We knew that it would not take long and with Arsenal due to face Chelsea in the Community Shield game at Wembley on Sunday before the Premier League season kicks off next weekend, Jose Mourinho has not been able to help himself from having a dig during one of his pre-season press conferences.
I very much doubt whether it will have raised anything but amusement in the Arsenal boss and the Chelsea coach will have to do a lot better if he is going to get under the skin of the Frenchman before the weekend. Mourinho had a go at our other Premier League rivals Man United, Liverpool and Man City a few days ago, showing an almost unbelievable cheek and hypocrisy by suggesting they were trying to buy the title.
Maybe someone pointed out that he had not mentioned Wenger or the Gunners though, because he has quickly moved to put that right, as reported by The Mirror, but his decision to use the spending of the respective clubs again is a pretty strange choice.
The Portuguese said, “If you add up the amounts the clubs have spent in the last three or four years I think maybe you will find a surprise.
“Get a calculator. That is one of the easiest things to do. It leaves no space for speculation. If you want to be honest, objective and pragmatic it is the easiest job for a manager or a journalist to do.
“They have bought a fantastic goalkeeper and that is a position which is very important in a team.
“If you put Ozil plus Sanchez, plus Chambers, plus Debuchy you will maybe find a surprise.”
Perhaps the Frenchman should give his rival a little present at Wembley; perhaps the calculator he was talking about, because Mourinho has not done his sums. In fact, since he returned to Stamford Bridge, Arsenal have spent £148 million which is not even two thirds of the £234 million spent by the Blues.
If he had stuck to the last 12 months then Mourinho maybe, just maybe, had a point. But is the world really supposed to forget all their previous spending and focus only on the present?
So not only was Mourinho wrong but trying to suggest what he did and to put extra pressure on Wenger and the players in their attempt to win the title tells me that he is worried. And that should be very good news for everyone connected with Arsenal.
Now let’s beat him at Wembley and watch Mourinho really start to lose it.
lol just read the comments from the last post…
sorry lads…WE ARE -NOT- GETTING KARIM BENZEMA!
IS IN NOOOOO.
I don’t really want us to blow £40m on him, but I wouldn’t say it isn’t a possibility. Who knows what Madrid are going to do..
Yes true we ain’t getting the only real striker real has. There is no chance.so time to switch to plan b, bring in reus and give Theo the much deserved cf role. And I really hope Wenger gets a backup for lecoq cuz flamini and arteta are nowhere near arsenal material. Time to bring in a couple of new faces.let’s win the damn bpl this year. Come on Wenger, prove us wrong and spend some money
I’m thinking we are gonna buy Lars bender. Leverkusen just bought aranguiz who is a DM/CM and Kramer is back from his loan at gladbach.
Bender has to be leaving then
I wouldn’t mind bender at all. He would be a quality signing
This is what Mourinho does… make ludicrous comments to piss opposing fans off. He has a higher gross and net spend in the past 3 years, that’s not including his previous stint. I highly doubt Arsene gives a flying hoot what this imbred chicken has to say regarding the financial aspect of the game.
do chickens partake in inbreeding?…never going nandos again
what matters is he who gets the last laugh i think…if for instance he beats wenger these weekend, then boy i think we will be in for a long summer but if not, then that my friends might mean us not buying another player…Mourinho knows what he is doing by creating a controversy right before our game
season !summer
I think José has a point but it should not involve us, manure and Liverpool are looking like they want to buy the bpl. Specially manure…but we are not even close to buying the bpl, we are not even signing the two players we need so badly. How on earth are we buying the title???? José can once again s…k on this. Him and his ridiculous mind games. He’s so twisted.wish him all the worst for the coming season. Coyg let’s beat them on Sunday and take a huge step towards the bpl title.
He could have a point if you compare net spend.
But wtf does it matter anyway? Spend a hundred mil and win the Prem and we are all happy!
Peace an Love.
Say what you will say but it will get worse if Mou beats wenger again ths wknd…Chelsea vs Arsenal games hv bekam more of a Wenger vs Mourinho so our old man shud try to avoid more embarasmnt coz Mou has turned him into a punching bag…bt wat wil u do or say to a person who frequently beats u?!
