Step back and look at the bigger picture

[Sirjackofwilshere]

There are numerous accusations directed at Wenger in this forum and others. Some are entirely justifiable, intelligent and I would endorse. A lot however are baseless and consist of little more than puerile, hyperbole directed at Wenger, seen as the epitome of what Arsenal has become, borne out of understandable frustration at the situation the club finds itself on and off the pitch.

Hopefully this thread will be some sort of balance - I'll post on factors and influences that contrary to popular belief Wenger is indeed at the mercy of..be they financial or otherwise.

Just to kick off:

this is from a guy who has a lot of inside info at the club..it is from twitter but he is reliable and known by many of the hacks.

@DarrenArsenal1
ONLY WAY out of financial trough of next 2 yrs is for Billionaires to stand guarantor of debt, that we have £100m of cash ...in bank used as covenants. This cash could be used. Means them not putting money in but using their assets to stand behind....behind debt. Otherwise its sell to buy. Reality is dawning that club is playing for 4th for next two years, a possible cub and....stay in contention, as they can't afford to compete on current model..people don't like it, but its true. Given that we've had 3+ years of this the manager deserves a knighthood for keeping us competing. People don't want to talk finances but football, but fact is Arsenal in a complete mess off the field and its like ostriches. With many who don't believe it has effected what we have now become....which of course it has.

[Joker]

Fair enough but there are people who claim we DO have money to spend, and spending it will not lead to financial meltdown:

http://arsenalnewsnewsnews.wordpress...ions-to-spend/

The next point is do we have money at the bank? The answer is yes, we have it by the bucket load. The last set of accounts for the 6 months ending November showed we had £110M in the bank. This remember is for a period when we still have not received all the television money nor all the prize money. Whilst we need to keep £22M in the bank to meet interest repayments, this still leaves us with £88M to spend. Since November we have sold more flats at Highbury Square and also sold to Barratts the Queensland Road flat development for around £26M. Cash is not a problem.

Arsenal have plenty of cash, cash that other clubs are envious of, the UEFA FPP regulations are workable, so there is no excuse from Wenger or the board as to why we do not spend money this summer.

Moreover, this is what our Chief Exec said last season:

http://www.arsenal.com/news/news-arc...unds-to-invest

“We’re now coming to a period, with Highbury Square coming to its completion and some of our other property developments bearing fruit, where the financial health of the Club is secure,” explained the Chief Executive.

“That does not mean we have unlimited resources, but it does mean we have sufficient funds to invest. As always we’ll only do this on our timescale, on the basis of our manager’s assessments and not those of the media.

“We have the youngest squad in the Premier League and we need to translate that potential into results. To the extent that the manager thinks it’s necessary, we will use our resources to supplement the squad intelligently so that we can take that vital step forward.

“For the most part we’re now in the healthy position that almost all of our young players are under long-term contracts and their futures are secure, as well as their possible transfer values being protected. One or two players are coming to the end of their contracts - William Gallas, for example.

“Whatever happens, Arsène has identified the fact that the defence has been an issue for us this year, so it’s not difficult to imagine that that’s an area we’re focused on in this transfer window.”

On an unrelated note, look what Gazidis says at the end. If Wenger had identified the defence as a problem in 2010, and the assumption was that he would strengthen properly, why did he sign Squillaci, a journeyman turd of a football, and Koscielny, an unproven player who would obviously take time to get used to a much more competitive league? Surely some real quality should have been brought in, to strengthen us defensively and sort out the deficiencies that (apparently) Wenger had identified? Gazidis says the funds were available, so either he's lying or Wenger's ideological belief in "prudence" cost us big time.

[Sirjackofwilshere]

But that first article is typical of the over simplified narrative that so many fans are happy to peddle. What about player wages? What about staff wages? What about club expenses? Just because the club has a cash reserve in the bank it doesn't mean it can spunk it on transfers.

I recommend a read of this thorough analysis of our finances: http://swissramble.blogspot.com/2011...urce=BP_recent

Arsenal’s fifth place in Deloitte’s Money League owes a great deal to their £94 million match day income, which is only surpassed by Real Madrid and Manchester United. In fact, 42% of Arsenal’s total revenue comes from match day, far higher than any other club, emphasising how reliant they are on their fans (including the “prawn sandwich brigade”), though it also serves to underline how feeble the commercial income is. Among the top 20 clubs in the Money League, only Aston Villa earn a lower proportion of their revenue from commercial activities.

^ This is the major problem the club has at the moment. As the AST clarified earlier this week, the club is locked in to (retrospectivley) awful, awful deals that were needed for the upfront money required for the stadium build. Essentially we're on a tightrope till the club can re-negotiate these deals or find better ones...the earliest this can happen is 2014. In the meantime Wenger has to play a careful balancing act. The article above suggests that there is in fact around 30 million specifically for transfers and wages...but given the precarious financial situation the club finds itself in, given that we have yet to qualify for this years CL (if we don't, forget profits the club will only break even) given the increasing inflation of wages by Citeh and the market it is entirely sensible what those at the club are trying to do at the moment.

