And they SHOULD have won us the league that following season....we were right up there and bottled it.Originally Posted by 21_GOONER_SALUTE
That they didn't, is why we're all pissed off, as with last season....when we SHOULD have won the league.
It wasn't the quality of player out there. It was the mentality.
Why would he have wanted the board to stump up 100 Million quid, if he believed the team was capable of doing what it SHOULD have done.
Fuckin hell. Hindsight is a great thing.
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
Project Youth wasn't the unmitigated disaster that it's been made out to be.
At least twice we've had sides capable of winning the league. We've failed because of a weak mentality and possibly a lack of experience.
Had Wenger mixed Project Youth with one or two (not 6 or 7) experienced, quality players things may have been very different.
Frustrating.
But if anyone would prefer here's my biased summary.
The second most obvious difficulty with the rejection of the
rights issue is that Arsenal could have set an example had they
given it serious consideration. It is important to understand what a rights issue actually is. It is an issue of new shares to the existing shareholders, principally Usmanov, Kroenke and Fiszman,
who would pay Arsenal directly for those new shares. All the other, smaller shareholders
would also have the right to buy more shares, some new ones
could also be created for fans or investors to buy. Care could have
been taken not to give Usmanov or Kroenke a much larger stake, and to protect the stakes of
the smaller shareholders.
The virtue of this way of raising money for a football club – or any company - is that the shareholders pay money directly in to buy the shares. Pure cash goes to the club's bank account for it to spend as it thinks wisest. It is not debt; the shareholders are not lending the money, as happens at many other football clubs, which are so in hock to
their "benefactors."
Arsenal like to think of themselves as a model
club, embodying traditional virtues. A rights issue, in which
the rich men in charge actually invest real money, no strings
attached, for their club to spend, would have set an example to the clubs existing beyond
their means on loans from "sugar daddies," or, worse, those like Manchester United and
Liverpool, whose north American owners loaded the clubs with debt to pay for the
costs of their own takeovers.
The other problem Arsenal have with rejecting the rights issue is
that three longstanding
shareholders have recently made multi-millions personally
out of selling Arsenal shares,
but not a penny of it has gone
into the club. Usmanov himself paid £75m to David Dein for
the former vice-chairman's
stake, which Dein bought in the
1980s and early 1990s for a
fingernail of that sum. Fiszman
made £42.5m personally – tax
free because he is resident in
Switzerland – by selling an eight
per cent slice of Arsenal to
Kroenke in April. Richard Carr,
holder of shares which were in
his family for generations,
made more than £40m when
he sold 4,839 shares to Kroenke
for "£8,500 per share and
£10,500 per share," according
to Arsenal's official
announcement, on May 1.
All these millionaires, including
Fiszman and Carr who are
directors, custodians of the
club, have made many more
millions for themselves out of
selling their Arsenal shares. That
makes the board's argument
that the shareholders, including
Fiszman, do not need to pay
money into the club, a little
more difficult.
It might, though, make more
sense if the Arsenal board spell
those reasons out. The idea that
the club could simply not use,
at all, £150m, does not quite
wash. And the club's ordinary
supporters, not many of whom
are tax exile multi-millionaires,
are being asked to pay some of
the highest ticket prices in
football, while the rich men in
the boardroom solemnly
maintain a firm public stance
that they should not have to put
any money into the club at all.
Yep, Its only because no trophy's were won people made it out to be worse than it was. Like you say the talent was there, the mentality was not.
@ LDG
The funny thing is fundamentally I agree with you. I have said it many times over the past years and I will say it again, we have always had and continue to have players capable of winning the league. But I accept logically or at least based on empirical evidence, my belief is not logical and has not been for a while.
The facts have continued to point to the fact that the clubs who invest more in their squad do better than us. Bookies who rely on complicated facts that we can't even dream of, have not given us a realistic chance in donkey years and they have all been right.
Again sharing your view that the quality of our players is not the issue, how does investing more in the squad hurt us in anyway? how does doing this not help our cause?
The only thing completely illogical about everything we discuss is the managers consistent refusal to accept using more resources ( which we can conveniently afford) to achieve our aim.
And BTW if you look at it properly your own argument was the one that was entirely based on hindsight.
And they SHOULD have won us
the league that following
season....we were right up
there and bottled it.
That they didn't, is why we're all
pissed off, as with last
season....when we SHOULD
have won the league.
Last edited by 21_GOONER_SALUTE; 21-02-2012 at 06:18 PM.
Project youth was an exercise that only served to line the pockets of the board.
Dude, firstly, you've misread me a little. I was using the hindsight thing to highlight what I was saying anyway. I.e. we may well have done things differently if we'd known how it turned out. I wasn't basing that comment soley on what you'd posted....
The whole reasoning behind what I was saying goes back that point in time, and to the argument by some that "Wenger decided" that we shouldn't have a rights issue (which of course is nonsense). As far as I'm aware, he was asked his opinion, purely based on funding for players....not related to anything you have eloquently put above.
And as far as the player funding goes, to a degree (and I we all know about the collapse etc) Wenger was onto something, in that we didn't need to spend millions....and like we've both said, the mental weaknesses etc cocked up what could have been. Which is very much his fault if you ask me.
What I was defending, was the notion put accross by some, that Wenger turned down 100 Million, and we could have had Messi type arguments....
I'm not saying that we haven't fucked up. I'm not saying our manager has done a good job (he's clearly made a lot of mistakes)....I've been berrating him for the last three seasons for not building on the success up to Christmas by strengthening in January, for instance....I'm just saying that he believed, and honestly at that, that he had a squad capable of winning trophies. And to a certain degree he was right....though it was doomed to failure.
I dunno if that makes more sense? Meh.
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
It's a blog and his personal opinion. It's not meant to be objective, it's an opinion piece and people read for that purpose. You can agree or disagree but it wasn't written simply to inform. If you want objectivity, read an official report or find something written in the BBC or Metro.
The article makes a good few points and it sounds like some are having a hard time dealing with it. Especially the point about Gazidis. It's not his job to advise Wenger on who to buy. He's increasing revenue as seen and where it's spent is up to Wenger and as seen, he'd rather extend contracts and pay loyalty bonuses instead of signing new players. The money is there to be spent and if the Board were that tight fisted, they'd never allow such a huge wage bill which is a long term drain on our expense.
What's all this nonsense about having a hard time dealing with it?? Not at all. If all of that turns out to be correct, I'll rip the fucker to pieces myself.
And my personal opinion, is that this guy is a very poor blogger / writer.
It's better to burn out, than to fade away.
What's been written on Le Grove and what emerged at the AST meeting has been written and debated on here for some time but has often been met with resistance. Gazidis and Stan shouldn't have to tell Wenger how to do his job.
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