Quote Originally Posted by Kano View Post
There were no quotes at all about Higuain as far as I can remember and not buying Cabaye was hardly a player we've missed, given where he is now. The Lacazette bid is obviously true because Lyon came out with that press release. When transfers do come through, some of the large ones have been reported on before but think of the hit rate, the ratio of how many evolve into real transfers against those that don't. It's always safer to read with caution as far as the media are concerned until they can provide something concrete.

This is the trap that so many people fall into, that just because something is duplicated by multiple media outlets, that it has to be true. You say something enough times then of course it becomes 'a truth'. People tend to pick and choose the storie we believe because it fits in with a larger narrative we have on the situation. It's part of a wider manipulation and stranglehold that the media have on people's lives, that's why rags like The Sun and Daily Mail have such awful reputations for making shit up yet so many people believe the bollocks they print because it fits in with their version of 'the truth'. Did we try and buy Higuain and few years back or Alonso? Maybe. Did we miss out for the reasons the press stated? God knows, why should we believe what they've printed when there is nothing beyond their hand in the story? Well 50 media outlets all rinsed the same story with zero quotes or evidence so it must be true I guess.

Football transfers are one of the easiest to cook up and because we are traditionally slow and secretive about our business, and Arsenal fans online are one of the most fervent, too many allow themselves to get taken for a ride season and after season. The Arsenal board is shit but we don't need to believe the journalists are our friend. As far as they're concerned, we're easy bait.
It was widely reported that we were discussing a 23million deal with Real for Higuain and Napoli came in and offered 35million for him or whatever the fee was. We refused to up our offer to match Napoli's. All of the evidence pointed to that happening, it was reported everywhere. Sure we didn't need Cabaye but that's not the point I am making. My point is our laissez faire approach in the market and the fact we have form for not following up or increasing our offers for our transfer targets due to having some principled stance on setting our own valuations, what's the point? It gets us nowhere, the Higuain & Suarez examples are proof of that, we screwed up massively.

I see your point and you can't always take what you read as the gospel truth but let's face it, it would hardly be a surprise to anybody if the club came out and confirmed what everybody has suspected regarding not meeting selling clubs valuations. There is no reason for the media to report on us doing this kind of thing multiple times. Also, Wenger has hinted on more than one occassion that he's not followed through on bids for certain players because it would kill player x, y or z.

I wouldn't be so bothered if we had a complete squad but we have gaping holes in certain positions yet wont address them due to our principles, it's absolutely ridiculous TBH.