Is money still a problem, or is it Wenger?

[IBK]

We have 'a gazillion' injuries every single year. It can't be luck if it's always happening so you have to take the injury prone players into account when you're building a squad. Players like Diaby, Rosicky, Wilshere and Gibbs should be expected to miss long periods of the season.

I think Wenger did gamble to an extent. He offloaded a lot of deadwood, which was a good thing, but only brought in two players for our first team squad. It was a gamble to go into the season with only Bendtner as Giroud's backup. He had time to get someone else even if it was only a stop gap until January.

Yup - I agree.

[IBK]

I would still say that we have been unlucky with injuries, one season we had all our fullbacks injured at the same time and this season its all our wings that have been injured at the same time.

It wasnt really his plan to take a gamble on bendtner, since he was trying to offload him all summer and at the same time were after some pretty good strikers, but Napoli paying silly money for Higuain, Liverpool smoking to much dope and Chelsea pulling out in the last sec, were few of the reasons why it didnt happend this summer, but atleast he have showed that he knows we need proper cover for Giroud and are willing to spend, and i have no doubt we will see a quality striker comming in, in january or summer.

Problem is that January rarely sees real quality available in the market...

[The Ogg Monster]

Dont agree on the injury prone thing. If RvP would have been offloaded early it would have been a mistake.

About the thread title- neither money nor Wenger are a problem.

[Dein-machine]

Dont agree on the injury prone thing. If RvP would have been offloaded early it would have been a mistake.

About the thread title- neither money nor Wenger are a problem.

Depends what is meant by problem. If the problem is that we haven't been able to compete at the top of our own league or in Europe for 8 years then the problem is very much down to money. I am not a great Wenger fan but with limited cash I don't know that anyone else would have done more than keep us in the top 4 of a very competitive league when all around are spending big. However even if we had money, Wenger has made it clear that we still wouldn't have spent big, he wanted to nurture & buy young talent. Therfore if money wasn't the problem then Wenger was. He couldn't get his head round the fact that buying quality like Chelski & Man City have done wins titles, but the facts are there for all to see. Its one of the reasons he was never able to defend a title because he thought he could keep ahead of the rest without adding top quality every year. The truth is that our board have been extremelly happy to get CL football every year by finishing 3/4th, slowly paying off the stadium whilst winning fuck all. They don't view it that we have a problem at all because their shares are now worth a lot of money, especially with an asset like The Emirates paid for.

[Özim]

I would still say that we have been unlucky with injuries, one season we had all our fullbacks injured at the same time and this season its all our wings that have been injured at the same time.

It wasnt really his plan to take a gamble on bendtner, since he was trying to offload him all summer and at the same time were after some pretty good strikers, but Napoli paying silly money for Higuain, Liverpool smoking to much dope and Chelsea pulling out in the last sec, were few of the reasons why it didnt happend this summer, but atleast he have showed that he knows we need proper cover for Giroud and are willing to spend, and i have no doubt we will see a quality striker comming in, in january or summer.

We always seem to struggle with transfers, we pretty much had 3 months to get the players we needed in, you can make excuses about cost and clubs not wanting to sell but at the end of the day you should have a shortlist of players and backup options, I don't think we excel in that department.

Ozil was a fantastic signing but it can mask our deficiencies on the transfer front, we got rid of a number of squad players and brought in two players, think we could have done better than that and should have when taking into consideration the size of our squad and our backup options, there's really no excuse, as mentioned by someone else we have injuries every single season without fail due to the injury prone nature of some of our players.

[JonasTC]

We always seem to struggle with transfers, we pretty much had 3 months to get the players we needed in, you can make excuses about cost and clubs not wanting to sell but at the end of the day you should have a shortlist of players and backup options, I don't think we excel in that department.

Ozil was a fantastic signing but it can mask our deficiencies on the transfer front, we got rid of a number of squad players and brought in two players, think we could have done better than that and should have when taking into consideration the size of our squad and our backup options, there's really no excuse, as mentioned by someone else we have injuries every single season without fail due to the injury prone nature of some of our players.

But we did have a shortlist and we did put offers out on quality players, so what exactly do you want Arsenal to do? Offer more money? Make Higuain our best paid player and put him on the bench? I agree with Wenger on that, i wouldnt want us to put out top money, unless he's a 100% starter, Higuain wouldnt have been, Suarez would have and thats why we were willing to buy him, but Liverpools crack-smoking people only wants russian/arab money for him and tbh i dont want Arsenal to go there.

The excuses about us not getting more players and our squad being thin, really needs to stop. Except for a striker (and maybe RB, because we never know which jenk will show up), i think we have a brilliant squad and good cover on almost positions, something even silly money clubs like city and chelski dont have.

