Im not going to go on some `african kids are dying while football pays £89million for a player` rant, but it is a disgusting state of affairs. I no longer contribute anythng directly to Arsenal, I no longer go to games, buy the shirts, join membership clubs etc etc. They will always be my team, but it has just gone crazy and too far removed from my everyday life.Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory
Fun you! Gary got him the tickets...
This is a very good thread btw, well done everyone
Whilst I don't think people like that Positively Arsenal are typical of Wenger supporters, the guy is creepy in his messianic view of the manager. I'm trying to argue with him that the club and not the manager should be setting the value at which us as a buying club rates a player, it should be the managers job just to pick the players he wants the club to get for him.
Yes a manager will have a realistic appreciation of what the club can and can't afford, but actually agreeing a price should be up to the club and it's the way every other club operates. His answer?
"We aren't every other club, if every other club had Arsene. Perhaps they'd do things our way"
And then thought he'd try and trip me up
"What if the club did things your way, and decided against signing Ozil or Sanchez?"
"The club would only have made those decisions if we couldn't afford the players, as we did buy them that obviously wasn't an issue" - Dimwit but then what do you expect of someone who argues that someone who is 28 and 10 months is actually 29.
I can't see the point of an (allegedly) adult football fan having anything other than winning as the focus of his investment in a club. Hero worship, that's for kids. Other forms of worship are best reserved for the chapel. So this bullshit cadre of Wenger acolytes is a mysterious thing indeed. You support the club why? Because you think the club knows your name? Or you are somehow connected to the millionaire players? Long gone are the days when the players used to drink in the same pub (before the match in the case of our lads). Having a few rounds with your mates and taking the piss out of opposition fans, a chance to jump around a bit and shout stuff you'd be punched in the face for at any other time - that's about it isn't it? So where these weirdos get the notion the job of a fan is to slavishly devote themselves to the manager and to pitch up all over the shop to defend the bloke at every criticism, it's fucking strange. It's the sort of thing an utter cunt would do. Then again, this bloke certainly seems to be an utter cunt, so maybe it is normal for him.
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Social Media allows people to be more polemic in the views they hold than real life, unless the guy has no friends (which is actually quite conceivable) I don't imagine he spends his time with Arsenal supporters finger wagging at them if they happen to say anything bad about the manager. And i quite agree that kind of Hero Worship is for kids, but at the same time we are seeing it more and more....especially in the political theatre.
I remember being part of a group and as an icebreaker exercise was asked to name someone who i couldn't stand and someone who was an idol.....I had no problem naming the person i couldn't stand (it was George Galloway) but as for someone i admired.....no drew a blank. There are people who i respect for their work and their intelligence (the late Christopher Hitchens for example) but admiration and hero worship is one step away from demagoguery.
Which in itself is dangerous because it discounts the possibility of them being wrong about anything.
Great posts all.
What I've been trying to get my head around is whether, and to what extent the pain has been made worse by the dissimulation that has characterised our club over the past few years. The stadium project thing I can handle - because I do think that the club believed at one stage that this would enable us to compete with the very best. The problem is that this model of self sustainability was overtaken swiftly by events. First the 'oligarch' era; then the banking crisis that screwed up the profit on the residential development, and now the exponential increase in football money that has made the project essentially meaningless.
The dissimulation at AFC has however taken many guises. At board level, selling out to an owner with a clear and obvious track record of creating precisely the same unambitious scenario at his other 'franchises' as we are seeing now was at best naive and at worst calculating. The same thing goes for the 'promise' that once the stadium debt was cleared to manageable levels then we would start to compete again - something that meant that most Gooners were patient and supported the years of selling off our best players to our rivals while becoming firmly a top four rather than a top club.
On the playing side, we have been encouraged time and time again to believe that the club and the manager still harbour real ambitions of achieving success. A couple of 'record signings' seemed to show intent, and our FA Cups were held out as perhaps being the start of a new era.
What feels so disheartening now, however, is that the club and the manager seem to have abandoned even the pretence of wanting to compete with the best teams in this country and Europe. The situation at the start of the 2011/12 season was a shambles with the famous 5 signings in 2 days. Subsequent seasons appeared to show an improvement with Ozil and Sanchez being brought in in 2013 and 2014 respectively. But the nonsensical situation with our midfielders in the 2014/15 season - saved only by the surprising (unplanned) form of Coquelin; the astonishing failure to sign a single outfield player last season, and the debacle of this Summer (so far) has made it plain to see that we have no intention of competing for the premiership or the EPL, and are at best playing the percentages for securing a top four place.
And things have changed palpably. From being told time and time that there is a 'warchest' for the manager to use to sign the best players, Gazidis now says openly that that we can't compete with the top clubs over signings. And I no longer buy that this is merely a statement of the obvious. None of us are expecting a Pogba - or a world record signing. What our own chief executive really means is that we are not prepared to pay the going rate for the type of players who will win things for us. For a club like Arsenal to be reduced to relying on our (not particularly successful) youth system, and scouting players from lower leagues is astonishing really. You would expect it from a Leicester; a Southampton; an Everton - bit not from the world's 5th most valuable football club (2016 Forbes Rankings). To be starting the season with such obvious holes in attack and defence is frankly negligent and tells its own story.
We are committed to self-sustainability not as a means to future success, but for its own sake, and for the interests of our owner. End of. And it has become for me almost insulting for the club to pretend to the fans that the situation is anything other than this. For me it feels as though we fans have been the victims of an extremely cynical corporate project - and the manager has been completely complicit in this. To this extent, I think that we are unique as fans of the country's top clubs, and it hurts.
