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Liam Brady believes that Arsene Wenger still retains the full support of the Arsenal board and has called on them to give him the money to invest properly in the team.
The current Director of Youth Development’s comments will do little to bring clarity to the current situation at the club: is the under-investment in the team due to financial restriction or Wenger’s choice?
Brady seems to suggest that the manager needs more cash to splash, saying, “I hope that Arsene is given the resources to spend and have a go at putting us back where we were eight years ago.
“I think he should be given that chance and, from where I am in the club, I don’t think there’s any pressure on him – I think the board are 100 per cent behind him.
“When you get beat by your neighbours it can get a lot of people talking, particularly people ringing up radio stations and things like that. But I think we’ve got to keep it all in perspective.
“The majority of the fans are behind him, the staff are behind him and I think the board are behind him. So we wait to see what the future brings.
“I think Arsenal’s demise has been exaggerated.”
The reality of the Arsenal situation is that the manager does retain the full support of the board, and will continue to do so unless something really drastic happens in the last 10 games of the season.
The debate about whether he’s the right man to spend the money won’t stop, however.
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We really need a Bergkampesque signing this summer …
I was thinking the same thing. Wenger’s first big signing was Vieira, which was big money too. Wenger wasn’t always this shy to spend – it is only since we left Highbury that he’s been this way. So yes, more money, 1-2 truly spectacular signings, and we shall trounce the competition.
And count me as one who still supports Wenger (…let the storm of vitriol begin).
3.5Million big money?
We had a perfectly fine squad to beat Blackburn, to beat teams like Swansea.
It’s NOT money that lost us those games, FFS. It’s pure tactical and mental issues that cost us against teams that maintain the 10% of our wage bill.
We have a squad full of internationals, and although there are glaring holes like the lack of a proper striker, but it’s all Wenger, he spent on Girouds, Parks and Gervinhos, but even with the current squad we should not have lost 9 games in a season.
Sorry progman7, did you even watch the blackburn game, the problem was not tactical. Tactics get you into positions to score – if a player misses, that’s the players fault. The reality is we have the 4th highest wage bill; last season we finished third despite profit on our player sales. This season we are fifth after sellling two of our best players – I think wenger is performing exactly as could be expected.
Whilst I have always back Arsene, I don’t see how money can be blamed for the constant defensive mistakes we make time and again, surely that’s down to coaching/organisation. Anyway Arsene hasnt spent the money he has had, or he’s wasted alot of it.
Love him as I do he’s stuck on his ways. We’ve always played passing football but had good enough players with strong physicality to find a way to win. As the standard and strength of players diminished we’ve found it harder.
Rohan, you don’t know what you are talking about.
I simply cannot believe how people – unless they are trolling – that a team of Lowe – Pedersen – Ollson – Kazim-Richards – Rhodes is better than our team.
Read my post again – i say tactical AND mental. Mental, because a Gervinho who scores against Chelsea should be good enough to put an easy chance away. He isn’t because he is a mental wreck, which is Wenger’s fault more than others’.
Would you rather have Lowe-Perdersen-Rhodes or Rosicky-Arteta-Chamberlain? Seriously. Our team was better on paper, so it was only about mental and tactical failings.
Got it now?
Oh and of course we need players, because I don’t think Gervinho for example is Arsenal quality, nor is Giroud a trophy winner striker, but the squad itself it still good enough for a better performance than losing 9+ games in one single season.
At the end of the day we dominated the Blackburn game. Upsets happen in football. A key issue this season has been consistency and Wenger will be the first to admit it. Football is not as clear cut as you would like to make out. Mental failings also have to come down to the players.
Take fernando torres, numerous great managers have come in to try and fix him but eventually the buck stops with Torres.
It’s also kinda stupid to take an anamolous results and use it to describe our entire season – the real issue this season has been facing the big teams – Of our seven league defeats this season, 5 are shared between man utd, man city, chelsea and tottenham. Having had to sell players season after season is this to be unexpected?
i would like to see us try 4-4-2 more often with walcott up front alongside giroud. it works for united when they play rooney and rvp up front with just two in midfield, especially against weaker teams. how many times this season have we seen good balls whipped across the opposition six yard box but nobody in there to finish them off?
