Quote Originally Posted by Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie View Post
Mentality is often not enough without money, Money is significantly dented without Mentality. You need both.

People laud Simeone because of Atletis mentality, but they have not been able to break the two club domination in Spain of Barca and Real....that's not a failing. It's just understanding that money is the most important factor in the game, not the only one but the most important for sure.

I think honestly some users on here are frightened to face this reality because it will appear like an excuse for Wenger. We can definitely do better, we can compete but without Kroenke paying out of his pocket we won't be able to break the city-United-Chelsea hegemony, anymore than Atletico can break the Real-Barca one.
I get what you are saying. But it's a mixture of factors, really. If I can be controversial and give Wenger 'credit' for something, in his successful years he showed that there is an alternative route to success - namely buying and developing good but not already 'world class players' and in a sense, we have become conditioned to this approach. I believe firmly that our current squad has more in them than recent results suggest, but the manager has become stale, his tactical shortcomings have been exposed, and the team has lost the togetherness and self-belief that will elevate them. The right manager would IMHO get a lot more out of them - we have as good a squad as the Spuds, for instance. Whether this would be sufficient to compete consistently with the big money teams you have mentioned is doubtful, but we have to accept that we will never adopt the 'star signings' approach that has characterised the very top teams. I think that a club of our resources should be able to challenge for top honours from time to time, but competition is an unfortunate fact of life. Spending massive amounts is undoubtedly the best way to ensure that you are in with a realistic chance of winning the league season in season out, but it is not the only way to achieve occasional success - with the resources available to us. Where we are at present however is someway short of this aim - and we need to think realistically, and our approach needs to be to have a team that we can at least feel has the tools/ability to win against the top teams in any given game. The depressing atmosphere surrounding our club ATM is because currently I don't think we have this. A new manager will hopefully provide the tools - then we build from there.