Just because they don't come out and explicitly state the clubs poor finances (which would be a ludicrous thing to do) doesn't mean everythings hunky dory.

[AKBapologist]

*sigh*

Been saying this for weeks now. I think fans are pretty much entrenched in there views, and will cherry pick what they want to believe.

[dazthegooner]

Whilst Wenger is still manager I will give him a 100% backing (well what choice do we have) Maybe we should bring back Terry Neill (who was manager when I first started supporting Arsenal)

[Power n Glory]

I'm sick and tired of this debate about money. This is simple. Why can't we afford to give Nasri a new contract when we've just sold Clichy and giving Gibbs a chance in the first team?

We're selling Denilson and Bendy. That should free up around 90k - 100k. So why can't we afford to bump his wages up?

If money was such an issue, then how comes Wenger can tell the board that we're nit selling Nasri and we'll risk losing him on a free? Does that make any sense especially since we're supposed to be struggling financially? Why haven't we sold Cesc yet?

Fans are making up reasons and excuses for this club. The type of the excuse the club itself won't even use. It's embarrassing. Back in the Highbury days, stories about our bad sponsorship deals with people like Nike were supposed to be part of the reason why we couldn't compete with the big boys. It may be true, but the same story is floating around now and it seems like this move to the Emirates has been in vain or someone is leaking some serious bullshit to the fans.

[Boss]

I'm sick and tired of this debate about money. This is simple. Why can't we afford to give Nasri a new contract when we've just sold Clichy and giving Gibbs a chance in the first team?

We're selling Denilson and Bendy. That should free up around 90k - 100k. So why can't we afford to bump his wages up?

If money was such an issue, then how comes Wenger can tell the board that we're nit selling Nasri and we'll risk losing him on a free? Does that make any sense especially since we're supposed to be struggling financially? Why haven't we sold Cesc yet?

Fans are making up reasons and excuses for this club. The type of the excuse the club itself won't even use. It's embarrassing. Back in the Highbury days, stories about our bad sponsorship deals with people like Nike were supposed to be part of the reason why we couldn't compete with the big boys. It may be true, but the same story is floating around now and it seems like this move to the Emirates has been in vain or someone is leaking some serious bullshit to the fans.

this

We lack money to compete at the top level for the 40M+ players but nobody (or very few) are asking for that.

The way the club is run is a joke at times.

[cricketsi]

I'm sick and tired of this debate about money. This is simple. Why can't we afford to give Nasri a new contract when we've just sold Clichy and giving Gibbs a chance in the first team?

We're selling Denilson and Bendy. That should free up around 90k - 100k. So why can't we afford to bump his wages up?

If money was such an issue, then how comes Wenger can tell the board that we're nit selling Nasri and we'll risk losing him on a free? Does that make any sense especially since we're supposed to be struggling financially? Why haven't we sold Cesc yet?

Fans are making up reasons and excuses for this club. The type of the excuse the club itself won't even use. It's embarrassing. Back in the Highbury days, stories about our bad sponsorship deals with people like Nike were supposed to be part of the reason why we couldn't compete with the big boys. It may be true, but the same story is floating around now and it seems like this move to the Emirates has been in vain or someone is leaking some serious bullshit to the fans.

That's assuming the reasons for Nasri not signing a new contract are purely monetary. Do we know this to be the case?

[Boss]

That's assuming the reasons for Nasri not signing a new contract are purely monetary. Do we know this to be the case?

There's one of two cases re: Nasri:

1) It's about the (supposedly) desired extra 20k per week. Roughly a million extra a year. If Wenger looked at it financially, surely getting him to sign on for the low risk of 1M (assuming he doesn't completely tank next season) would be worth it as he'd either become a better player with us or be sold at the same price next year.

2) It's about wanting to be part of a team that can challenge, which speaks to the success of Wenger's projects when one of his most talented players wants to leave, his striker has asked for 'star' signings, the longest serving youth player has moved to the football project at Citeh and the captain desperately wants to get out. It'll continue unless he changes his policy.

Either way the club is fucking up with this shit.

[selassie]

I'm sick and tired of this debate about money. This is simple. Why can't we afford to give Nasri a new contract when we've just sold Clichy and giving Gibbs a chance in the first team?

We're selling Denilson and Bendy. That should free up around 90k - 100k. So why can't we afford to bump his wages up?

If money was such an issue, then how comes Wenger can tell the board that we're nit selling Nasri and we'll risk losing him on a free? Does that make any sense especially since we're supposed to be struggling financially? Why haven't we sold Cesc yet?

Fans are making up reasons and excuses for this club. The type of the excuse the club itself won't even use. It's embarrassing. Back in the Highbury days, stories about our bad sponsorship deals with people like Nike were supposed to be part of the reason why we couldn't compete with the big boys. It may be true, but the same story is floating around now and it seems like this move to the Emirates has been in vain or someone is leaking some serious bullshit to the fans.

This.

If we were that financially strapped we wouldn't hold onto Cesc or potentially risk losing Nasri for free.