It is time for some perspective because the truth is that if you believe and listen to some commentators, pundits, former players and fans about Arsenal you could be forgiven for thinking they will be fighting relegation next season.
Was the season a disappointment in the end? yes, of course it was but just two different results, one in the Premier League and one in the Europa League and things would have been very different and that is how close the margins are when you are talking about the top-six.
We do need a mini clearout but we are not the only club that does and if you think we are the only top-six club that has serious issues with some of our players you are mistaken.
We have the Ozil issue, Man Utd have Pogba, Sanchez and Lukaku, you want to read some of the comments said about Kieran Trippier from Tottenham fans, hero to zero in the space of just ten months, go back a year and see what they were saying about Moussa Cissoko compared to how they revere him now, Chelsea with Jorginho and so on. We are not the only club at the top end of the Premier League that want players gone.
Chelsea are set to lose their star man Eden Hazard, Liverpool may lose Mohamed Salah, Spurs could lose Christian Eriksen, United a whole host of players and so on.
Remember there were just two points separating third from fifth at the end of the season and with Chelsea facing the loss of their best player and a transfer ban and Tottenham chairman Daniel Levy notoriously frugal there is no guarantee that either of them will strengthen any better than us in the summer.
All this talk about Wolves, Everton and Leicester City being close to us is stretching it in my opinion, even with our horrendous end of season run-in where we lost points to all three we still finished 13,16 and 18 points ahead of them respectively.
We reached a major European final beating some top teams on the way and yes we collapsed in the second half in the final but guess what, shit happens occasionally, it will not always be like that.
Then there is the transfer budget, yes, it is low in comparison to say Man City but they are facing penalties for not playing by the rules and clubs like United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Tottenham have had to sell to bump up their own transfer budgets, I mean, where do you think the money for Virgil van Dijk and Allison came from for Liverpool, Phillipe Coutinho anyone?
We will be selling players and so the idea that we have just £40 Million to spend is nonsense, it will be closer to £100 Million in my opinion when all is said and done, just wait and see.
We have some fantastic young talent coming through and Unai Emery has already indicated he will be looking at youth to fill some gaps and we will strengthen in the right areas.
So, while it does feel like we are in decline and in freefall when you analyse it deeply you will soon realise not all is as bad as it seems and our closest rivals are not necessarily in that much better a position either.
I don’t agree.We pushed Wenger Out together now we need to kick out Silent ‘Stan’ Kroenke together.And then we will see progress.Remember : United we kick out divided we struggle and remain pathetic.Kroenke Out!
Only one person can get Silent Stan out and that is Silent Stan, it is the situation we have to live with. The Board are powerless and basically function in name only.
Have we made progress. If you believe the words of the mass media the club has sunk to its lowest position in the history of the club. they would have us believe the club is a wash out. It isn’t.
The new manager has taken over at a difficult time. In his managerial career he took charge of Valencia when they were in a much worse state than we are and he turned the fortunes of the club round. We have to believe he can do the same for us.
This past season he kept the ship afloat despite the corruption that English football is riddle with.
We have to accept we can’t change the factors (Kronke’s grip on Arsenal)we cannot change but there other factors worth trying to change because they can be changed.
When the dust has settled and closed the transfer season there will no doubt be a thousand and one opinions as to how well we have done. We can safely predict the media will tell us we have a 1000% failed and as usual they will be a 1000% wrong.
As usual I will join other Arsenal fans and be 1000% optimistic for the new season. It is going to be a long hard empty summer.
I’m with you on this.the media feeds the frenzy of a failed club to some fans but I ain’t taking a single bite into it.I strongly believe we will improve this season if we get hard workers into the team and us fans give unai & the team the full support they need to thrive
main problem in Arsenal is the OWNER
I’d like to see youth given more of a chance at arsenal. There are some fantastic, exciting and talented youngsters onboard just now and they deserve a chance to show what they are capable of. Not just an odd ten mins as substitute but a few games and in their natural positions not emergency cover in a position they have rarely played in before. Come on arsenal, give youth a chance to shine.
