Proud Wenger: Arsenal now have HIGHER ambitions

When Arsenal made the decision to invest their resources on increasing our revenue by building a bigger stadium, they did it with the full knowledge that they would be stretching their resources and would not be able to invest so much money in the squad.

But Arsene Wenger took on the challenge full on and miraculously kept us in the Champions League every single season. Now that gamble has paid off, and Wenger finally has money to spend. He has invested wisely, as the arrivals of Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez has shown, and now Le Prof believes we can now aim much higher that the “Wenger Trophy” from now on. In the second half of this season (when we finally reduced our injury list) we have shown real consistency with now ten matches undefeated.

Wenger believes this is just the start: “We feel we have made progress in our consistency, our quality and our stability.” Le Prof said on Arsenal.com. “That is what we want to continue and I believe it is important to finish as close as possible to Chelsea and come out of the season and think we are ready to challenge next season.

“It is difficult to know how strong every team will be next year but you gain as well your confidence from what you have achieved the year before and how you have moved forward. That is why it is very important that we continue to be consistent until the end of the season.”

“I’m proud of consistency because it’s not easy to produce quality every year, every day,” he continued. “For years we had to do it with less resources than people thought we had.

“People forget about that but we had to sell our best players for years to stay at the top. Today I think we have gone over that hurdle and we can have higher ambitions again but for years it was difficult.”

When you consider the stick that us Gooners gave Wenger when he was forced to sell our best players every year, we should be relieved that he swallowed his pride and didn’t jump ship to join other clubs that would have given him the resources to win trophies. We should be proud of what he has achieved especially this season, taking us into the Top Three after our awful start.

I firmly believe that Arsenal will improve even further next season (as long as the injury Gods smile on us for a change!) and we will make our mark on the world.

Onwards and Upwards!

Tags Highbury Wenger

25 Comments

  1. He done a fine job in my opinion and i like how now we have a young core of British and otherwise players who have been together now for a long time. We all know Fergies success was largely due to having a good core of British players whilst adding some top world talent.

    The ingredients are almost all there just missing a couple of spicy peppers.

    We do owe Wenger a large thanks and gratitude for not abandoning us in a way that many top managers would surely have, and he owes us similar for our undying support.. especially the wobs – Wenger only best superhero.

    1. It is nice to have some good young Brittish players developing at Arsenal but please don’t say that nationality means anything.

      Our invincibles wasn’t loaded with starters who was born in England.

      Also British…. in football? It is either English, Welsh, Scotish etc. Sorry for sounding a bit of a knob but the media has made this a subject I have to speak up about >.<
      If Arsenal had 11 starting Scotish players then do you think the papers would praise us when England fail yet again?
      The scotts call themselves scottish, the people from wales call themselves welsh, Irland is irish.. So why can it not be English from England? Why insist on calling us 'British'?

        1. That is the problem with English football. Wales is NOT a country.
          there is no political reason for Wales to have team. I don’t care if the Welsh are pissed, they are not a country. That would add Bale and Ramsey to the England team.
          We have Team GB in the Olympics and Wales for football and rugby.
          Makes no damn sense.
          Northern Ireland and Ireland; political constructs for grumpy old tossers.

      1. To be honest, it’s not much of a ‘core’.
        Wilshere? Hardly ever fit to play, and when he is fit, doesn’t usually start.
        Ox? Great prospect, but again isn’t first choice.
        Walcott? Barely seen him since he’s come back.
        Welbeck? Started well but now that Giroud is back he isn’t central to our team either.
        Gibbs? Lost his spot to Monreal.
        Chambers? Haven’t seen much of him since the New Year.
        Jenkinson? On loan, doesn’t look like he’s going to be first choice when he comes back either.

        Ramsey is the only ‘British’ player that is really in the core of our team. I’m guessing if he was English and someone like Gibbs was Welsh, we’d refer to it as an ‘English core’ rather than a British one.

        There’s no problem with having players from across the world make up the core of our team, though personally I’d like for us to produce a lot more talent from our academy. We have a lot of players from our academy that don’t really make it even to Premier League level. I think we really have to improve our academy. Yes we’ve brought through some great players, Bellerin and Coquelin being the most recent examples, but you looks at our U21 squad, they’re mid table in division 2. Yes we have a lot on loan but so do other top clubs, it doesn’t stop them. Top 3 in the U21 1st division are Man United, Liverpool and Chelsea… Shows you just how far we are behind our rivals.

