In some ways I think we have to respect the way that Arsenal Football Club is being run and has been run in recent years. When the UEFA rules about Financial Fair Play came in it actually looked for a while as though the Gunners were about to be proved right and helped back to the top of the game but that did not last too long.
If you believe that all the money in the game means that there will always be ways of bending and breaking the rules then I guess the FFP thing was never going to work and when you see what has happened this week in the transfer market, with PSG paying something like £200 million to sign Neymar from FC Barcelona then you could say that anything is possible.
Well it is for clubs that are happy to spend crazy money like that on a player, but Arsenal are certainly not one of those clubs, even though Arsene Wenger has broken the transfer record a few times in recent years and did so again this summer by spending over £50 million to get Lacazette from Lyon.
It is not so much the club’s but the owners and we know that our man at the top Stan Kroenke is not a glory hunter and will never sanction the club spending beyond our means to claim a trophy or two (not the bleeding carcass sort). Maybe that is why our manager has bemoaned these mega rich owners who have changed the face of football in recent years, leading to this previously unthinkable Neymar transfer.
Wenger said, “For me it is the consequence of the ownerships that has changed completely the whole landscape of football in the last 15 years. Once a country owns a club everything is possible.
“It becomes very difficult to respect Financial Fair Play because you have different interest from a country to have such a big player to represent that country.
“I always did plead for football living within its own resources. We are not in a period anymore where you think ‘I invest that, I will get that back’. We are beyond that.
“The number [fee] today involves passion, pride, public interest and you cannot rationalise that anymore. On the other hand inflation is increasing – we were at £100m last year and only one year later we are at the £200m line.
“If you think Trevor Francis was the first guy for £1m [in 1979] and it looked unreasonable, it shows you how far football has come, beyond calculation and rationality.
“We still live with rationality and we are not the only ones – 99 per cent of clubs do that – but of course we cannot compete with that.”
And there you have the big problem, because even Arsenal fans who like the way the club is run want us to be able to compete for a trophy like the Premier League or the Champions League and while we have Kroenke in charge and other clubs keep spending this way it is only going to get harder for us, so for the Gunners to be able to compete do we need a change of owner?
Bob.
There are still lots of more than decent and talented players that will not cost 200 million. One thing Pep has done since he took over Man City is not to spend crazy money. He bought good players that can work with him. Neymar dose not guaranteed that PSG will win every competition and I think it more of a show off than any other thing. Don’t get me wrong, he is a good player but 200 million is just crazy. I hope he joins Mata in donating 1% of his salary to charity. And other players too. Arsenal dose not like to spend crazy money and I don’t think that is the reason why they haven’t won the premier league, it is more because of Arsene Wenger’s rigid style (until recently) that other teams are used to and can easily defend against.
Did you just say Pep has not spent crazy money? Are you kidding me?!
Who is Pep most expensive player? How much did he cost and compare the money to the relative market. Remember Paul Pogba and Lukaku?
Oh right, so you are basing how much a club has spent, on literally the cost of one single player? What brilliant logic!
I thought the talk is about the money PSG paid for Neymar? And if Arsenal can compete? And I said some top managers do not believe a player should cost 90 million! Or at least he has not bought one yet which should be a good thing for some clubs that can not afford 200 million! The totality of the sum of the cost of a team is reflective of the cost of a single player!
150 million net spend last summer and 141 million net spend this summer isn’t spending crazy money at all…
So a quarter of a billion (yes Billion !) pounds in 12 months is not crazy money ?!?! This is the real world not Monopoly !
Why wont FA put an annual cap on spend so every team can compete ?
FFP is almost pointless as FIFA & UEFA cow tow to the big european clubs
“Pep has done since he took over Man City is not to spend crazy money.” Errmm, what..? Have you been living on a different planet these past couple of transfer windows?
taking all summer to get lemar over the line
let alone a cm or cb
we gave mediocre players stupid contracts , such good ones infact they would rather be a bench player and earn crazy coin, then play first team elsewhere for less money
its not just kroenke, footballs moved on, i will support wenger but still believe he has way too much control an is not a coach .
hope we have gd season dont want this wenger out global ish again
“such good ones infact they would rather be a bench player and earn crazy coin” According to who? Oh yeah, the newspapers said it, so it must be 100% accurate!
Yeh jay coz some many of them have moved on haven’t they???
I wish I could hire a sniper and ask him to take a shot at whoever is responsible for transfers at arsenal.
It doesn’t matter even if it is Arsene.
I don’t think he deserves to be anyware near arsenal.
“A lot can happen in the final few weeks of the window, we are always alert on what opportunity might be around the corner, so we need to act quickly when a player becomes available”
What the f*ck is that statement?
If you think a position in the team needs to be strengthened, you find the likely players and make a bid for them.
You don’t want to sit there and expect the selling club or the player himself to come and ask you to buy him.
Now see what happens with waiting for the right moment to sign lemar.
Barcalena are in for him as Neymar replacement.
Now who would you think lemar would choose between us and Barca?