Wenger gets money sufficient enough to buy top talent e.g. £30 million. Instead of spend £15m each on two quality players. He tries to test his genius and looks for some promising player from ligue 1, ligue 2, turkey e.t.c and blindly puts his hopes they will come good then when/if they do. We will all praise his genius. Well fucking guess what? It’s not working out anymore. He one day likened gervinho to henry (that gerv could one day be our henry) see that! That’s a man trying to re-write history….disgrace.
You mean like Santi (£16.7m), Podolski (£10.5m) and Giroud (£10.5m)?
Sant and Poldi I think are great additions and I don’t think people dispute that. The problem is spending 10 million on Giroud when you lose RVP for 24.
I don’t think Giroud is a bad player or not necessirily worth the price – but its a perfect example where he should have spent the whole 24 persuading a true genius striker to join to replace the old one.
It hurts we didn’t pony up the 24 mill to buy Juan Mata for example.. the money was there, we had a Nasri/Cesc shaped hole looming and plenty of bucks.. instead we penny pinched.
Shooting yourself in the foot there mate. Talking about Giroud as a great buy? then you clearly have no clue as to whom we lost. You know a certain dutchcunt who scored for fun, great accuracy, superb strike, good conversion rate….everything giroud isn’t doing atm. That’s was the point. Rvp for £24m, giroud for £12m (with the hope that he will one day fill rvps boots, guess what? We want NOW, not some day)
Nasri is the same, sold him for top dollar then went for second rate gervinho for peanuts. may I Point out park, santos, as recent wenger transfer flops he supposedly “unearthed”
It’s this summer people…..make or break, wait I said this last summer.
Guys, seems you don’t realize the problem, now let me knock your head a bit.
The problem is on MIDFIELD. Santi, Jack, Rosicky, and.. (I don’t consider Ramsey as Arsenal player) are either not taking risks to through the ball or don’t have a good vision.
How many times did Theo attempt to run through center but our midfielders just ignored him (or they actually didn’t see him)?
And, you said Giroud sucks. Imagine this: Spurs signs Giroud, and you would see that he would torture our defenders. Both Verminator and Koz are not at Giroud level. Per? He would be beaten by his off-ball movement.
Where did you get £30 million from? They had to sell RvP and Song to finance last summer’s acquisitions, and netted a profit to boot.
we penny pinched because we had to. now that we hopefully don’t have to anymore i think wenger deserves the chance to spend the cash. he’s had to put up with the past 8 years of penny pinching while trying to compete with clubs who have pumped hundreds of millions into their squads. we wouldn’t be in this great financial position now with a new stadium and a squad full of potential (only 2-3 signings and some self-belief from being genuine contenders imho) if it wasn’t for him doing the difficult thing and taking all the sh*t that comes with not spending crazy money. which other club would you prefer to be? city? no thanks. chelski? no thanks. spuds? no thanks. liverpool? no thanks. the only club i envy are united and they had all their ducks lined up well before us and despite all their success are still in a pretty bad financial position thanks to the glazers. let’s get behind our boys and our boss now and make sure we get that 4th spot at least. 30 points still to play for. COYG!!!!
Shooting yourself in the foot there mate. Talking about Giroud as a great buy? (he’s only good) then you clearly have no clue as to whom we lost. You know a certain dutchcunt who scored for fun, great accuracy, superb strike, good conversion rate….everything giroud isn’t doing atm. That’s was the point. Rvp for £24m, giroud for £12m (with the hope that he will one day fill rvps boots, guess what? We want NOW, not some day). Nasri is the same, sold him for top dollar then went for second rate gervinho for peanuts. May I Point out park, santos, as recent wenger transfer flops he supposedly “unearthed”
It’s this summer people…..make or break, wait I think said this last summer. :-(
15 mil won’t buy you a good player, mate … Not unless u beg City, Chelsea & Co. not to outbid you. Although Wenger is partially to blame (for his philosoophy), I believe the buck stops with the board – as well as the sugar daddies who have ruined our glorious English football…!
problem is a bergkamp in todays market would cost you 40 million quid and 200 grand a week. we had one. his name is RVP.
If anything doesn’t Liam Brady saying that Wenger needs more money understate the fact that he understands that Arsenal’s Style requires top players and that Wenger isn’t being allowed to spend the money to get them? We have plenty of quality in the team but they can’t shine when they’re under the pressure of not getting injured (Diaby, Rosicky, Gibbs, Wilshere, Sagna etc.) and at the same time they still have to play all their games in the CL, EPL, and their international friendlies. Cazorla, etc. are fantastic players, but it’s always the same thing about bench depth. When every other big club faces possible failures, they have a quality bench that helps manifest that fighting quality of pulling out results.
