I wouldn't want David Dein back, because of his behaviour in the past, but I think that this is evidence that Wenger did impose artificial budget constraints on himself, to the detriment of the club as a whole. I think the whole problem is that Wenger is economically a free marketeer, and like the free marketeers in the Conservative government at the moment, they believe in austerity and adhere to this ridiculous notion of the housewife's budget, where increasing debt even in a manageable way is seen as heresy. I believe it would have been entirely possible for Wenger to spend reasonable amounts of money in the last 5 years to augment the squad with quality players, and if he did this, we may have won something.

I am not saying we needed to spend huge amounts of money like City, but more signings like Sagna and Vermaelen (i.e. players who didn't cost the earth, could slot in immediately and were the sort of quality players who could improve the squad) would definitely have helped. The fact that it appears Wenger put ideology over the welfare of the squad is a bit of an indictment his performance as manager in the last 5 years tbh.

Nevertheless, the board need to take responsibility for not putting extra pressure on Wenger to invest in the squad. However, they had an incentive to maintain the status quo, seeing as they were making a good return on their shares and were increasing their bank balances due to Wenger's parsimony, even though it was hurting the on-field success of the club.