And even if Barca can’t get lemar but still manage to get countinho then Liverpool consider lemar as countinho replacement.
And finally we end up with players like Lucas Perez whom that arseholenger would not give any chance to prove himself, with all due respect to Perez he might be a good player, but definitely not an upgrade to anyone already at the club. If he was ,he would have been already snapped up by some big clubs ,don’t you think?
And Mr. Arseenger keeps saying quality is more important than quantity every time some one asks about your transfer strategy. And also you say you only sign top top players?
So do you think Lucas Perez,Dany welbeck ,Sanogo Etc are all top top quality players?if they are so, why don’t you try to sell them to Barca, Bayern,real madrid. Or atleast try to sell them to Liverpool and Spurs, both who are still at Arsenal’s level.
Please All the akbs, stop believing that arse,
If you think he is really not responsible for this site state of arsenal and you think board is the main culprit, then I really pity you akbs.
Even if it is the board Arsene has the responsibility as an arsenal fan himself to understand us fans and let us know that he is not being supported by the board.
But I really think it is arsene who is the main culprit.
You see what he is trying to do in running down the contracts of the players that are in final year?
He is afraid that a new manager who takes him over would do wonders with the same squad just by introducing innovative modern day football tactics.
He fears that the same squad would suddenly challenge for major honours in league and europe, the same squad which is trying to just finish around 4th place under Arsene.
I feel that is why he wants the players to go as free agents by the time he retires, so that people wouldn’t finally understand that he is the realy culprit all these years for such poor performance by the team.
FFS, it’s the same old transfer window like every other season. And he signed a new contract by giving a message that things would change this time as we lost champions league football.
I am Just a frustrated gooner, trying to put my view in front of fellow frustrated Gooners.
I will be keen to know how many of you feel the same.
can you or anyone else confirm who prepares the contracts and decides the salaries ? I doubt Wenger is doing it on his own !
Neil! Why do u defend wenger like we fans don’t have decades of evidence to back us up on how incompetent he is??? Please tell me why a team that didn’t win the league went out and only brought in cech in a whole summer??? Please tell me why players contracts are all running down?? Coz u seem to think wenger has nothing to do with it so what is it then? Wenger has to much control or wenger has absolutely no control??? Coz either way it’s BAD just look at every other top club! And by the way arsenal are the 5th top earners in the world
We cant compete with psg,mancity,real,barcelona,man utd in terms of money but that doesnt mean we cant win with them there.
just look at monaco last season in ligue 1.
juventus in the UCL.
all it takes is a smart coach with very good tactics.
Reading your comments makes me laugh, have you forgotten how Juventus bought Higuain for £80 Million? Monaco since the take over has spent money also on big names like Falcao,etc But Monaco youth scouting is very good at getting very talented players at such young age and it only takes a good coach to develop them. To be honest you need to spend big in this ‘Era’ to win Something sensible. I know people will talk about Leicester two season’s ago but the also spent to recruit talented players, Kante, Mahrez et all , maybe not big spending though but you see what happened to them last season. if they have spent big with some players they may have done better. What makes you a Big club? 1. Revenue (Including Sales of Jerseys,Ticket sales,commercial etc). 2. Fan Based. 3. Top Players. 4. Top Coach. 5. Money Power.
IF they count’ top 10 biggest clubs in the World Arsenal is there, about 6 clubs in England alone
Man utd-1st
Man city-5th
Arsenal-6th
Chelsea-7th
Liverpool-8th
Spurs-10th
Each team i mention has Top players, Top coach, Money Power, Fan Based and Revenue
BUT MY PROBLEM WITH ARSENAL IS THEY DON’T SPEND EVEN IN AREAS THEY NEED MOST.
Higuain wasnt a very good signing for Juventus…
Their fans even protested a waste of money
Juventus like Bayern hardly had any challenge since the downfall of Inter and Milan
Didnt he help get them to UCL Final and win tje league ? Its not his fault the other teams are so poor but its reflected how good they are by getting to UCL final…
I agree, you have to spend to have a better chance at titles. This is how football works now and if you don’t adapt and play the money game then you lose out. What bothers me most about the Neymar transfer is that with prices like these, we may soon fall farther away and become totally bullied in the market. As long as we don’t have a owner willing to invest in big money into the team, then there’s very slim chance the club can compete because you already are losing at the race’s starting line before it even begins.
I don’t think the Neymar transaction shows Kroenke’s short comings. I and most reasonable fans don’t expect our beloved club to compete at these type of price ranges.
Kroenke’s problem IMO is his lack of ambition shown in other area’s. He has a manager who no longer is at the top of his game and Kroenke is fine with that because he doesn’t expect to win trophies. We spend money but we spend it inefficiently. We spend big tickets on players who fail to have big impacts. We buy players we don’t play. We keep players on the payroll who we pay so much that they become virtually unsellable. We either in the transfer market to such extent that more often than not we miss out on our targets. We hold onto players who are too injury prone (Diaby best example but Wilshire and others are also good examples). We fail to get to the bottom of the issue of “why we seem to have more injury problems than other clubs”.