It seems to me that we must reserve judgment on the matter until it actually matters, during the summer transfer window.
If anything doesn’t Liam Brady saying that Wenger needs more money understate the fact that he understands that Arsenal’s Style requires top players and that Wenger isn’t being allowed to spend the money to get them?
Interesting perspective
I think people cannot make up their minds about whether Wenger does have unlimited power at the club, or he is controlled. For me, it’s very strange.
Look, any other manager at any other club that wants to call themselves “top club” like we do, would have been sacked long ago. Wenger is different, but why? In my opnion, because first of all, Gazidis and Kroneke don’t want to interfere with Wenger in any sort of way, apart from maybe the player sellings, but even that’s an interesting one, if the rumours that Wenger agreed with Cesc to let him leave a season later are true.
Liam Brady and anyone else who believes he is providing confidential stuff should answer the million dollar questions:
1. Why wouldn’t Wenger be given green light on any resource, if he is given unlimited time at the club?
2. Where else would the money go, as Kroneke, for all the dislikes and hate aimed at him, hasn’t taken money out of the club and probably won’t, either?
3. Do you believe that we have such clueless managers who believe that not having a good squad and not competing with the top will be good enough to keep the Club’s high profile that brings Kroneke value, that brings the club profits?
So you honestly believe there are some billions sitting in the bank and Wenger is allowed to spend hese billions? All bollocks, the club is strained by its current liabilities. The alternative is Kroenke issues new shares but I doubt he will as it seems he will be unable to buy his rights thus making the club open to a takeover.
However, the club needs cash to compete with the top clubs right now and Kroenke is not doing that. My take is, he either raises his stake in the club or divest. The organic growth model is simply not working. I don’t buy the argument that Arsenal will go the way of Leeds or Blackburn. Those clubs do not have the assets Arsenal has at the moment. Arsenal has the fans, the location, a stadium and as such there will be always be investors coming around to keep the club going.
That was my instinctive thought. The club may have GBP123m in reserves and 70m transfer kitty, who knows? But who also knows what conditions are imposed on the manager? That 70m includes the wages for a 5-year contract? That can’t get you a top class player. Who knows what covenants are levied on the club, the restrictions on certain financial ratios for example.
We can only guess. For all we know, what we have is a top class manager who doesn’t diss his employer in public.
AP- the 70m would include the transfer fee and first years salary I believe.
The ‘homegrown’ agrarian bullshit is not actually as dumb as it seems – granted we’re not going to raise a winning 11 (and no ‘homegrown’ policy should ever expect to do so), but you cannot say that Wilshere, Gibbs, etc. are not successful, ‘homegrown’ players. What Wenger needs is the ability to round out the squad AFTER these players are established in the team. He sells RvP, we get Giroud, Cazorla, and Podolski. No one will argue that they are bad signings, but at the same time no one can say that they have sufficiently replaced RvP.
Let us consider it in the wealth options on the pitch. Attacking play can be discussed like a flowchart, and for Arsenal’s, it is surprisingly stagnant.
Arteta -> Wilshere/Cazorla -> Giroud
Giroud (if he doesn’t score) -> Walcott/Cazorla/Podolski, etc.
So if Giroud is plugged in the front against towering pieces of shit (which has been the case, except for the sp*rs game since he found some form earlier), then the option routes become completely closed. The whole cross and hope strategy is certainly not working, and statistics show that these are the case. So what happens when Wilshere has a quiet game and Cazorla is fouled like a red-headed step child of Aryan supremacists (fuckin spurs)? The driving options inside the box are then limited to Jenkinson/Walcott. Where was Walcott last Sunday? Neither Jenkinson or Giroud are mesmerizing dribblers and Walcott needs about an entire pitch to act like he is one. Hence the lumping crosses and hoping. When the player is world class though, unfortunately like RvP, the options open up in the case that chances are more likely to be converted or possession retained.
