Good Bye RVP!

[LDG]

Thats the thing we'd have got parker over spuds have we been in for him, he wants cl football and with spuds will get it. don't think we will get many top players in the europa league simply because 1 they won't want to play in it and 2 we won't play them in it till the latter stages.

Players want to play with the best not some 3 division team in eastern europe.

Eh? Spuds aren't in the CL this year. If he wanted CL football, he would have joined one of the four that are in it.

We just didn't want him, full-stop. Not sure if he would have chosen us, had we been in for him. But we weren't anyway, so the CL thing is of no consequence.

Like I said, as long as you show ambition (or in our case, that you're not a club in meltdown), players will always be tempted by challenges....especially ones a big club like Arsenal can give them.

Problem is, from the outside, we're a club with no ambition, and not looking like we're going to sort it out any time soon.

[Syn]

None of the big clubs bidded for any of these players and going to the teams they did was a step up, had we bid for falcao do you really think he have chose them over us or if the chavs had bidded for suraez do you think he had still gone to pool?

(Sorry, I know it's cruel)

[McNamara That Ghost...]

None of the big clubs bidded for any of these players and going to the teams they did was a step up, had we bid for falcao do you really think he have chose them over us or if the chavs had bidded for suraez do you think he had still gone to pool?

You're missing the point again. He left Porto, a big club, that were in the Champions League to join a side, that were not. And anyway, what you're saying is just proving you can get those kind of players without being in the Champions League.

[Marc Overmars]

Eh? Spuds aren't in the CL this year. If he wanted CL football, he would have joined one of the four that are in it.

We just didn't want him, full-stop. Not sure if he would have chosen us, had we been in for him. But we weren't anyway, so the CL thing is of no consequence.

Like I said, as long as you show ambition (or in our case, that you're not a club in meltdown), players will always be tempted by challenges....especially ones a big club like Arsenal can give them.

Problem is, from the outside, we're a club with no ambition, and not looking like we're going to sort it out any time soon.

Spot on.

CL football or not, we act like we're mickey mouse club when we're not.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

If we had been winning the epl or CL like barca have done i can understand why top players would want to join us. Heck even being in the CL was enough reason to want to join us. Playing in europa won't convince he likes or Hazard or Goteze to come here they more or less go to chavs. spuds or the mancs.

The only way we will get top talents if we don't finish top 4 is to pay big wages which we won't do.

No, I said winning something makes a club more attractive - not solely being in the Europa League.

[McNamara That Ghost...]

Spot on.

CL football or not, we act like we're mickey mouse club when we're not.

Probably true. Mata, for instance.

[Boss]

the europa league is a far more respected competition on the continent but as i said above, too many fans in the uk think that players think just like them and treat the comp with contempt, which really is not true at all.

if suarez was offered the same amount of money by two clubs, with similar recent histories, same wages etc but one of them were in the europa the following season, then the europa team would win. players want to play out of their leagues and test themselves against others, no matter what level, that's how you remain competitive and build your career CV.

It may be seen as a more respected competition but the top players still see it as second best.

With the Suarez scenario you're assuming a perfect world with everything else being equal, which is misguided we know that's never the case. If everything else was the same and one club had Europa League football and one didn't, even assuming that the persuasion methods, city, weather for the clubs was exactly the same, then yes, perhaps the player would be more likely to join the EL side but as that's never the case there's no point discussing it. Whether they have EL football or not is at the bottom of a list of why or why not a player should join a club.

If you look at the list of the top moves last year, of the top 20 (as decided by Goal.com but that doesn't affect us here), only two players moved to clubs with Europa League football, and even in those cases that was more down to the fee paid than the club having Europa League football (Falcao to Atletico, 40M, Pastore to PSG, 42M). As far as I know no one else bid such obscene figures for them. If you look at other top transfers in the last five years, that percentage decreases even further.

List for reference: http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/edi...the-final-list

[Marc Overmars]

If we were Chelsea who always compete for the very best signings, then losing CL football would be a big blow. For us however, who seemingly distance ourselves from that sort of transfer activity, I don't think it makes any difference at all being in CL or not.

[Kano]

It may be seen as a more respected competition but the top players still see it as second best.

With the Suarez scenario you're assuming a perfect world with everything else being equal, which is misguided we know that's never the case. If everything else was the same and one club had Europa League football and one didn't, even assuming that the persuasion methods, city, weather for the clubs was exactly the same, then yes, perhaps the player would be more likely to join the EL side but as that's never the case there's no point discussing it. Whether they have EL football or not is at the bottom of a list of why or why not a player should join a club.

If you look at the list of the top moves last year, of the top 20 (as decided by Goal.com but that doesn't affect us here), only two players moved to clubs with Europa League football, and even in those cases that was more down to the fee paid than the club having Europa League football (Falcao to Atletico, 40M, Pastore to PSG, 42M). As far as I know no one else bid such obscene figures for them. If you look at other top transfers in the last five years, that percentage decreases even further.

List for reference: http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/edi...the-final-list

of course it's seen as a second best competition, that isn't up for debate but completely dismissing it as a pointless waste of time is wrong.

my example is not about a europe dreamland but an example that players do see worth in being part of the competition.

so, you wouldn't expect players to drop down from one to the other - as you can see from the list half of that list moved from cl teams to other cl teams.

we never have and will not for the forseeable future, shop from the top shelf of available players, so the level we will be in the market for will be ready to take el football for now.

[Coney]

What grates is that we don't actually have to buy any of the top 20 best players. There is a raft of talent out there even after Barca, Real, Citeh, Chavs, manu etc have spent their funds - we are just not buying the two or three players that would convert us from an almost team to a winning team. We don't need to replace the entire squad, just lose 3 or 4 dross players, get a goal scorer or two and we can challenge for things. We will just buy another potential goalscorer again. Why the fuck don't we buy someone who has a track record of putting the fucking ball in the fucking net. FFS.