And the pity of it is that we don't even expect to be a Citeh or a United. All we would like to see is a team with a realisitic chance of competing with the best. It says it all that no-one at AFC is even talking in these terms any more, let alone acting on it.
Putting the laughter back into manslaughter
Wenger has been complicit, in fact, I think he has influenced the direction. The transfer strategy, youth development, wage structure came from his ideas. If he couldn’t deliver CL along with saving us money, we’d have probably seen a different approach a long time ago. Now the danger is that he’s set a precedent for club. The next manager to walk in may find himself having to work in this restrictive culture he’s set up. The building blocks to this corporate takeover…thanks WengerI hope the next manager that walks in can change or adjust the culture but we won’t know for sure. Whether Stan will allow that is another question. But I really don’t know what to make of Stan. The American sports ownership structure can’t really be compared to anything we have here. I don’t think it’s that easy to invest in new talent when you have a salary cap and draft system. I guess the really kick up the butt is how Stan and the club are so desperate to cling on to Wenger. That kind of says it all.
If Stan had bought up and the said shut up, my club, I'll do whatever I want then I'd have more respect for him - which would still only be a very small amount of respect. It's the deceit. The false promises from him and his mates and particularly from the manager. But that's not even the worst part. Worst of all is their belief we'd all swallow it. That we could watch things season after season and still believe the shit they are shovelling. So it was shut up, my club, I'll do what ever I want - and then they took a dump on the fans for added effect. Now the demand, based on the very traditions and loyalties they have abused and destroyed, is for the fans to eat it up with a smile on their faces. And some do.
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I think it's a myth that there are people who revere Wenger to the extent some people on here suppose. There may be some but you'll always get extremes of views in a large group of people. I think a lot of people still respect Wenger though. I certainly do. And that's why I will defend him at times, but only from the more extreme opinions. I certainly don't jump to his defence at every opportunity as some have suggested.
I am increasingly frustrated by his damn stubbornness in the transfer market. He's like some OAP grumbling about the price of things. Well yes, things are expensive and yes it is ridiculous but that's the modern game and if you want to compete you need to join in. He has to an extent with Ozil and Sanchez, for a while he was spending folding money. And I can see the logic in not signing more players of the level of Giroud or Welbeck - go big or go home - but we DO need to go big and, once again, he's failed to get his man despite making offers for the sort of players we need.
I don't agree the stadium project was a failure. I don't think we'd have been able to compete long term without doing the move. All the other big clubs have either expanded, moved or are looking to. The notable exceptions being Chelsea but with their other stream of income they haven't really needed to. I do think the timing of it was somewhat unfortunate though in that we did it at the time when the billionaires were having the most impact, there WAS a period of belt tightening in that era, I think Wenger did well during time, and by the time the financial pressures eased we had TV deals which almost wipe out the advantage the new stadium gives us. I don't think you can pin any of that on Wenger.
My problem with Wenger is he's now not making enough of our considerable resources and my problem with the club is that they don't care. It's simply not true that Wenger is under no pressure but he's not under enough. He keeps delivering top 4 and while that shouldn't be the limit of our ambitions it shouldn't be sniffed at either. It doesn't give much margin for error and other clubs have thrown a lot of money around trying to achieve it and failed to do so consistently. But with our resources now he isn't doing enough and the board don't care how we do so long as the finances are good. This is why removing Wenger, although necessary, is no silver bullet.
The last 3 years we:
Finished 4th and won the FA Cup
Finished 3rd and retained the FA Cup
Finished 2nd
If this all seems disappointing and under-achieving then it is a back-handed compliment to Wenger. Before he came along we were a big club but never expected to challenge consistently, historically we hadn't done so. He's got us in a position where we expect to be winning titles regularly and are set up financially to do so, he deserves credit for that.
I believe Wenger still wants us to succeed. He maybe takes a bit too much pride in the perennial top 4 finishes but I don't believe for one minute he doesn't want us to do more. It's increasingly clear that he's either unable or unwilling to do the things required to push on though. I don't think the idea of being self-sustainable is a bad thing in and of itself but we now just seem to be stockpiling money which benefits only the owner and board.
I just think football as a sport is broken. As NQ said in one of the Olympics threads, you see in the Olympics what sport should be about. These preening, cheating, diving multi-millionaires are no part of what I think of as sport. And the clubs (not just ours although we're one of the worst) endlessly see us as customers, not fans. They cynically use the fact that we can't go to the 'shop' down the road, it's the ultimate brand loyalty. You can walk out of the shop but you can't go elsewhere. I literally can't believe they get away with some things, like the ruse of changing their kits every year and people queue up to buy the incrementally different new shirt.
In brief: Wenger needs to go but I don't think it will make as much difference as some suppose with our board.
The club is broken in terms of what a football club should be and historically was, but we're a small part, well not that small, of a far bigger problem in the sport in general.
All started with Sky, if you ask me.
I absolutely have no idea why you would respect the man to be honest, he doesn't even treat the fans well, he belittles them, lies to them and doesn't care about their concerns, all whilst he's lining his pockets at their expense. This once great club is no a shadow of itslef on the pitch and even the fans are split and that's because of him.
I have no respect for the guy, he's not a good guy at all IMO and he's destroying what it left of this once great club IMO, with his stubborness, arrogance and holier than thou attitude.
I'd understand it if he was good to the fans, but he really isn't quite the opposite, that's what annoys me the most, he treats fans like dirt and yet they still have respect for him.
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