Teams like Chelsea are able to stockpile players to the point where they can not just build better squads than anyone could if they had to live within their means, they employ far more cynical tactics than just outbidding other teams. Chelsea buy up players and then loan them out to non-rivals to make it even harder to compete with them.
( http://www.theguardian.com/football/...-west-football )
City's owners have bought other clubs where they can stockpile players thus ensuring rivals don't get them.
It's not an 'excuse' to say it's very difficult to compete with clubs who can do this sort of thing. You seriously think another manager is going to waltz in and we'll be winning the league? You're kidding yourself.

I agree with the rest of your post. Our football isn't good at the moment and we should be playing more like we did against Galatasaray who might not be much good but they're probably no worse than a lot of the PL sides we'll face. That game showed we can do it, it's frustrating we don't do it more.

As for what Wenger says. He does spout a load of bollocks, granted, but he's never been one to publicly criticise his players and nor should he, IMO. Like it or not 4th place is important because of the way the CL works, it's not like a trophy obviously but see above about Wenger spouting bollocks and I don't see how you equate that with claiming he: 'trumps whatever crap we are producing best in the world'. 4th shouldn't be the limit of our ambitions but I've explained why I feel it's difficult to do better than 3rd. I think we should be closer, I think our football should be better, but we're hardly mid-table or worse and we did win the FA Cup less than 5 months ago.
I'll ask you a question... lets say Abramovich or Abu Dhabi did not come in whenever it was, do you think City or Chelsea would EVER have won anything? The format and money of CL is such that there was really only 3 teams- Liverpool, Utd and us who had a chance to win. Yes, I accept that that a sustained period of spending took them above us but I think that in the last 2 seasons we had the financial power to be very close to them. Especially with FFP, these teams cannot add players as they 'wish'.

Like I said, I am not saying we beat them left right and center (it'd be great if we could).. all I am asking is that a team filled with that much talent at least entertain and put in an effort. And this is not an ask only because of this match, this is ALL I ever asked of the manager.. and he has failed to deliver that consistently over the last many seasons. Like I said.. for his salary and the ticket prices we pay, Arsenal Football club deserves a manager who can do that and Wenger is NOT the answer!