Former Gunner claims Arsenal fans deserve more than balanced books

Emmanuel Petit has claimed that the shareholders have been prioritised over Arsenal fans, and that needs to be addressed.

The Gunners have gone 13 years without  a Premier League title, and have failed to mount a sustainable challenge for top spot for a number of years.

The club’s spending has come under question a number of times, and that is most certainly down to the backroom staff, and the return is what they deserve for their outlay, but we deserve more as devoted fans.

“Wenger has been criticised for not bringing in enough players, and you cannot be satisfied with an Arsenal manager winning just an FA Cup at the end of the season,” Petit said.

“He has to compete for titles at home and in Europe – what the shareholders want is not exactly what the fans want, and the shareholders are happier than the fans, and have been for the past ten years.

“Fans aren’t stupid. They understand a season can be made difficult by injuries or the manager making incorrect decisions, it happens all the time.

“But when it happens every year, then you can understand their frustration when you see the money they spend to follow their team.

“I think Arsenal are impressive in the way they manage the club, but they need to ask themselves whether they have found the right balance between the fans and the shareholders. You need to keep your customers happy.

“The problems aren’t caused only by the club, but also by the players – they need to get back their winning mentality.”

So far this summer, we have bought only one player in Alexandre Lacazette, while landing Sead Kolasinac on a free transfer, and that surely isn’t enough to change a fifth placed finish into a first is it?

Pat J

Tags Arsenal Petit shareholders

29 Comments

  1. The players cannot get their winning mentality back, if the club’s mentality is still more profit oriented than achievement. Arsenal could change the manager and most of the players, but their ambition, transfer policy, youth development and management would remain the same.

    I think the contract rebels have had enough with Arsenal’s mentality and policy, after all they have to think about their careers and incomes. Only loyal fans are able to wait for more than a decade.

    1. gotanidea,
      Couldn’t have said it better myself. The biggest problem with our once great club is the ownership and board, Kroenke said it himself “if It was about winning titles I wouldn’t have bought A.F.C” . How can anything change when the owner has this mentality, the only way Arsenal will ever get back to where we belong is if Usmanov or Dognote take over and start to do what other Billionaire owners do. I don’t understand why the old owners sold to this Yank. He knows nothing about football and treats A.F.C as a business. Never taken a dollar out off his pocket to invest in the club other than what he spent to buy it which is more than likely to triple if either one off the 2 I mentioned above are able to convince him to sell . Please Stan you have had your time and failed, your never gonna be the owner us loyal fans need you to be, you stand to make a truck load off cash in the sale SO PLEASE PLEASE TAKE THE MONEY AND GO, if you care at all about the club you will realize that you going is in the best interests off Arsenal and you will go.
      C.O.Y.G

  2. Be careful what you wish for, they kept saying! Sacking Wenger will mean an end to CL football for us…wait a minute!

  3. every season fans want at least 4 signings

    Judging from the signings and the way City and Utd plays

    Utd and City are favourites to win the title

    1. MU dominated Swansea with their player’s physicalities. Their players’ strength, speed and height are superior compared to Swansea’s.

      Arsenal could follow Mourinho’s style, by buying more monsters like N’zonzi, Carvalho, Draxler, Ibrahimovic, etc. They could dominate the Premier League with this method.

      But teams like MU will struggle against skillful European teams like Barcelona and Manchester City. In UEFA Super Cup, Pogba-Matic-Herrera were dominated by Modric-Casemiro-Isco, highly skillful midfielders.

      1. To put real madrid and man city in one sentence is a joke. Real.madrid are class or two above everyone. United problem will be when jose gives too much respect to their opponents . If they line up like this against most of the teams they will do well. They have the strongest squad and jose will be cherishing it.

  4. Where’s that guy that wrote a really long essay in response to my post stating that we can’t really expect much difference as the squad is more or less the same? He was rambling on about how we need to stop thinking about signings as signings aren’t the be all and end all and how I was deluded saying both Manchester teams were better than last year.

    Well I just checked and Lukaku, Martial and Pogba scored today. That’s three recent recruits and guess what they all cost a hell of a lot of money. Looks like signings do seem to make a difference.

    1. If Arsenal is still playing with the old system, new high quality players are required. Even Arsenal’s football level is still the same, the high quality players would still be able to score and assist with their speed, strength and height.

      MU’s new signings are Lukaku, Matic and Lindelof. They all have similarities with Pogba, they are fast, strong and tall.