I agree and on the bench should be 1 player for each position so if a player got injured say CB then take CB off the bench and he would slot without disrupting the team flow
Great article, Martin
We can follow Liverpool’s way in rebuilding if we manage to sell Aubameyang or Lacazette, just like when they sold Suarez and Coutinho. Only those two players still have 50+ M selling values, whereas their teammates’ price tags are low, including our most popular footballer Ozil
If we can sell our useless no 10s, we can allocate their positions for young wingers. Arsenal have to move on from the timid football style to the more courageous one
Arsenal problem can be solve Now the problem is wish formation did emery want to use next season. If it 4231 or 433 I will advise we get rid of Aubameyang that is if we can get 80mil for his sale reason being he is getting old. Now imagine adding 80mil to the 40mil that we got a total of 120mil, and selling Mustafi, Ozil, koscielny, ospinal, Jenkinson, Elneny, Monreal, Xhaka, mkhitayarn, chambers and Mavropanos. If we can get 100mil from them believe me it a good business (but to be real can we get 100mil from these bunch of average players) OK let assume we get get it after players sales that leave us with a total of 220mil transfer budget never to forget the adidas 60mil money that leave us with 280mil?? here we go! ???
PLAYERS IN
Saliba (St Etienne) 25mil
Dunk (Brighton) or Vestergard (Southampton) 15-20mil
Tierney (Celtic) 35mil
Meunier (PSG) or Yousef Atal (NICE) 22mil
Emanuel Reynoso (Borca junior) 22mil
Rabiot (PSG) FREE
Ziyech (Ajax) 25mil
Fraser (Bournemouth) 30mil
Sarr (Rennes) 35mil
Martinelli 6mil
Maddison (Leicester city) or Doucoure (Watford) 55 to 60mil.
OUR LOAN PLAYERS TO BRING BACK
Martinez, Rowe, Beilik, Nelson and Asano.
So all our signings will cost is exactly 280! please is that not a good business? and we go into the summer with this squad ??
GOALKEEPERS
leno
Martinez
Macey
DEFENDERS
Saliba
Sokratis
Holding
Bellerin
Dunk or Vestergard
Tierney
Meunier or Yousef Atal
Kolasinac
MIDFIELDERS
Torriera
Reynoso
Rabiot
Doucoure or Maddison
Sarr
Martinelli
Nelson
Beilik
Willock
Rowe
Ziyech
Fraser
Iwobi
Saka
ATTACKERS
lacazette
Asano
Nketiah.
Plz is this squad no good enough to challenge for title? Wot ur opinion.
The best suggestion ever,Hope someone in authority takes it seriously
We could get Neves from Wolve
When we compare the decline during Wenger’s era (not taking anything away from our legendary coach), and how our season has always ended by February in years, we wouldn’t see this season as a failure. I’m not in anyway justifying our failure this season but seeing positives in an already split milk. I will cut Unai some slack in his first season( knowing how hard it is to rid oneself of a long time philosophy). Next season, I will be supporting the club again despite this season’s heartbreak.
i guess we are at the best level when the loanees are back.if we sell xhaka example then chambers replaces him. major concern will be on the wings and if that is to be solved promise you that no side will want to play us.
Personally after the EL game I was disappointed, a terrible season no CL, then on Saturday night it turned out to be a glorious season in my hatred for Spuds !
Incidently, if you know of a depresssed Spud supporter and are too kind hearted by not putting them out of their perrenial misery then you can give them The Samaritans phone number of….0800 101010….that`s 0800 won nothing won nothing won nothing.
On another blog there was talk of the bad vibes between Emery and Ozil and that one has to go between manager and player, I thought of a compromise…………….make Ozil player manager with Xhaka and Mustafi as his assistants ! 😆
??
Nice one.
Yes, Ozil can’t even motivate himself given his wages; how do you expect he would motivate the Arsenal squad as coach?
