There are very few Arsenal fans that would disagree that Unai Emery has done an excellent job so far this season, considering the resources he has had to use and the dire amount of injuries he has had to contend with. But although we are still in the fight for the Top Four, we are still a long way from competing for the title. According to the Gunners legend David Seaman, the only way we will get closer next season is by making some big signings in the summer. Seaman told Yahoo: “Arsenal, if they’re going to challenge for the title next season, they need to make some signings,”
“Whether that happens or not we will wait and see because we don’t know what sort of funds they’ve got.”
“There have been rumours about only £44 million. That ain’t enough, it is never going to be enough.
“If you are going to challenge for that league title you have got to spend big, and Arsenal need to do that.”
Going by our actions in the January window (no money at all!), it doesn’t bode well for the summer, but I guess that maybe Kroenke will surprise us all and stump up the cash for a couple of world-beaters, but I’m not holding my breath!
Darren N
Of course bigger transfer budget will help a lot
But if Arsenal claim they don’t have more or have to be prudent with expenses due to their self sustainability, Emery has to rely on the scouts and the youngsters
I believe Ranieri’s success with Leicester was no fluke and Arsenal should be able to follow suit, if they are truly a great club
Your beliefs are misguided, I’m sorry to point out.
The Leicester season happens once in 50 – 100 years (depending on the league).
It happening again, and happening with precisely Arsenal being in the Leicester role is only marginally possible, and that too if we don’t have to play in Europe so we can focus on the league exclusively. And I just don’t see us finishing 7th or worse.
Have to rely on bargains and good scouting. E.g. Go all in for Rabiot on free transfer and recruit top talents like Guendouzi.
Just read the Spurs earned $9mil through UCL quarter-final qualification (and further ~12 mil for winning the comp) whereas for Europa, final 8 earns only $1mil – means we really need to aim for UCL as that’s where the money is
Spend big lol. Spurs fans would tell us to stop complaining. And so would United fans for that matter, even though all their performances happened after change of management, most of them still with Pogba and Lukaku.
And look at it the other way too: throwing good money after bad doesn’t immediately fix any problems, as seen by the season after spurs lost bale and Everton lost Lukaku
of cause, they have to spend big, i think unai emery has done a good job reshaping the team, this time last season, we’ve already give up on top 4, i guess if the board can help with funds, then we are ready to go next season.
I think Emery has done well so far, though this “injuries” excuse does not fly with me. Wenger had to cope with multitudes of injuries as well, through out his tenure so for me that is not something that can be used to cover for Emery.
£44M will afford us at most 2 good players. One £25-30M player replacing the departing Ramsey and a £15-20M RB replacing the horrendous and certainly departing Lichtsteiner. With Bellerin set to be out well into the next season a new RB is a must.
Then we will have to promote somebody to replace Welbeck’s lost goals. N’ketiah? Smith-Rowe? Can they give us top 4? Looks like we will have to wait till 2021 to get a worldclass winger unless we can land a freebie. I didn’t count Jenkinson or AMN as possible RBs because those guys are not top 10 quality leave alone top 4 quality.
I think Jenkinson is being underrated due to the lack of his playing time.
What I’ve liked about Emery he is using the whole squad when necessary, not when a player breaks, this is bringing a certain responsibility on the players.
It may give us an edge in multiple cups but who’s how far the squad is behind other teams in the prem.
Unfortunately for me I have never rated Jenks. I remember when he used to be so bad he had to be benched even when he was our only fit RB and Koscielny started playing RB. It was similar to how bad Andre Santos was that Vermaelen had to start playing LB and he also turned into s**t eventually. Maybe Jenkinson has changed though, 2 years out is a long time.
He certainly hasn’t got as many errors in him as Mustafi, as a backup RB I think he is good enough, first 11 is a different matter.
QD, in my 57 years of following the Arsenal, I can’t remember a season even under Wenger, where the coach/manager started the season with 2 long term injuries (Koscielny and Mavropanos) and then lost 3 players to season ending injuries (Holding, Bellerin and Welbeck). I would appreciate any figures you have to set me right, please.
Wilshere, Rosicky, Diaby, Fabregas, Walcott, Vermaelen, Van Persie, Gibbs and even Ramsey were always guaranteed to have major injuries throughout the season. Wenger managed to challenge for top 4 with that unreliable lot!
Not just challenge for top 4 but lead the table for several weeks as well. Besides, we had much smaller squad of mature players in those years.
@Quantic Dream
But wenger knew very well that these guys were always injured season after season but went ahead with not doing anything about it.
If we want to keep competing for 3rd, 4th place and Europa league then we don’t have to spend big, we should just keep doing what we have been doing for the last 10 years.
But if we want to compete for the Title or CL then we need to spend more than we are used to.
Leicester City title win was a fluke, an anomaly and that is why they have not been back in the CL ever since.
We have Emery haters already saying that next season he has to be competing for the title even if he is only given £70 million to spend. Imagine the nonsense. Other clubs doing better than us already have stronger better squads and i bet you they will be spending more than £70 million.
So wherr does that leave us?
Yes, but you see a team like Tottenham are spending close to nothing yet have been looking like they can challenge for the title. They are through to the quarter finals in the champions league as well. I am an Emery supporter and fully back the free-pass season allowance for him but next season he MUST transform us like Ole Gunnar has done Man utd without spending a coin.