      Arsenal could also dominate with Mourinho’s style, by buying players with similar statures and physical attributes. But it would be better if Arsenal improve their football level with more skillful players and better system…

  5. “Fans aren’t stupid. They understand a season can be made difficult by injuries or the manager making incorrect decisions, it happens all the time.”
    At Arsenal and with Wenger it happens more than anyone.
    Book balancing is more important than success on the field – teams with that ethos do not win the league.
    Arsenal are not a challenger – sooner people realise the better…

  6. When people say Arsenal fans are not stupid, Quick poll who has purchased any of the new kits this season, Then you will find out how stupid some fans are regarding shareholders being very happy.

  7. It’s kind of disturbing watching Utd get two 4 nil wins in a row when folks were making fun of them last season. As much as I hate both Manchester clubs, City more for being owned by a country and were nothing before then. They addressed their weaknesses from last season, City had aging defenders and Utd had multiples draws. Kolasinac and Lacazette were great starts but if we don’t address our blatant weaknesses it’s going to be a long season with hopefully an FA Cup in the end to soften the blow. Not a good way of convincing needed players to stay in my opinion. We need someone to play with and compliment Xhaka along with a replacement for Gabriel with Chambers looking likely to follow him out the door. Minimum!!!

    1. It’s how easy they pick up clean sheets that makes them even more daunting, now they’ve added some firepower, and muscle. I hope someone beats them quickly before they pick up too much confidence, they need a set back.

  8. We the fans are helpless. Wenger agrees with the board, the board agrees with Wenger. Why? Because both are the beneficiaries( Financially). As for the fans, the joy of victories and trophies is unfortunately a secondary priority at Arsenal FC. It is good to know that someone in the capacity of Petit feels our PAIN.

  9. Treating fans like customers? The two are not the same thing. We are viewed as customers by the board. But once you have the philosophy on football it damages the club. If you view the fans like the customers, then you view the club as a business, if you view the club as a business the ONLY measure of success if finances, if success is defined by money nothing matters on the pitch. Then what are we as fans?
    You can’t treat fans like customers.
    This is major gripe that many fans have and it’s not simply an arsenal problem, but a premier league one. Although I can’t think of a set of fans in the country that have suffered more under this philosophy. Even if we are customers to them, we’re not getting value for money. Paying for a 5 star hotel, but sleeping in a bed and breakfast.
    What do customers do when they aren’t getting value for money? They shop elsewhere. But we can’t do that, why?
    Because we’re fans not customers.
    Anyway, COYG let’s get these three points but more importantly put in title contending performance. Just watched United, I ain’t gonna lie. They look dangerous….

  10. It’ll be interesting to see who he picks at right wing-back. Bellerin needs to pick himself up, he has the attributes and he can be good at defending when he wants to be, so he really needs to start taking it more serious. Oxlade watched footage, which is impressive, because he picked up some positioning tips and he does seem a more intelligent player lately. Bellerin should do likewise, I don’t know why but I get the feeling that Bellerin is of the belief that because he has experience at fullback it means that he is good to go.

    I’d like to see an angrier Bellerin, one that goes in hard even when he doesn’t have to. Win the ball and leave the man sitting at the same time. He should in my opinion concentrate a little more on the stopping of players, than at going past them and being an outlet for our team. He shouldn’t leave such a big gap between himself and the nearest CB, the CB doesn’t want to be coming out to the touchline to try block a cross, he wants Bellerin and another to do that so he and the other two CB’s can try win anything which might get past them. Maybe Barcelona are after getting into his head a little when they took the rejection badly. I remember they got into Henry’s head before that final. They chipped away at Bellerin’s abilities on the ball, and maybe it affected his overall game. Team shape, unity, the right place right time, work on this and I think he’ll be fine. He’s still a potentially great player, he has a very high ceiling, but he needs to work his socks off to reach it.

  11. We are currently 7 goals behind on GD. So today we need to win and do it with style.

    Confident? I am not..

  12. seeing Man u winning like that just boils me with anger…why cnt we address the weakness we have just for once,we always go into a new season thinking that we are the best untill things start falling apart

    1. Petits honest assessment of AFC fundamental financial objective should answer your question quite succinctly.

      It’s beyond asinine that Wenger is the only futbol mind(Ivan the terrible doesn’t count. Lol) within the current hierarchy of a club the size of Arsenal. The man is the sole captain of a sinking ship adrift @ sea.