Good point Admin on the other clubs and I am sure every club in the league has issues with one or two players, but we are Arsenal fans talking about Arsenal issues I couldn’t give a Monkey’s about Chelsea, spurs,Utd or any other club we are all followers of our great club and in my opinion we have maintained a steady fall in standards by letting players leave for nothing or selling our best players, defensively we have declined inexcusably since Wengers all out attack and entertain plans got found out by long ball merchants like Allerdyce and Pulis and we have never recovered from it,no stand out leaders no defensive kingpin and no hard ball winner in central midfield and to agree with Indfalcon no fully committed owner and board, they didn’t even bother to turn up at the euro final, they are divi grabbing cheese and cucumber sandwich eating fatcats getting rich off the backs of the fans.
We won’t be fighting relegation
We will be fighting for 5-8 th position
I dont agree with the headline as we are utterly shit !
We could not get CL qualification when all the socalled big teams(apart from Chavs) were playing CL, that should have been our chance to qualify !
We got to EL final, so fcuking what, it`s not the hardest co,mpetition to go far in is it !
As for our team, I cant think of a time in the years of Wenger and now Dick when we had the most amount of deadwood !…………..theres` always been a few deadwood in every year, but the last two years it`s like more than half the squad are shit!
With an owner who has so far invested £0 in the team we are going to be average for many years my friends !
Are you a realist or a pessimist as to your final sentence? Or could it be something in between? Certainly the Kroenke factor is a huge ongoing handicap and one should overlook that. But on the plus side, we no longer have to suffer either Wenger or Gazidis who were responsible for generally poor and unmotivated players brought in,esp in defence, but also in midfield and for the calamitous and numerous contracts mistakes. So all in all, a curates egg; good in parts and some , though not too much , cause for hope.
no one, not “one”
Never thought of it like that, Jon , a bit of both I suppose !
There`s a couple of scenario`s that are playing through my mind…1) Seems to me that Emery is waiting to see how many players he off loads in transfers and out of contracts to see how much he has to spend both on purchasing and wages.
and 2) he uses a lot of youngsters who are chomping at the bit, will that work today with all the money ?……….think of George Graham bringing in cheap buys and using the youngsters, it worked then and it worked for ManU with their class of was it `92 ?.
Or Maybe 3) he does a “Leicester”, but all the stars and planets need to be alligned for that to happen again imo.
BUT…………..Man C have so much money, how do you competet with that ?
It is always worrying if you have to start hoping for the weakness of your opponents in order to create hope about the future.
IMO we have the weakest squad of the top 6 teams. We probably have the smallest budget of the top six teams. With the exception of Man U we have the weakest manager of the top 6.
And if you want to look for signs of improvement under the new manager you have to have a willing eye and you won’t find it during the run in.
All worrying signs.
I am interested in how and why do you rate Emery lower than Sarri?
Stan is honestly not the biggest problem we’ve had of the past 5 years, it’s selling players and renewing contracts. Gazidis is the boogeyman here not Stan.
Liverpool Sales:
Coutinho £142m
Benteke £28m
Sakho £25m
Ings £20m
Solanke £19m
Ibe £16m
Danny Ward £13m
Joe Allen £14m
Total – £277m
Arsenal Sales:
Chamberlain £35m
Perez £4m
Cazorla £0m
Wilshere £0m
Ramsey £0m
Sanchez £0m
Giroud £10m
Walcott £20m
Total – £69m
We’ve got no money because of the business guys at the top of the club, not necessarily Stan.
Where was Stan last Wednesday night???
One good signing and maintain the same squad and hopping for better luck with injuries would give us top 4
Its amazing how many idiots there are amongst our supporters i quote “I cant think of a time in the years of Wenger and now Dick when we had the most amount of deadwood”The deadwood you talk of were signed during the Wenger years.
If you can’t be optimistic bugger off, we all knew (well those of us who are realistic)this was going to be a tough project post Wenger. The one thing is I don’t blame Kronke for the apparent state of the club. He bought Arsenal the business he just wants us to use our money to run our football club like how it used to work pre Abramovich.