Wenger could have had a bigger chance of winning if he had signed a top striker earlier. He likes to leave it late, this is a bad old habit of Wenger’s. Anyways wish the team all the best on Sunday. Can’t wait to lift another trophy this Sunday,although its going to be very hard.time to break the José spell Mr Wenger.
I suppose the game results will effect bragging rights for fans within London. Otherwise…. it matters little. After a couple of weeks nobody cares about or remembers who won the Comm. Shield. It is not recognized as a real trophy. It is a pre-season warm-up of 2 top teams with some very temporary local bragging rights.
Did you remember all the talk last season about Arsenal’s domination Comm. Shield?? No. Because it did not happen. Nobody cares. I cannot tell you who won the Comm Shield in almost any year.
The only reason anyone could remember this Comm. Shield is if Josey the Snake says something idiotic and provocative…… Again.
“…..After a couple of weeks nobody cares about or remembers who won the Comm. Shield.”
No! I disagree.
If we win it, it will be a reference / turning point for us (supporters) for a long time for to come. Even if we win 100 games against Mourinho thereafter, we will continue to remember the game as a point that the table turned.
We need it now, just as we needed FA Cup trophy 2 seasons ago.
Benzema is scoring 1 goal every 2 games in La liga. can we improve that ratio for him, make it 2 every 3 games instead? Real Madrid create more chances than us by the way in their league than we do.
The lack of goals from benzema could be due to the fact that ronaldo is too selfish. If he joins us he would be our main target man and therefore score more goals. I’m not a huge fan of benzema but I think he would bring quality to our team.he’s worth 40 mil in today’s market. But I see a 1% chance of signing him.reus is the player we should be targeting
This bit of news about benzema flying solo seems to be rue as the source is ESPN. Updated 54 minutes ago. I reckon they would have known by now if it was false info. If true it’s a bit strange. Where could he be going? Has real accepted our latest offer? Is he coming to have talks with arsenal and Wenger? Im a bit confused here,don’t know if this story is true or not. But from what ESPN is stating it might have some truth in it.
Take away Ronaldo’s goals and Real scored another 100 last season. Plenty to go around. And if he is to be our main target then just as well get Navas and Young to feed him from the wings because Alexis and Theo are not great providers/creators – they want to score as well and run similar lines to what KB will want to run. You have prolific wide men and the CF goal tally suffers because they allow the wide guys to play, providing decoys and set-ups. Suarez got 16 league goals with Neymar and Messi outscoring from wide, Mandzukic and Muller are not prolific with Robben and Ribery out wide, Benzema averages 15 league goals with Bale and Ronaldo presently. Part of the reason OG is likely to be sideshow with maybe Alexis and Walcott out wide.
So that is the reason giroud doesn’t score more than 16
@ Sean
Ronaldo had the 2nd most assists in la liga
Some have theorized that Benzema’s goal production is negatively affected by other quality players claiming so many goals. It is a fair point.
But ……. Benzema is also provided many more goal scoring opportunities than he would in a weaker team exactly because he has so many quality players around him to give him more and better service.
It cuts both ways and probably works out fairly in the long run.
Wenger can’t beat mourinho on Sunday.
because he is a fulltime specialist in
failure
when it comes to playing mourinho’s team.
Wenger is the only problem of AFC.
#AKBs. bring the thumb down
Its funny how fans here (especially seancali) keep saying how arsenal can’t challenge for the epl with their current crop of players yet still go on to say arsenal should beat chelsea & lift the community shield trophy – so f#cking contradictory – you bad-mouth your supposed team & call them incompetent yet expect them to win the current champions?…..change your ways!!!
Dude, that kind of rampant hypocrisy is the fabric that holds these boards together. Just go back abd re read threads before and after certain matches and you’ll see people pulling U turns left right and center. Some of the same fans singing Wegner’s praises now wanted him gone when we were down to Stoke 3 – 0 in the first half last season.
Injuries were ignored then but wehad an upswing in form and injuries were suddenly the reason we had a poor season, thid isn’t to say they weren’t but it’s funny how they were completely ignored when we had the actual injuries.
People may not like Hafiz, but at least he’s consistent and willing to stand by what he believes in.