Wenger can’t do anything when Gibbs is out, Sagna is out, to provide final options in the final third, and they are our attacking plan B. Jenkinson, needs more time, and Monreal as well. Walcott has no one to one-two with into the box and has been pretending it’s Halloween and he’s dressed up as H.G. Wells’ invisible man. We can measure Gibbs and Sagna’s worth when Walcott and Podolski seem helpless without their partnerships. The answer then seems clear to me, 30 million in quality signings instead of budget carrots from the Arsenal academy continuing to fill the roster.
I love the Arsenal Academy, but no one expects a superstar team to emerge from one school – the quality of competition is just that severe.
Is this a hint that AW is not given the resources? hard to believe…
This is the frustrating thing about our club!
Brady is basically saying Wengers hands are tied in regards to splashing the cash but when Wenger is questioned about it, he’ll say he can spend if he wants to.
Gazidis will say there’s cash to spend & available to Arsene. PHW will say players salary is ridiculous, Stan Kronke will say fuck all, Usmanov will promise the world.
The fans remain confused, angry, frustrated & unsatisfied.
Yet nothing ever changes!
It’s baffling.
I agree with your whole statment except that I am no longer confused because Brady is saying the money has not been threre, and he is in a position to know. Let’s hope Wenger gets the dosh.
Also, I think the lack of Jan spending was to keep the powder dry for the summer. Anyway, this will be obvious in a few months one way or the other. I can see some spending is not required, like in midfiled, but I expect an expensive strliker, that is my litmus test. I wouldn’t be surprised by a winger a DM and a CB- in that order.
Do you realise we have the wage bill of Bayern Münich?
How on Earth is that not money, I cannot understand.
What money bought Gervinho-Giroud-Chamberlain? That is around 30m, roughly the price of a big name striker.
that’s all the money we got from selling our best players. there’s been no money ‘put in’ the team.
i wish some journalist would ask wenger about these brady comments, ask why brady has the impression wenger hasn’t been given the money. although the answer would probably be the usual blah-blah.
@prog.
I suppose if you are on a budget and need to make dinner you don’t blow it all on a 30quid bottle of wine, rather you by a 5quid bottle, some meat, some veg, a cheap desert.
The problem with ‘keeping the powder dry’ and waiting until thesummer to spend is that if we don’t have CL football, we will find that the best players won’t come anyway.
The nightmare scenario would be for Spurs to have the allure of being in the CL. That would create a situation whereby acheiving top 4 would get even harder. Should have bought another player in Jan….
@shuggietodd
I do believe we have a squad good enough to get into the top four next season, regardless of Sp*r2 yet to be clinched ‘champions league allure’.
But strengthening is key, especially that frickin’ leaky defence, which i dont think requires money but a change in attitude. And some bloody TRAINING.
wenger himself said he tried to sign a couple of other players in january but it’s not easy getting top quality players in the middle of a season. nobody else did either…
Simple. Brady is less concerned about acting like a politician.
he is also retiring at the end of the season so i get the feeling he feels he can speak out now and is using his opportunity to defend the boss and put some pressure on the board/owner. brady is a true gooner and a very smart chap so we should take what he says seriously.
Imagine something like this… your BOSSES are LYING to the media going on about something like “there is money to spend.”
It is not easy for an employee to CONTRADICT his boss’s lies in front of the press, as that would look very poor and destroy relations with the people you work for.
So Wenger has no choice but to “play along” with this perennial lie about the (phantom) war-chest.
Hopefully, now that we’re in a ‘super-crisis’, he’ll get some cash to spend this Summer finally.
In the meantime, can’t believe Nicolas Bendtner is on our books until Summer’2014. Any chance Juventus fancies him on a permanent-basis?
Didn’t Juventus just basically sack him for getting arrested?
Yep, but it just means we get him back, unless we can find some clause in his contrast that would allow us to use his behaviour to fire him,
What odds on actually there being one
It’s not really baffling, the last couple of years we’ve been reliant on player sales to break even. The money hasn’t been there and won’t be until the new Emirates money comes through and until we can more efficiently restructure the ‘socialist’ wage bill. Hopefully both can start to happen this summer with a front loaded deal and the exit of Arshavin, Squillaci and whoever else we can get rid of.