Liverpool have very little money only generated through sales, its taken 4 seasons to get where they are. Chelsea have little money, an owner in exhile and a 2 window ban. Utd have spent close to 1billion had 4 managers to build a 6th place team. City are cheating fraudsters working around and through the rules illegally to compete. Spurs tbh are the only team like us with some integrity in the top 6 and the will be hampered by their over budget stadium.
The person to blame for the us failing on the pitch and as a business has hot footed it to Milan. Gazidis did this to our club and the best bit of business this club has done is letting him leave. I believe he would have been sacked if he didn’t leave. Raul has a history of success building the current Barcelona dynasty with pep, trust him.
We will see big changes this summer lets see what happens over the next 3 months
A heartening post full of truths. All I differ on from you is about KROENKE. I passionately believe that ANY owner of a huge business, as all top clubs are, has a moral duty to be involved and to invest in order to improve his assets value. He also has a moral duty to the fans who are the lifeblood of all clubs, to show interest and love for the club and it is US fans who keep the club alive. No club can survive long without fans.He is failing in this big time, soon Kroenke I completely differ from you. But all else you say is good.
It seems to me KSE are trying to juggle too many balls. At the end of the day commercial income from the American franchises is something we can only dream of getting. We can’t change our owners unfortunately it was disappointing not to see them at the final too. Vinai and Raul run our club they seem to pay guys to do the job for them.
First of all I`m not an idiot and I wont bugger off for being pessimistic. I may or may not agree with what you write, but I wont call you an idiot. We all have different opinions and if we all agreed there would be no point in commenting !
Kroenke bought shares and owns the club, but has never put a dime/penny into the club to speculate to accumalate, then you have every single person who has ever commented on here having put money into the club whether tickets or goods and only owns his love for Arsenal.
Try being a bit more respectfull to others opinions, it could be someones mother/father/sister/brother, treat others how you would like to be treated yourself. Have a good day.
Well then that explains you calling our current manager “Dick”. You want respect? Shame on you to expect something you cant give in return. Stop talking about hurting someone’s brother/mother etc when you dont realise the dame fact you are preaching. Bugger off
If you know British humour Shekar233, you would know that Dick Emery was a Comedy TV show in the 60/70`s, so calling him Dick is not meant to be in a rude way, but in an endearing manner !………I`ll accept your apology for not knowing and being rude……….if not you can go bugger yourself !
I miss the days when Arsenal sold their best players. Now we give them away for free. And the ones we get some money for go way under market value. Everything transfer related when to h… when David Dein left. When he negotiated for us we made great deals, after he left it’s been crap.
Let’s hope Vinai and Raul will ensure the good old Arsenal that sells their best players is back. They can start by selling Auba, should he refuse to extend and do the Coutinho with the funds they get from Auba’s sale. The more important one is to extend Lacazette.
James, I agree Gazidas was a major culprit for the current state.
However, I find it hard to believe that he was the only one in favor of signings like Mustafi and Xhaka, both of whom cost us a lot and both of whom are incomplete players. We would be in much better shape if Mustafi and Xhaka were complete players.
Let’s not even speak about Ozil.
I am not sure rebuilding through buying is possible on our budget. The £40 million budget we have is probably not unlike the budget of newly promoted teams.
I sincerely hope we manage to raise £100 million through
selling and bring along some of our young players.
We had a 40m budget last season too, we spent 75m plus signing in fees and wages. So i wouldn’t read too much into media speculation on our assumed budget. There were players that Gazidis pushed forward on and signed because he ballsed up contracts and capturing Wengers top targets. Girvinho, Perez and Mustafi, i have in on good authority that Wenger didnt want to sign them. Towards the end i don’t think Wenger’s advice and wants were taken into account. Look at Mbappe we should have thrown money at him when Wenger spoke to him in 2017 Griezmann another one who was waiting for the call to confirm a transfer was sorted. But Gazidis in his wisdom didnt authorise them
No point complaining about Kroenke
He is sole owner of Arsenal pretty much. He’s got our testicles in the palm of his hands (apologies for any lady gooners) ready to clench.
