Summer transfer joy and happiness

[Letters]

Waah, waah, waah.

And yet, for all your whining, we are a good as anyone apart from the top 2 - one of whom has resources which make them extremely difficult to compete with, Klopp has certainly done well but even he couldn't quite topple them.
We were a point of Spurs - people have spent all season sucking Poch's cock and going on about their team. We were above Utd who have spent a load of money. And we're in a European final.
We have a front 2 as good as almost anyone. The midfield needs some work but it's not that bad. Defence is a shambles, never Wenger's forte.
We have some work to do but we're not as bad as you keep pretending.

[Özim]

And yet, for all your whining, we are a good as anyone apart from the top 2 - one of whom has resources which make them extremely difficult to compete with, Klopp has certainly done well but even he couldn't quite topple them.
We were a point of Spurs - people have spent all season sucking Poch's cock and going on about their team. We were above Utd who have spent a load of money. And we're in a European final.
We have a front 2 as good as almost anyone. The midfield needs some work but it's not that bad. Defence is a shambles, never Wenger's forte.
We have some work to do but we're not as bad as you keep pretending.

We're not as good as Spurs, they're in the CL final are above us in the league and that's despite buying no players last summer.

Klopp has done amazingly, all these years you've been saying you need money to challenge, but Leicester and now Liverpool have disproved that, it's about having the right players and the right manager.

I know your harp on about our team not being bad, but not being funny apart from the front and maybe the keeper we're average, the midfield is awful, it lacks creativty, lacks fight and lacks quality, that's why we have to rely on very limited players like Xhaka, Mhkitaryan, Iwobi and the defence, well the less said about that the better.

Yes Man U are in a bad place, but that's down to the people at the top, they want to reproduce the Ferguson way and aren't giving their managers the freedom to have total control of team matters, what we do know is that they'll spend money and probably bring in quality, we on the other had will most likely have peanuts to spend on a bunch of nobodies. As for the Europa league final, lets not make out like it's some sort of major achievement please, plenty of people didn't even want us in this competition and didn't have any respect for it, now I'm happy enough we're there and it's always good to be in a final in Europe, but you can't say the oppositon has been top class, we've played and lost to some pretty poor sides on the way, we haven't wept into the final performing amazingly and winning game after game, it's been stop and start and we've stuttered a fair amount.

I'd be really happy if we won the EL final, but the reality is that other awful competition in Europe has really devalued this by taking most of the top teams through the top 3/4 sides qualifying for that, it's not like when we won the CWC and faced some European giants. It'll will be good to win and will get us back into that other competition, but unless we invest heavily I think we may well get outclassed in that like we did for years when were were in it a few years back, in reality just making up the numbers.

Please tell me, how long is it now since we were a serious football club, I don't mean a bunch of also rans who collapse when the pressure is on btw, I mean a team who other teams fear and a team who genuinely can challenge? In my book that's about 15 years now, yes that's right 15 years, how time flies.

As a club we're firmly in the 2nd tier also rans club now, we don't excel at anything, our youth policy is average, our transfers are average, our team is average and so on, then on top of that we have an owner who really couldn't be less interested, hard to see where we go from here to be honest, noone at this club seriously has any ambitions of winning or being a big player, they seem all too happy to fight for the scraps of 4th place.

[Marc Overmars]

As a team I think we could kick on with some good coaching and smart signings but as a club I don’t think the pride or hunger is really there from the people at the top to make it happen. It should hurt everyone at the club that Spurs are in the CL final but I’m not sure it really registers because they’re not football men let alone Arsenal men.

[Mac76]

As a team I think we could kick on with some good coaching and smart signings but as a club I don’t think the pride or hunger is really there from the people at the top to make it happen. It should hurt everyone at the club that Spurs are in the CL final but I’m not sure it really registers because they’re not football men let alone Arsenal men.

Yeah that's the biggest cocern, with the right people in charge we could actually improve quite quickly IMO but it's just that feeling it's not gonna happen

[Letters]

We're not as good as Spurs

They were better than us by a point over 38 games
In the two head to head games we beat them comfortably at our place and they were lucky to get a draw in the other.
If they are better than us then there's not much in it.
Yes, they're in the CL Final but they have, to say the least, rode their luck to get there. Very fine lines in Cup competitions, they should have been out several times.
Whisper it quietly but they deserve credit for getting there and if they win it () then they will have earned it, but they're nowhere near as good as teams like Liverpool, City and Barca. They are nearer our level than theirs.
It's interesting how you use cup competition progress when you think it backs up your argument and dismiss it when it doesn't.
Intellectual dishonesty.

Klopp has certainly done well. He has spent a shitload of money though - I've given the stats on that. What they have done well, and we have done very poorly, is managed contracts and transfers well so their net spend hasn't been that high. But they've still bought £500m of playing talent over the last 4 years. They've bought well and sold well but they've hardly been thrifty. Leicester's achievement was incredible, they did it in a season when the other big guns were rebuilding and it was increasingly clear by that point that Wenger wasn't able to deliver another title. But it was a one off, they don't have the resources to maintain it. They've won nothing since. If you don't think money and success are highly correlated then you haven't been watching over the last decade.

You'll need to explain to me how an average team can finish a point below a Spurs team who everyone keeps fawning about and can get to the Europa League final.
There is clearly work to be done, we're miles away from a title challenge, but we are far from average. You say yourself we are not going to have loads to spend this summer.
Partly because of poor contract management but partly because our owner doesn't care about the football side of things. Until that is sorted there's only so much any manager can do.