First of all Mourinho wasn’t talking about Arsenal’s spending vs Chelsea’s, he was referring to Arsenal’s spending and how it translated into a title challenge or not. Even Mourinho isn’t asinine enough to suggest Chelsea spend less than Arsenal but to be fair he has a point, Arsenal should be challenging for the title and we have not done so for years.
This year as last I am expecting a challenge, not to be double digits off the leaders by Christmas or to steamroll lesser opposition but flake against top squads. In my book there is zero room for excuses. I will not be upset if we don’t win, but I will be upset if we don’t challenge.
I think people are getting hyped over the wrong thing. YES he is being a massive hypocrite by being the biggest spender of all time but he does have a point about people just buying players like crazy to try to win the league. All the top teams are regularly shelling out huge sums that generally dwarf the spends of the other teams in the league. Until recently that did not include Arsenal so much – we mostly bought in a few 10m players and were done with it. Now we are in the same ball park spend as the big boys instead of sitting closer to the minnows.
Don’t get me wrong – the guy is being a total bellend. He has no right to point fingers when he spends more than anyone, but the truth is the top teams are buying up talent to try to win.
I think he is wrong about Arsenal though. With the exception of Ozil and Alexis, nearly all of our purchases have been young players or players brought in to replace outgoing players who have either betrayed the club (Sagna) or we allowed to move on for first team football (Fabianski). When you realise we are not selling to buy, but rather buying to replace assets who we have been favourable towards you see the different club ethics at work and THAT is the problem with his statement.
Unlike Chelsea who have bought
2013/14: Andre Schurrle £18m, Marco van Ginkel £8m, Cristian Cuevas £1.7m, Willian £32m, Isaiah Brown £209,000*, Christian Atsu £3.5m, Nemanja Matic £21m, Mohamed Salah £11m, Kurt Zouma £12.5m.
2014/15: Cesc Fabregas £30m, Diego Costa £32m, Mario Pasalic £3m*, Felipe Luis £15.8m, Loic Remy £8.5m, Juan Cuadrado £23.3m.
2015/16: Asmir Begovic £8m, Nathan £4.5m*, Danilo Pantic £1.25m*.
Total: £234.259m.
(Borrowed from sanmi.marvellous)
Of those players I can already start seeing names who’ve been shipped off and replaced. Cuadrado will probably face the same fate as Schurle and Salah. Matic is the perfect example of how Chelsea are – he was used along with 21m in part exchange for David Luiz…and then bought back when he became wanted for 21m. However the David Luiz saga turned out, I’m pretty sure the original purchase of Luiz was not rated at 42m so you’d have to say Chelsea took a loss on a player they already owned. Why? Because THEY buy the league.
Conversely look at Arsenal with Diaby. We’ve fit the bill for his wages for years and were even willing to talk about a deal this year despite his constant injury. Did we do this because he is a top class player who we could not buy better than? HELL NO. We did this because if we have quality, we nurture it. We’ve bought in some quality at long last to replace the quality we’ve lost due to financial restraints over the past 10 years but not 3 or 4 players at once while shipping out good quality players to replace them.
The difference is an approach to transfers that is very simple.
Chelsea see a player X who is better than player Y and decide to buy him. Player Y moves to the bench, and they sell player Z who was next down the pecking order, or they sell player Y to fund the bill.
Arsenal see a team of players and try to mould that team. If a player Y leaves, we look for a great quality player X to replace him. In the instance a superb player Z appears on the market, we may attempt to buy him to increase our squad quality, but not at the detriment to the team. No player will be sold just because there is a better alternative we can buy, as each player is a member of our team and deserves his chance.
1 team is buying the league. 1 team is trying to improve, while still operating as a team, not mercenaries.
While I understand the analysis one huge thing that everyone seems to forget when analyzing Chelsea is managerial continuity. Stamford Bridge has had a revolving door for decades and what usually happens is players brought in under one manager usually fail the cut with another. David Luiz wasn’t a Mourinho purchase, nor was Van Ginkel or Salah. Luiz has always been a suspect defender, but which manager could have gotten rid of him? AVB was out before May, Di Matteo was out before Christmas and Benitez has never been liked at Chelsea. Mourinho went in and shaped the team as he saw it. Getting rid of players he deemed not good enough.