[Power n Glory]

Depends what is meant by problem. If the problem is that we haven't been able to compete at the top of our own league or in Europe for 8 years then the problem is very much down to money. I am not a great Wenger fan but with limited cash I don't know that anyone else would have done more than keep us in the top 4 of a very competitive league when all around are spending big. However even if we had money, Wenger has made it clear that we still wouldn't have spent big, he wanted to nurture & buy young talent. Therfore if money wasn't the problem then Wenger was. He couldn't get his head round the fact that buying quality like Chelski & Man City have done wins titles, but the facts are there for all to see. Its one of the reasons he was never able to defend a title because he thought he could keep ahead of the rest without adding top quality every year. The truth is that our board have been extremelly happy to get CL football every year by finishing 3/4th, slowly paying off the stadium whilst winning fuck all. They don't view it that we have a problem at all because their shares are now worth a lot of money, especially with an asset like The Emirates paid for.

That's a good point.

[Dein-machine]

But we did have a shortlist and we did put offers out on quality players, so what exactly do you want Arsenal to do? Offer more money? Make Higuain our best paid player and put him on the bench? I agree with Wenger on that, i wouldnt want us to put out top money, unless he's a 100% starter, Higuain wouldnt have been, Suarez would have and thats why we were willing to buy him, but Liverpools crack-smoking people only wants russian/arab money for him and tbh i dont want Arsenal to go there.

The excuses about us not getting more players and our squad being thin, really needs to stop. Except for a striker (and maybe RB, because we never know which jenk will show up), i think we have a brilliant squad and good cover on almost positions, something even silly money clubs like city and chelski dont have.

It was clear at the end of last year where we needed strengthening & it would have been clear that we were in a postion to spend. This didn't just happen late in July when as per usual we start to get mentioned with various players that never end up signing. We woud have known this in May of last year. By the time all the wrangling about Higuain & Suarez was doing the rounds clubs like Man City & the Spuds had already acquired quality players without the fuss & with the chance of those players having a decent pre-season. In the case of Suarez it was never going to be plain sailing mainly due to Liverpools relcutance to sell to us & also the threat from Real Madrid. For some reason this always seems to be the case when we are linked with anyone. We needed then to act by buying another striker, from our supposed short-list to get the cover we needed. Even if we had gone on to buy Suarez it shouldn't be viewed as a problem when you see the amount of strikers at Man City for example. We startd the season with only Giroud as a 1st team striker & there was even doubts about him being the finished article after only one year in the EPL. Simply not good enough by Wenger & the board after telling us we were finally in a position to compete financially.
We only got Ozil in the final week of transfer deadline & could have lost him to the Mancs last minute, after getting rid of alot of the deadwood our sum total of players in could have been Sonogo & Flamini! - costing fuck all. Ozil's signing has plastered over the cracks of yet another disasterous transfer window for Wenger, why we think we're likely to get better players & better deals by leaving everything to the last minute is beyond me. We give our new players no chance to have a pre-season with new team mates & sometimes can't play them for a few games because of match fitness. It was only two years ago that we bought 3 players a month after the season started due to the Mancs hammering us & embarrasing Wenger, how can anyone justify that having had 3 months to get your squad ready for the new season.

[Özim]

But we did have a shortlist and we did put offers out on quality players, so what exactly do you want Arsenal to do? Offer more money? Make Higuain our best paid player and put him on the bench? I agree with Wenger on that, i wouldnt want us to put out top money, unless he's a 100% starter, Higuain wouldnt have been, Suarez would have and thats why we were willing to buy him, but Liverpools crack-smoking people only wants russian/arab money for him and tbh i dont want Arsenal to go there.

The excuses about us not getting more players and our squad being thin, really needs to stop. Except for a striker (and maybe RB, because we never know which jenk will show up), i think we have a brilliant squad and good cover on almost positions, something even silly money clubs like city and chelski dont have.

A very shortlist by the sounds of it, we waste too much time on transfers, if Higuain was too expensive then move on, Suarez was never realistically going to happen, Liverpool made their stand point very clear. There were other players available, maybe not as good as those but they would certainly be very useful for us right now and would have given us options and goals. Why are there always excuses for us when other clubs seemingly have no trouble signing players, are we special?

If Giroud, Fabianski, Sagna or one of the centre backs get injured we're in trouble IMO, our squad is very good in the midfield area but needs more depth elsewhere.

[Letters]

We're a bit lightweight up front but fine elsewhere. Defence could do with a bit more depth but up front is the biggest issue IMO.
Either way we're never going to be able to assemble a squad like City or Chelsea can.