QD the implosion of Spurs is just around the corner, when they have to pay back the loans for the new stadium and contract renewals have to be negotiated with the current players and manager.
How much have Manchester United (arguably the biggest football club in the world) spent and how many managers have they been through since Ferguson left to get to where they are now?
Yet we expect Unai Emery to get Arsenal back in the top 4 and competing in the Champions League with minimal injection of funds. If this happens my belief in miracles will be restored.
@QD.
Hahaha. “Tottenham looking like they can challenge”.
There is a difference between challenging and looking like you can challenge. How many times have spuds challenged? All we ever hear is that they look like they can.
I said it, the amount they are spending only gets you to nearly there / pretenders. That is how we used to be “Arsenal are nearly there, they just need to spend big on a CB, DM and a GOAL KEEPER”.
We were pretenders all that time. Same as Spuds are today. Spending big on top rated players is what can makes a difference against your opponents.
Will never happen while we have a yank owner only interested in filling his pocket with club prophets and no ambition of challenging for the big trophies and don’t see that changing while this greedy scum bag is running the club!!
I think the gap between City and rest has become “a bridge to far” i fear its all over for the rest of us just a little chance for Man-U if they get bought out by the Saudi King they can have a two way competition and the rest will fight for cums, clubs like arsenal and spuds will depend on Academy players to come through and even then just as they get good the two Manchester clubs will buy the cream of the crop just like Bayern Munich and PSG do in their countries
First of all the £44m is I believe the net budget, that is after the sale of players who are no longer considered important for our future success.The likes of Ospina,Mustafi,Elneny ,Welbeck, and perhaps Chambers and Ozil will sold/released but at best I doubt it we would get £50m for the lot of them.To unload Ozil, he will have to be freed to attract any potential suitors while I would personall retain Chambers who has done well at Fulham and is very adaptable .Lichsteiner ,s contract will not be extended and I suspect Emery would sell Kolasinac if a suitable opportunity arose as his effectiveness is limited to the role of left wing back.Basically I very much doubt if we could raise £40 m by unloading all the players mentioned in which case our transfer budget will probably be in the region of £70/80m at best.As alluded to by Johnny G.bargains can be unearthed like Guendousi and this is an area of the market we need to focus on more as we cannot compete financially with the big boys in Europe under the stewardship of our present owner who will not put his hands in his own pockets.Emery has in my view done well in his first season and under him i feel our promising youngsters will flourish and obviate the need for us to spend vast sums of money.
For me I think Emery has done a decent job improving most of our players since taking over from Wenger. The good side of this is that their values has increased to maybe 20% in the market for for me the only way I see is;
(1). Improving our average players and selling them for a decent price. this will help us build a strong finance base just like Liverpool did selling Suarez and Coutinho.
(2) Based on the assumption that Kroenke will never surprise us with big spending, we need to depend strongly on intensive scouting efficiency. For example, we bought Guendouzi for what 8 million? And if we are to sell him to a bigger team for say 70-80 mil I say we take the shot.
(3) If we do this we can build a very strong war Charest and buy good prospects.mI believe that Emery can take us there…
(4) Our contract negotiations has to improve. we cannot keep letting our best players leaving for free. We have to stand to defend the cloud in our negociations with players. We have had players who has been injury prone and after one season’s performance they are leaving? What happens to loyalty? My point is to be prudent to any player who shows any symptom of disloyalty.
(5) I do not totally agree that we need to spend 200 million to compete, we only need to have an effect and efficient strategy. Unless you believe we can force THE KROENKES out of our club; well I don’t.
We have 100m to spend, if we make top4 or win EL we have 150m
If we do both we have 200m.
If we sell the unwanted players (elneny,chambers,ozil,mustafi,ospina,jenkinson) we ll have 270m to spend.
Nah, those numbers are way too high. It is reported that we have about £40m to spend in the summer. If we get into the top 4 top that figure is reported to raise to just over £100m.
“If we do both we have 200m.” Sorry mate, but winning the EL doesn’t get you £50-100m. It’s getting into the CL that the additional revenue comes from, not from winning the cup itself.
“considering the resources he has had to use and the dire amount of injuries he has had to contend with. ” Funny that, when Arsene Wenger had to deal with these things the vast majority of posters on here placed their blame firmly at his feet, heaven forbid actually using those things as an excuse!
And yet do you people use that as an example of how wrong and/or needlessly critical/combative you behaved towards the man? Not in a million years.
“Hypocrites and parasites, will come up an take a bite”
– Bob Marley
Wenger put up with those players in the squad that were persistently injured, this is Emery’s first year I dont believe he would stick with these players through multiple consecutive injuries.
He would move on and readapt the team.
We can’t challenge for the title next season.
It’s insane to think we can. Look at Klopp, he’s had a huge transfer budget and it’s only this season that Liverpool are actually viable challengers.
Given our limited transfer budget, thanks to Stan’s tight arsed approach, we know it’s going to be several transfer windows before Emery can get a squad of “his players”.
We have to accept that we’re still only going to be fighting for the top four next season, barring a repeat of the season Leicester won the title where City, Chelsea and Utd all had massive brain farts!
If u think Arsenal will improve with Emery u most be joking.Emery don’t have style on football he is Spanish Jose morinho.Just look at how arsenal is playing right now,small team always at play them they can’t make up 3to4 passes with out losing the ball…..Emery shouldn’t be trust with big founds (eg) PSG,ROMA