Match reaction - Man City

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

Maybe they fucked that up too. Certainly that's what the gypos claim. Our incompetence and dithering was the main reason Alexis is not gone and Lemar is not here. So goes the claim.

Aye but we could have just pocketed the money without replacing the player if profit making was Wengers sole motivation

I think he only cares about making the club money argument is just a way of trying to make sense of his behaviour when it fits into no logical pattern. Medically unwell? No but hamstrung by his own weird “values” and totally entrenched by stubbornness and inability to accept that football has moved on from the days when he was successful.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

Yeah because we signed terrible deals years ago that we're still locked into. IMO that's why we're such a tight arse in other areas, because we're trying to make up for it. I had a friend who went for an interview pretty high up at the club and they basically admitted they are doing everything in their power to match Man Utd commercially.

A lot of the deals we were locked into expired two three years ago like the Nike Kit deal. We tried to get a similar mega bucks deal with Addidas to what United got but they told us to fuck off (an example of how you do need on the pitch success to generate top commercial revenue).
Gazidis is chiefly responsible for this as CEO, and he’s useless at it. You break down what we take in commercially and we’d be operating at a loss without the tv money in the same way we’d have been operating at a loss without player sales five-six years ago.
This club may be more interested in financial success, but it’s not particularly brilliant at that either

[Cripps]

Aye but we could have just pocketed the money without replacing the player if profit making was Wengers sole motivation

There would have been pandemonium if that had happened, especially on the back of finally dropping out of the top 4 into the Europa League. Gazidis and co knew that hence his comments about avoiding another RVP scenario and the unrest that caused.

What'll be interesting is how we replace both this summer. Will we go all out and spend the £80m-£120m needed to replace them, or will we promote from within or go for cheaper options. Wengers comments recently suggest one of the latter 2.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

There would have been pandemonium if that had happened, especially on the back of finally dropping out of the top 4 into the Europa League. Gazidis and co knew that hence his comments about avoiding another RVP scenario and the unrest that caused.

What'll be interesting is how we replace both this summer. Will we go all out and spend the £80m-£120m needed to replace them, or will we promote from within or go for cheaper options. Wengers comments recently suggest one of the latter 2.

There would have been pandemonium, but if you take the AGM as an example. It seems abundantly clear that no one gives a fuck what might upset the fans anyway.

Past the point of giving a fuck who replaces them, end of the day neither are putting in the kind of performances to make them huge losses for us on anything other than a financial basis. The chances of us making top four are nominal even with them playing.

[Marc Overmars]

I think what we’re seeing is that there probably isn’t any point in keeping players in their final year who have no intention to sign a new contract. I can only imagine what the rest of the squad who are committed feel about Ozil and Alexis. I thought Alexis would still be the same player but he looks like he’s going through the motions now.

With the power of hindsight, they probably should have been sold.

[Cripps]

A lot of the deals we were locked into expired two three years ago like the Nike Kit deal. We tried to get a similar mega bucks deal with Addidas to what United got but they told us to fuck off (an example of how you do need on the pitch success to generate top commercial revenue).
Gazidis is chiefly responsible for this as CEO, and he’s useless at it. You break down what we take in commercially and we’d be operating at a loss without the tv money in the same way we’d have been operating at a loss without player sales five-six years ago.
This club may be more interested in financial success, but it’s not particularly brilliant at that either

Agree with the bit in bold. The board and manager missed a seriously big trick in not going for the kill in terms of winning a couple of major trophies over the years. A couple of premier league titles would have taken us to another level commercially and completely neutralised all the unrest. We weren't far off on a couple of occasions either, a striker or DM or CB here or there and we could have won a league title. They decided to go with a different strategy and this is what the result is.

[selassie]

He says as the club's profit before tax was £12.6m in the latest financial results, compared to a loss of £6.2m for the same period a year earlier...

Sure, but despite this I don't believe for one minute Wenger's sole purpose is about money making. He is just getting exposed for what he really is now. It makes no difference whether he spends or not, he's not up to the job.

[selassie]

But do you see how mad this has become? We are now saying Elneny was a better option than Coquelin, and that might be true once you are through the looking glass. But what about the ACTUAL defenders we have available that don't even make the squad? We need to be careful not to get sucked into Wenger's la la land. Draw right back and look at his insanity in all its glory. The fixes are simple but the old fool is mired in layer upon layer of his own craziness.

Yep

[Power n Glory]

Certainly agree that (despite the non-fact we are over-achieving in relation to our major rivals) we suffer bad management from top to bottom. Which is why these losers might not even be aware of some of the issues you point out. If they are sitting there thinking Xhaka is the best thing since sliced bread and the 35mill was a great investment, which considering Wenger sticks him on every team sheet might be the case, they might be equally confused when it comes to handling Lacazette. If they are completely incompetent, which may or may not be the case but which the end results certainly suggest, it's no use for the fans to try to connect things together in a logical manner because we aren't dealing in logic here, or even common sense. We're dealing in pure madness half the time and rank incompetence for the rest of it.

These idiots are sitting on a quarter of a billion quid in a hyper inflated market. So, for sure, they are losing money. On the other hand, and in other markets, and if there is no intention to spend that money in football but instead to use it to underpin some other venture, maybe the madness and incompetence on a football level then makes some sort of twisted sense. In this case we're calling the board and the manager corrupt. Another very strong possibility.

Hard to make sense of what’s going on. The fact that Wenger received a new contract despite finishing outside of the Top 4 suggests something else is going on. I’m putting it down to incompetence. As suspected, it makes no sense for the Board to overlook the wage bill and not look to bring that down as first priority considering how much of a huge drain it is.

Also, allowing Ozil and Sanchez to leave on a free and passing up the chance to make £60m - £100m makes no sense at all. The whole situation is short sighted. Wenger’s comments about it potentially being more expensive to renew their contracts compared to signing a new player smacks of incompetence. I don’t know how he’s able to get away with such statements when he presents these foolish ideas as if he’s imparted some sort of wisdom to the masses. Didn’t he say this could be a trend in football? To allow your star players to run down their contract? I’m not great at maths or economics but what he has said doesn’t add up at all. When you factor in how much it will cost to sign a player and then add the wages on top, resigning Ozil and Sanchez would have been the cheaper option. Incompetence all over.

[Herbert_Chapman's_Zombie]

I think what we’re seeing is that there probably isn’t any point in keeping players in their final year who have no intention to sign a new contract. I can only imagine what the rest of the squad who are committed feel about Ozil and Alexis. I thought Alexis would still be the same player but he looks like he’s going through the motions now.

With the power of hindsight, they probably should have been sold.

Sanchez bless him just isn’t very bright, whilst I think the likes of Gonella went out of their way to extol his “virtues” to circle of access journalists like John Cross. I can’t imagine he’s making himself too popular, the calculation or whatever you want to call it was that he’d play himself into the shop window especially with Chile not qualifying for the World Cup.
But he is just making the assumption that City will go for him regardless (he’s right of course)

Ozil is just Ozil, he’s not behaving any differently than he has in the previous four seasons at the club. He’s a luxury player for whom rolling his sleeves up is anathema to.