      Sad, sad times

    2. True, when we need a strong combating DM we get Elneny or Xhaka, the problem is still there and we can all see how soft we are at the middle. Man U got Magic to solve that issue, Mourinho always seem to know which position to strengthen whenever he goes to a new team, and it won’t take time till he wins something huge, like Europa last season. And we are still here hoping Wenger does a miracle with his crop of overpaid lads

  13. well till now we r having a very good transfer window because :
    1- we bought a new lb who is better than what we have (can play as lcb as a bonus )
    2- a new cf who can turn to be top class
    3-till now we r keeping the ox ozil and alexis (the board could have easily sold the 3 for more than 150 mil so i believe there is a change in the policy of the club )
    what we r arguing about now is buying a CM and a CB i believe that we need really is a CM an athletic one but also a good ball distributor to combine el neny and ramsey qualities.

    all we need is 1- to focus completely on the league and let the kids and the fringe players play the cups and europe
    2-players to stick to the plan and no lapses of concentrations (arsene should stop being a daddy and be ruthless with who cost us points )

  14. For people who have been blaming Wenger… Think of it like this.

    If a baker won awards for producing top baked good with fresh ingredients was asked to keep producing top quality baked goods but given rotten ingredients so save money, what do you think the result will be?

    Wenger wanted Lacazette for multiple years.
    Wenger was given Welbeck and then Perez before we finally got Lacazette.

    Wenger asked for a top player and was given a rotten one, WTF do people think was going to happen???

    This is an issue with the ownership, not providing the right players for the manager, managers have their styles and as such the players need to fit into the managers style otherwise it becomes unbalanced.

    Would any of you give a sushi chef a beefsteak and expect the perfect steak because it is meat still?

    The person who we lost that was ambitious was Dein. We lost him when the old board got greedy, Silent Stan and Usmanov got their shares in 07 and the old board, the ones who called Dein crazy for investing his own money into AFC, they seen an opportunity to cash in.

    Dein left due to issues that couldn’t be resolved, Dein wanted AFC to have funds to keep buying players and to keep winning (while making fat stacks of cash from winning) and that is why he found Usmanov and sold his shares to him.

    Dein left, Gazidis came in as CEO, the role Dein was doing. Gazidis was hired to put £££ in the bank, that simple. More £££ we had in the bank while maintaining UCL football then the more the share prices increased. Dein used to do transfers, Gazidis took that role, not Wenger.

    This very website had an article highlighting how Gazidis didn’t think Wenger knew what players was worth and a bit clueless about valuations… Wenger wants to risk losing around £200 million in players due to contract issue, doesn’t sound like someone who wants to save every damned penny he gets hold off does it?

    Funny how we hear about this after Wenger went around Gazidis and directly to Silent Stan about his contract and Wenger got Silent Stans backing…

    Lastly if we look at say… City. They get transfers done. They got the guy who used to do transfers for Barca. We got Gazidis from soccer in the states.

    Gazidis needs to be upgraded for AFC to look forward, who do you all think will be finding the next manager after Wenger????????????
    We can moan at Silent Stan till Hell freezes over but will he leave if he is making profit? I doubt it. We might be able to get him to replace Gazidis with a winner though and then watch the domino effect happen.

  15. Pity Dein didn’t do his research more diligently then before he introduced Stan to The Arsenal! As much as he was the catalist for good regarding Wenger, he was also responsible partly for where we are now.

  16. I hate Mourinho but I have to agree that he is a better manager than Wenger.
    The problem ManU had last season was they didn’t have a strong DM who would complement Pogba to go forward and attack.So they bought Matic.They had a ageing forward in Jlatan and they bought in Lukaku.He identified the problems with the team and he addressed it.
    Question every fan needs to ask is has Wenger done that in the last five seasons? I am not counting the years from 2006 to 2012 as we had huge debt owing to new stadium.But in last five years we have not addressed the problems that we have and instead we have stuck with our policy of panic buying and then struggling to ship them out when they fail.

  17. Arsenal has been the same for the past decade and probably this season gonna be same all same
    old stories – to make my story short, right now we are way behind teams say Real Madrid they way they dominated Bercelona on those three games i dont know about Arsenal if we can stand a chance and biggest problem facing Arsenal has been recruitment of quality players – when we need atleast 5 new players we always brings in 1 or 2 and starting convincing ourselves we gonna win championship if we loose those two of our new players is the same old Arsenal i just dont know what to say any more

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