        1. Add up the game time of Ramsey Wilshere Welbeck and Gibbs whilst fit and you cant tell me they arent very important players for the Arsenal. Gibbs has just lost his place but that is because Monreal had to bring his best and thankfully he did.

          Jenk Chambers could well have a huge futures also. Like it or not Wales and Scotland are classed as British and like it or not our British players are apart of our core… they have been for years.

          PS – I fully expect Theo to play a huge part next season.

  2. In Wenger we trust..this man saw us through the transition periods but still managed to keep us in the top8 clubs in Europe with limited resources for 10years..my friend thats consistency..Thank u le prof,Thank u monsiuer Wenger,a living LEGEND.

  3. “We do owe Wenger a large thanks of gratitude…”??? Now these are the exact kind of stupid, extreme comments that I really don’t like.

    Yeah, you are all gonna thumb down this comment, but please let’s be very realistic here. Indeed Wenger has done well for Arsenal, but the fans too deserve so much credit for being very patient with him and our seemingly numb owner for this long (until guys like me lost it very recently). I mean if Arsenal were as ambitious as the other big clubs have been, totally driven by the quest for trophies on a regular basis, Wenger could long have lost his job.

    Up until now, Arsene has been under no sort of pressure. He’s always had the freedom to do whatever pleases him at the club, and he’s payed beautifully well; why would he want to leave???

    I’m still a very young man, maybe not as old as some of you here, but I started supporting Arsenal formally in 1998, had a crush on the club in 1997 though. Come on, guys!!! Would you compare that Arsene to the one we’ve had up until recent???

    I do feel some kind of positive change taking place at the club. Don’t mind me, but I think Wenger is beginning to do the very right things he just should, but the f***king truth is that the avalanche of seemingly negative criticisms he got made him really sit up, to a great extent, in my opinion.

    No kidding, things do seem to be getting better. I do hope Arsene wins the league while Mourinho is still in charge of the bus, I pray that happens next season. But Wenger REALLY has to do everything he can to WIN the league next season.

    1. It took Chelsea a billion odd dollars in the transfer market and City roughly the same to compete at the top. Wenger’s been hanging in there with a fraction of the resources and now has a financial structure to offer our star players star wages and lure top talent…
      Don’t tell half the story, the clubs ambition has lifted with the resources afforded to the manager and our improvement has been clearly evident as a result.

      1. Essentially no one has done or can do (as of now) what wenger has done. Look how many teams in England have tried and still want to move stadiums but can’t cause it would cripple and destroy them.

        Teams like Liverpool spuds Everton would kill to make the CL consistently and even after lavish spending they are no closer than they were before. We have a genius and legend as a manger who not only set us up for the next 100 years but ensured we will have the financial capabilities and potential to always be in the mix with the top teams.

        There’s only one Arsene wenger

    2. I am going to print what you wrote and use it as toilet paper.
      “..but the f***king truth is that the avalanche of seemingly negative criticisms he got made him really sit up, to a great extent, in my opinion.”
      * I expected such effluent to come for Adrian Durham not an Arsenal supporter. You think Wenger listens to you? Are you delusional?

      Read the following very slowly;
      “Profit before tax of £11.1m was almost entirely from the football business £10.8 million,” *Swiss Ramble

      All of Arsenal’s money is from FOOTBALL operations ; not some Russian siphoning off funds to lend Chelsea FC(958 million) or some country selling oil to fund City.
      We can now buy class again; the difference is being able to buy Gervinho or able to afford Sanchez.

      Arsenal improved financial position are the reason for improved players. BAM!

  4. There were some very slim years for us moneywise. I can’t think of any manager in the world that could have seen us through that. Ensuring we never slipped out of the top four, not ONCE on a shoestring budget. The spuds spent almost £100 mil and still couldn’t do it, Liverpool have spent heavily and still haven’t been able to get top four two years on the bounce. Man U have spent huge this season and haven’t coasted in to the top four by any means. He wont leave his successor with a mess to clean up like fergie did, he’s laid down a very good foundation for who takes over next. He’s made mistakes, I doubt there is any manager that hasn’t. I have and will disagree with him at times, but it is for all the things he has done so far to protect this club and set us up for the future why he will always have my respect.