As for the various sound bites, Usmanov will say anything to make things less comfortable for Kroenke, Wenger is restricted in what he can say in public by not wanting to criticise his employers in public or dishearten the players, can you imagine him in a press conference saying ‘yes I know Gervinho is shit, but I don’t have any money so I had to go for my third choice in the transfer market in that position.’ As for Gazidis it would do more harm than good for him to come out and say ‘We have no money to invest in the squad, so we’re going to try and tread water this year. But please renew your season tickets while I try and convince world class players to come to a club with no money”
The way the stadium move was funded, combined with unforseen rampant wage inflation means that this was always going to be the toughest season, with or without Van Persie. From this summer Wenger will be able to start to spend again,towards a complete team rather than trying to replace players who have lost patience
Personally I think this clarifies it all for us. Wenger is the most respectful manager in football, and he will not disrespect his players in public even when we all see the errors they have made, and he will not disrespect his owners in public even if that means he takes the heat from the public and media. He respects and loves the club so much that he keeps all club dealings inside the club. It is frustrating to us as fans because we want to know everything that is going on inside the club we love, however, that doesn’t mean they are obligated to provide such information. No company needlessly airs their dirty laundry to the public, and Arsenal is no different. Here we are seeing Brady, a person who is very well in the “know” and who is ending his tenure at the club and thus has nothing to fear by coming out with these statements, urging the board and the owners to give Arsene Wenger the means necessary to be successful. I have no doubt in my mind that this means Arsene has been severely restricted in the market until now, which makes sense due to stadium debt. Now that we are coming to a point where we are comfortable with the debt on our books, he is urging the board not to keep this spending policy they have grown used to while the debt was there. Wenger is not the problem. Very few managers could have kept Arsenal in the CL every single year through the development of a new stadium, nor would they have put up with confused and angry fans and press for this long. You want to know a man’s ability and character? Ask his peers and his rivals… They will all tell you Wenger is an amazing manager. And everyone who insists we should get rid of him… who would you have replace him? I listened to that moron Piers Morgan and he suggested Mourinho, Pep, Klopp, & Heynckes. What a fuck*n idiot he is… what makes him think any of these managers would want to go from clubs that give them full support financially and otherwise to a club that forces them to work with their hands tied behind their back and lets them take all the heat for it. You cannot just pick whoever you want to manage your team and force them to do it people. We are lucky to have such a committed and capable manager. I fear we probably wont realize this until its too late and we have forced him out of the position.
Well put dude
We all know.that by now what the issue should be is that some one out there is trying to get the players we need early so by the time the season begins theres been a couple of games played as a team.
It would be wise from Wenger to get the team back on track, win a trophy or 2 before his contract it out. Massive changes should happen in the summer.
We have German international striker with 100+ caps and 50 goals for his his country, Europe and World Cup final experience. But Wenger keeps him in the bench for 2 very important games against Bayern and Spurs.
Can anybody explain me why?
I’m if raid we ned new coach first.
The reason is that he wants wilshire to play AM and can’t drop Carzola. Given that, he could put Podolski in for Giroud but if that didn’t work you’d be on here asking why is Giroud, our new summer signing, on the bench. Unfortuanetly, Wilshire didn’t have a great day at AM, it happens. Also, I think he wanted Giroud to get on the end of Jenkisons crosses- also didn’t come off.
It will be interesting to see if he signs a LW in the summer to compete with Podolski.
In all fairness, i’m not really sure that if it didn’t work out that we would be asking why Giroud is on the bench. At least if it was just tried out for a game against opposition we should be beating.
That is really one of the things that i find hard to understand, that Arsene won’t experiment with his tactics or lineups. Podolski is arguably the best finisher at the club and Olivier is going through a bit of a barron spell, so why not give it a try?! What’s the worst outcome? Poldi doesn’t have a great game and we revert back to Giroud for the next one.
At least that would signal that Arsene acknowledges there is a problem and is trying to do something to rectify it, rather than going through the motions and hoping that some of the players that underperformed in the previous games, will perform in the next. These players need to know that below-par performances mean that they won’t play and will need to fight to get back in the team.
@wyn: This us exactly what he did against Bayern Munich! Giroud to the bench, Podolski starting. Didn’t work so well.
I thought a drawback in that was that we looked weaker than usual (which is saying something) defending set pieces. Giroud at least gives us a solid presence on the near post whilst defending corners.
@witoldo yes, Podolski started instead of Giroud but he was still playing out wide with Theo up front. I do see your point regarding him being useful from set pieces but this is fucking Arsenal. We shouldn’t be selecting a striker based on the fact that he can win headers in our own box. If we learned how to defend set pieces correctly then it wouldn’t even be an issue.