So yes Kroenke is the main problem but more for his lack of ambition and understanding of the game and the club than for his lack of investment.
IMO all of the above issues would have been addressed by a more ambitious owner. But the fact he didn’t buy Neymar or Mbappe doesn’t bother me because those are silly prices to me. What bother’s me much more is that once again the season is about to start and we seem to have failed (thus far) on signing Lemar and without a high-quality 3td signing we will have lost ground compared to the activities of Chelsea, Man U, City, Everton, and Liverpool.
Mist players Arsene signs flop anyway so it is all irrelevant
Yes, and no, to some degree. Prices have been rising for sure, but even for a billionaire owned club, the Neymar deal is ridiculous! They only payed £200 million, because they wanted the deal done quickly, they can afford it, and it was the buy-out clause.
Arsenal can’t afford to buy players for £100 million, but we can compete a lot better if we start selling at high prices, but we’re about the only top club that doesn’t. We’ve brought in just over £50 million from sales over the last 3/4 years. That’s an incredible low figure.
Anko says “One thing Pep has done since he took over Man City is not to spend crazy money”.
Wow, I must have imagined the 385 million quid he’s spent in TWO YEARS then.
Pep has spent almost 1 Billion in his management career from Barca to Bayern to City
He spent it on changing the squad and not just few players. I do not know for sure how much he spent, but can you please tell me how many players he bought with the money. I will like very much to be educated
All this talk of big money signing means nothing if you haven’t got the coaching staff to get results from the resources you have sevilla and athlietico Madrid are good examples of this, paying 200 million for a single player is crazy in my opinion and I’ll take a bet on him being injured at one point in the season
Pep Guardiola is not a true coach. Seeing him last season with a good set of players shows you that his tactics have allot top do with the quality of player. Look how far you can go when your players are some of the very best around. Pep is not a real coach. I’d argue that Ranieri and Conte are much better coaches, they are pure tacticians and trainers. Same goes for Klopp and Simeone. These guys prefer their own players alright, but are going to get the maximum out of players without having to be at a club ,who’s master-plan, is chasing football royalty like transfers.
Kroenke unlike Chelsea’s Roman Abramovich has no love , passion and a desire . Look at the owners of Chelsea , Bayern Munich , Barca , Real Madrid hell even Spurs have a owner with aspirations to be the best and win titles….. ( maybe in the next 10years lol ) . For Kroenke, Arsenal is nothing more than a cash cow . Every great team from every league have no tolerance for mediocrity, they won’t allow the club to stagnate or regress whilst their rivals become stronger . If the manager cannot deliver the one goal which is winning the league or Champions league then they are replaced by someone who can . Kroenke won’t upset the apple cart because that would mean spending money
only Neymar can not win d CL for PSG. that amount is crazy.what ar they turning football into?
We don’t expect Arsenal to compete with others in terms of money. The annoying issue is we don’t get the necessary players when all this clubs who can splash the cash r all taking a nap.
It’s a pity how my darling AFC is been run.. Look at all our rival clubs, they have players that would sell for £100 million if they are willing to but for Arsenal not the case, mediocre players that will interest big clubs except for Sanchez.. Spurs will conveniently sell Ali and Kane for 100mil each.. Liverpool has coutinho, chelsea has hazard, manu has David de gear.. Mancity has debrune.. And this clubs has players that will sell for 50 million conveniently but aside from Sanchez and mayb ozil who no one is keen on.. Nothing just bunch of average players.. Wenger is his own worst enemies, where was wenger when this 100 million pounds player in the epl where bought for nothing more than 30million pounds or far less than that.. Except for de gea every other player that would sell for 100 million today in the epl were bought for less than 30million.. No one is saying AFC should do a neymar but do seri of today that might have another good season and his fees will skyrocket.. Our Academy is next to nonexistent in the couple of years.. A serious club and coach would have sold welbeck, Ramsey, wilshere, and probably Walcott not to talk of the official deadwood of debuchy and Co..
Please show me the bids for other clubs players at over £ 100mn ? !! No. .. cant do it ? Thought so
Errm Neil are u forgetting Barca wanting coutinho for 100mil??? And if bale went for about 100mil how much do think Kane or alli would go for??? You need to stop defending wenger it’s only gonna cause u pain bcoz the truth always comes out in the end
Hearing that deal for lemar is off ?
Round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.
£200 million for a player is an obscene amount of money that we can only dream of spending and it would be stupidity to do so on one player. Kroenke’s only ambition is to make money and he will do so when he sells the club if at all. He has already made money from the club and will continue to do so as long as he is the majority shareholder and will not plough his own money into the club, so yes it is Kroenke’s fault all the way. We can all blame Wenger who is responsible for league and competition standings at the end of each season but ultimately Kroenke and the board are to blame for having little ambition and not getting transfers done quickly enough by being petty in their bids and or negotiations with players, agents and clubs.
This has happened before in the past and will probably happen again in the future as we have never been the biggest spenders in the market and are being out-spent and left behind.