[hobson's choice]

And yet, for all your whining, we are a good as anyone apart from the top 2 - one of whom has resources which make them extremely difficult to compete with, Klopp has certainly done well but even he couldn't quite topple them.
We were a point of Spurs - people have spent all season sucking Poch's cock and going on about their team. We were above Utd who have spent a load of money. And we're in a European final.
We have a front 2 as good as almost anyone. The midfield needs some work but it's not that bad. Defence is a shambles, never Wenger's forte.
We have some work to do but we're not as bad as you keep pretending.

This type of thinking is why the 2 Milan clubs and United are where they are. And we are going down that route.

We have to rebuild properly and that means stop thinking we are 2/3 players away. We need to completely gut this team and hit restart. Kinda like Barca did in the early days of Rijkaard.

But we are not doing that. So best of the rest is our future

[Letters]

This type of thinking is why the 2 Milan clubs and United are where they are. And we are going down that route.

We have to rebuild properly and that means stop thinking we are 2/3 players away. We need to completely gut this team and hit restart. Kinda like Barca did in the early days of Rijkaard.

But we are not doing that. So best of the rest is our future

Personally I think any rebuilding should be done slowly - if nothing else, our owner isn't willing for us to spend a load of money at once so we can't just gut the team and start again.
We're a million miles away from a title challenge, I don't think we're going to get there in one or 2 seasons.
A proper captain and better defence and that would be some progress which is all I'm looking for right now. There are a bit of progress this season but not much.

[Özim]

Personally I think any rebuilding should be done slowly - if nothing else, our owner isn't willing for us to spend a load of money at once so we can't just gut the team and start again.
We're a million miles away from a title challenge, I don't think we're going to get there in one or 2 seasons.
A proper captain and better defence and that would be some progress which is all I'm looking for right now. There are a bit of progress this season but not much.

Realistically if you want to rebuild slowly you have to buy young players who are going to be around for years, otherwise if you bring older players and especially players in their late 20s which seems to be what we seem to be interested in (very short sighted and costly IMO) you'll constantly have to replace ageing players, Klopp pretty much did it in 2-3 seasons, there's really no reason why we shouldn't be able to rebuild in 3 seasons.

First stage is to get rid of the duds and not offer them new contracts, offering Xhaka a new contract last summer was ridiculous, he's never going to make it and is a liability.

What strikes me about Arsenal is that it's full of excuses, when Wenger was around it was the fact we were paying for a new stadium, then that we had a young team and it will take a bit of time for them to get experience, then it was that other clubs had too much money, there's also been excuses about injuries (when in reality maybe our medical team wasn't up to scratch, out training seemed to cause injuries and we brought in and stuck with injury prone players) and now it's that the owner won't spend and we need to spend years rebuilding.

When does it end, what will it be next? Personally I'm tired excuses, I don't want another manager who sticks around for years and doesn't deliver with everyone being happy with scraping 4th. I'm alarmed that Sanelhi and co are delighted with Emery's work, to me that's the sign of a club stuck in mediocrity, failing to get top 4 in such a poor season isn't great, yes we've got to a European final but we've really stuttered along the way and as we know this competition isn't full of top quality teams, so we've not exactly had to beat amazing teams.

[SMatthews]

This type of thinking is why the 2 Milan clubs and United are where they are. And we are going down that route.

We have to rebuild properly and that means stop thinking we are 2/3 players away. We need to completely gut this team and hit restart. Kinda like Barca did in the early days of Rijkaard.

But we are not doing that. So best of the rest is our future

Man Utd finished second in 2018 - as funny as it is, the mass introspection about their current situation is way off the mark. Panic always sets in when it comes to the media and fans, drawing up doomsday scenarios that rarely come true. They have money, are still a huge draw and will be back - although not under OGS.

And that financial pull is the big difference between the Prem and Serie A. When Inter won the CL years ago they - and the rest of the league - weren't set-up to capitalise off the pitch. The fact the two clubs share the same stadium is also a massive drawback in today's money driven era. The theory is that the Chinese have bought into both clubs because it connects them to Berlusconi and the economic and political heartland of the country - the owners are apparently under pressure from the Chinese government to capitalise on financial opportunities that will benefit their home country.

If Man City aren't reigned in by UEFA - and it's hard to see how they will be given their backers have more money than the governing body - then no-one else will be winning the title any time soon.

[Letters]

Realistically if you want to rebuild slowly you have to buy young players who are going to be around for years, otherwise if you bring older players and especially players in their late 20s which seems to be what we seem to be interested in (very short sighted and costly IMO) you'll constantly have to replace ageing players, Klopp pretty much did it in 2-3 seasons, there's really no reason why we shouldn't be able to rebuild in 3 seasons.

First stage is to get rid of the duds and not offer them new contracts, offering Xhaka a new contract last summer was ridiculous, he's never going to make it and is a liability.

What strikes me about Arsenal is that it's full of excuses, when Wenger was around it was the fact we were paying for a new stadium, then that we had a young team and it will take a bit of time for them to get experience, then it was that other clubs had too much money, there's also been excuses about injuries (when in reality maybe our medical team wasn't up to scratch, out training seemed to cause injuries and we brought in and stuck with injury prone players) and now it's that the owner won't spend and we need to spend years rebuilding.

When does it end, what will it be next? Personally I'm tired excuses, I don't want another manager who sticks around for years and doesn't deliver with everyone being happy with scraping 4th. I'm alarmed that Sanelhi and co are delighted with Emery's work, to me that's the sign of a club stuck in mediocrity, failing to get top 4 in such a poor season isn't great, yes we've got to a European final but we've really stuttered along the way and as we know this competition isn't full of top quality teams, so we've not exactly had to beat amazing teams.

Agree with most of that. Honestly, we are a pretty poorly run club right now. Replacing Wenger was necessary, but it wasn't a silver bullet.