  5. So us vs Chelsea.. If I was to pick a combined 11, this would be it:

    Courtios > Ospina
    Ivanovic Mertesacker
    Cahill Monreal
    Coquelin = Matic
    Fabregas > Cazorla (just)
    Oscar Welbeck/Ox
    Hazard = Alexis
    Costa > Giroud

    So only 3 Arsenal players straight up beat their Chelsea counterparts. Disappointing. 2 that could go either way. 6 for Chelsea.. Perhaps I’m just harsher on our team than theirs, but I don’t think I’m wrong in saying we need improvement.

    We need top quality players this summer. We don’t need any more gap fillers like we’ve been signing recently, all the gaps have now been filled (well, other than 1 more DM). We need players that are straight up better than players in other teams. That’s what we’re lacking now. If we have higher ambitions now then I want to see that reflected in the players we go after in the transfer market. People say I’m silly for wanting us to get Reus, even I say I’m silly for thinking that he’d join, but that’s the calibre of player we need to sign if we’re really going to move forward as a club.

    1. Mou inherited his back 5, the best by mile in the PL and arguably one of the best in Europe, he didn’t buy any of them – not much for him to do to be honest. Only Kos would challenge for Cahill. Chelseas’s front 6 cost an average of £30M a time – we have 2 £30+ purchases. In the circumstances I would be shocked if Chelsea didn’t have a better team.

      Also depends which Chelsea team we compare – the 2014 version or the 2015 version. People are very quick to make excuses for Chelsea’s drop off this year in terms of fluency, style etc but no-one in the media will jump to our defence and talk about Giroud, Ozil, Kos, Ramsey and Debuchy being out for much of the start of the 2014 season. I thought Chelsea had a world class squad with 2 players in every position?

      Frankly, the only 2015 Chelsea front 5 player that would indisputably walk in to our team, no questions whatsoever would be Hazard. And, if we did it strictly by position it would be a marginal decision because he would be up against Alexis. Argue about Cesc v Santi/Ozil all you want but no shoe-in. And honestly, who on here would be wetting their pants with excitement if we signed Oscar or Willian?

  6. It is very important to make the distinction between – The Club and The Squad.

    The foundations of the club are rock solid – academy, stadium, financial strength (lack of debt!), global fan base, marque sponsors…all these ensure continuity at the highest level.
    The Club persists long after this incarnation of the Squad has gone. Long after AW has gone.

    The Squad is built through acquisition of young talent, world class players and the development of high potential youth through the academy, U18’s, and U21’s.

    As many of you have correctly highlighted, AW has done an outstanding job in balancing BOTH…I would give him a 8.5/10 (nobody is perfect).

    The pipeline of youth and developing players is very encouraging and many respects very exciting – Zelalem, Gnabry, Hector, Hayden, Martinez, Bielik, Crowley, Toral, Akpom.

    The current squad is being added to – Gab, Ozil, Chambers, Welbz, Sanchez, Debuchy, Ospina, in the past 2 seasons, with the promise of a couple more “top, world class” in the next window.

    So from where I stand – things are looking quite brilliant for my Gunners and I cannot fathom how any fan/supporter or any other 3rd party can sit there and criticise the achievements of THE CLUB and the SQUAD.

    Yes we should have won at least 1 Champions League trophy by now and with a little more luck (knock out competitions require an element of luck whether you want to agree or not). We should have won at least 1 more League Cup :). So that’s why I give AW an 8.5/10.

    I would love to hear how the armchair experts would have navigated the Club and Squad over the past 11 years – instead of just saying not good enough…spell out what you would have done. That should make for very interesting bed-time reading.

  7. Well said. For me, and anyone who cares to think properly about it there have been 3 distinct phases to AW’s tenure.

    Phase 1: 1996-2004. Nuff said – assume there are not too many who want to have a pop at him for this period.

    Phase 2: 2005-2012. Austerity period. Why we didn’t spend is maybe up for discussion and it would not have been AW’s decision – but the fact there was a zero net spend is there for all to see.
    Why people ignore it or are in denial is beyond me. Few managers could have eked out continuous top 4 UCL qualification on a zero spend.

    Phase 3: 2013 – Present. For me phases 1 & 2 are done and dusted, water under the bridge – I am only thinking of post-Ozil Arsenal. There will be no excuses offered by me in defence of Wenger if we are not PROPERLY competing for the PL for the remainder of his contract.

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