All we can hope for is a creative and visionary Manager staff and scouts to find amazing talent for the future and be able to sell our deadwood or the amazing talent and create more funds to get top quality players (ie Spurs did with BALE and Modric)
we need creativity not only on the field but in management and coaching staff too
At the moment, We are NOT in a better position. We must sell our deadwood and somehow get better players.
Easier said than done but needs to be done none the less
I have Zero confidence in the following players
OZIL
Mkhitaryan
Mustafi
Xhaka
Elneny
Jenkinson
Iwobi
Honestly, I’d prefer the guys we recently got rid off Walcott, Cazorla, Wilshere, Ramsey than these guys
I have to add Sokratis to your list. I like or respect his attitude or spirit but that’s where it ends.
I believe the best way to succeed in life is to live on hope. I hope Arsenal will improve the squad and perform better. Even if some players leave the Club we shall get others and move on. No player is indispensable. We failed to make top four and even lost Euro finals miserably when we had those players. So how can anyone claim invincibity among our current players?
On the issue of Kroenke, I think we need to accept that he will be around until he decides to sell to someone else. It is futile to continue calling for Kroenke’s removal because it won’t happen! Even he dies his offspring will inherit his property. Perhaps we need to use the persuasive approach to convince him about the benefits of investing in the team. We can cite him the example of Liverpool which has earned 250 million pounds from on field success and other vivid examples.
In the meantime let Emery use the resources at his disposal to do the best he can. Let him sell some players, buy those within his budget and promote some players from the academy. He may also have to sell one or two super stars to raise more money. We need fresh faces because our team has become stale. We have to fix all the gaps and move one. We should do it step by step and we shall get there.
You are right to highlight the young talent coming through and the fact that their mentor, Freddie Ljumberg is being promoted to assist Emery will hopefully encourage the Manager to trust these youngsters in the PL next season.As for comparisons with the likes of Leicester and Wolves,anyone with a degree of knowledge in football will recognise that we are weaker than these two sides defensively.Unless we can offload our woeful defenders there is in my view a very real possibility of us being overtaken by these Clubs.
If I remember properly as the start of the season everybody agreed this was a transition year and no one had any expectations,we missed cl football by one point,reached a European final suddenly the season is a disaster,i think Emery did a good job with what we had and spent compared to Chelsea and man utd,he knows what we need and if given the funds he can take us foward
The jury is stil out regarding Emery as far as I’m concerned.
By the way it is not often that I say it but the author is right about everything he wrote,very good article!!
I have read everyone’s divided opinion on who to blame at the current state or arsenal and respect all that has been said. I agree on most parts but disagree on some. The debate will always continue in circles so all I want to do is remind everyone the dream us fans were sold.
We moved from our beloved Highbury where our best memories and all our history as a big club were held.
Even though money was reinvested into a new stadium I’m sure some shareholders profited during these years.
The fans were sold pipe dreams too keep us quiet and we spent a lot the past 10 yrs waiting on promises to be delivered.
We have been PATIENT, believing that once the new stadium was paid off we would compete with the biggest clubs in the WORLD and that it was necessary to starve ourselves of luxury buys because better days were ahead.
Well we have been in our stadium a few years now and yet too see any return from the promises we were fed.
All we have received in return is a larger stadium and a team that deserves their position in the league.
Our history/youth set up/training facilities /stadium/international support ect, all suggest we are a big club but we can only be judged based on the players that represent us on the pitch and clearly they are not good enough.
From promising us for years that we will be able to compete with the best teams in the world once the stadium is paid off to now being told we are a self sustainable club is two different types of stories and I feel betrayed.
So in my opinion Arsenal football club have a huge debt to repay, US fans and start delivering on the promises we have been fed for so many years.
My patients is wearing thin, as I feel many of us, have been mugged off.
Of course mistakes were going to be made,we were the first ones to do it,it all went down hill after the cl final 06,spurs are copying wengerand was still a nightmare,din,t forget back then TV revenues were miles away From today,sponsorships dealsplayers values…warning to the spuds!