Think about it, for argument’s sake were Wegner to leave next season do you think every player here would be guaranteed play time? Not likely, one thing people often overlook is the continuity at Arsenal vs the lack of it elsewhere
A very astute point. Managers definitely shape a team to their style and players not fitting the style will obviously be sold etc. I imagine the same could be said of Arsenal if Wenger left, though I doubt it would result in the resolving door syndrome we see at Chelsea.
Contrary to what you’ve said, Salah and Van Ginkel were both purchased while Mourinho was in charge. Whether he “likes” the player is a whole different kettle, but they were certainly brought into the club while he was the manager. David Luiz and the matic situation is just a good indication of the club, but it’s true that Mourinho wouldn’t have favoured the former over the latter. Needless to say though that the club, Chelsea, buys players and then sells them on if they don’t fit. There is little loyalty and players who may even do well for the team e.g. Mata/Schurle will be unceremoniously removed no matter what.
Very true tg12 but Mourinho has started getting rid of players he bought himself less than a year ago – any other manager and this would be called incompetence but I’m sure it will be dressed up as ruthlessness – a bit like LvG with Di Maria.
i can wenger really panicking and giving into naopli’s criminal release clause, of £62 million and get higauin in the last few days of the window, because he will feel we need more fire power up front to win the league.
#maxoutthecreditcardwenger
If Giroud, Walcott and Akpom all got injured before close of the transfer window, you might have a point. Otherwise……… Wenger will not spend that for Higuain.
A couple of years ago Higain even came to London for a medical and Wenger still backed out of the deal because of the 32 mil asking price. So he now will pay double that for him?? No way.
I honestly thought this Mourinho guy was smart and clever, i guess i was wrong. Why talk about last 4 years? Why not last 10years???? Even in the last 4 years he spent more than us.
we are spending OUR hard earned money not OIL money.we are spending money on players we need unlike them buying players such as Lukaku, van ginkel, De bryne and loaning them out when clearly they didnt even need them in the first place so selling them would obviously make money back if you are looking at net spent.
The truth is Mourinho can see Arsenal have a team capable of challenging for the title. Just need a striker for now.
COYG
1. That was his original point, that Arsenal SHOULD be challenging for the title. He’s had that stance since last year
.
2. Mourinho hasn’t been in the PL the second time around for 3 years much more 4. You can’t compare Chelsea to Arsenal for 10 years as Chelsea have had roughly a manager every 2 years, Arsenal have had 1 for over a decade. If you’re talking about 4 years including his time at Madrid you really can’t compare the two, Madrid is the biggest club in world football, they are able to spend on one player what we spend over an entire transfer window
Ok i agree with what you said but are we really buying our way to Title contention like he says? I dont think so
We are building a team slowly but surely
twitter is red hot atm with all this benzema talk, and a few online rags are cottoning on to this, but like someone said in the last post the next 24hrs are going to be important, is we are to see any proper resolve in this massive matter. and like said this morning if we rolled up to wembely on sunday, with the big benz it would really sicken mouriniho big time.
coyg
confirmed by skysports, benzema is in shanghai along with other madrid players
It’s okay. we still have our secret weapon…Sanogo
His loan can be cancelled if we don’t get Benzema
I can encapsulate any article about Mourinho into just a few words…..
Josey is still a J#ack#ss.
Jossy is just looking for cheap talk. I wonder if he has nurtured any players through and through. He doesn’t know a thing about loyalty so also can’t understand a thing that AW does. And for those that think he’s smart, I daresay he just likes being in the news and he’s too old for that.
Latest Benzema Update:
He is now taking a shower and is projected to brush his teeth soon. Analysts have theorized this means he is definitely coming to Arsenal.
So sorry for the disillusional one Mou has turned into….so surprised to hear him raise alarm that other teams are trying to buy the title when he’s a master of buying trophies…so sad for him….he’s soooooo scared of the Arsenal…just hope Wenger lifts the trophy while Mou is still around…it will kill him
Pretty sure if We manage to win the league with Mourinho at the helms in Chelsea, he wouldn’t be in EPL next season. Let’s just make that happen. COYG