Plus, Bayern are better than us in every department so the fact that Podolski started ahead of Giroud in that one game and didn’t set the world alight surely doesn’t mean that we have now explored that possibility and it didn’t work out and should never be tried again. Let’s do it in the league, possibly against Swansea and let’s just see what happens.
Reason being he’s so insistent on playing two players who are very much alike i.e. Arteta and Ramsey. Playing both means there is only room for one more midfielder. Meaning Podolski is subbed and Carzola is moved to the left. However, Carzola is not your typical winger and will barely run up and down the wings nor track back to help the LB. He’ll often just drift back into the central position, meaning we lose width. He’s stated it several times how much he loves the free-roaming role behind the striker. But yet, Arsene still persists with this double DM thing. So infuriating!
Didn’t replace Song so we now need 2 cm’s to do the job that 1 dm would….
CAZORLA – He is not a car. Get your own teams players right ffs.
Podolski started against Bayern and was largely ineffective.
Because we had Mr Theodor Hundred K Week aka Play Like Shit When You Got Da Ting as our main striker.
Did he score a goal for us playing out wide? Did Theo done something ?
He is only guessing. Anyone who brings up Arsenal’s money related issues is in the dark.
Even if he doesn’t have money to spend, it doesn’t excuse the inflated wage structure which is 20-30% bigger than Spurs’s, and equals Bayern’s.
Even if he doesn’t have money to spend apart from what he collected from player sales, it doesn’t excuse not using the Cesc-Nasri-Clichy money well.
Gervinho, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Santos, Giroud were not exactly cheap and don’t represent a “broken” club, we spent 10m on Moreal, you cannot say we don’t have money to spend and then count 40-50m from the average players’ transfers Wenger has made in recent seasons.
After all these years we know it will take a massive change at the top level to change the AFC fortunes. For 8 years we have been outspent..thats a fact! Recently Chelski have purchased 18 players of PL quality and have them on loan throughout Europe….this is to circumventthe fair play rules when they arrive . Man City have done the same too. So if and when AFC sort out what they want to do re; take overs and Usmanovs money, the others will still be light year ahead. It has nothing to do with wenger he is just there to keep us in the top four. I have nothing but respect for him as a man but as a coach he is now failing because he has never accepted that he has no idea about the defensive side of the game.
That’s all well & good but how do you explain the manager approaching a game for example vs Real Madrid in the same way he would approach a game vs Bolton?!?
I’ve never manage a game of football in my life not even Football Manager,?but I know if I’m playing a team like Bayern, I’ll adjust my team, formation & tactics accordingly!
I’m my opinion, that more than the financial muscle of our rivals has been the reason for our lack of recent success. And cup defeats to teams worse than us proves that.
In my opinion unless Wenger actually acquires world class players, we wont be successful cos he refuses to alter/amend his tactics.
That’s why SAF is the best. Purely objective – no position is safe on his team. You perform or you’re off, no matter how much he spent on you. As soon as MUFC are scored on, he changes tactics/formation and regains control. We keep thinking it’s just bad luck and try the same over and over to no avail.
That’s all very well when you have the kind of money to spend that they do…
Their wages are 153m, ours 125m. Not exactly miles different.
Stephen, the difference between 153m and 125m is just over 5 players on 100,000 p/w wages. I consider that significant.
it’s plain wrong to say he has no idea about the defensive side of the game. this was the guy who built the invincibles defence and got a defence including eboue, senderos and flamini to the champions league final. yes, the defence is shit at the moment but that seems like more of a mental issue with certain players (yes, vermaelen, i am looking at you!) than a lack of organisation or training. coaching a guy to not lose the plot repeatedly in big games is not a very easy thing to do is it? all the haters are basing their arguments on all sorts of wild rumours with no basis in fact spread by people with a serious axe to grind with wenger (e.g. stewart robson and myles palmer)…
The invincible’s defense were largely there from when he started, he didn’t build it.,
i’m sorry but the invincibles defence was lehmann, lauren, cole, campbell and toure. all players that wenger bought or brought into the team. are you even an arsenal supporter?? please stop spreading your FUD…
“I don’t think there’s any pressure on him – I think the board are 100 per cent behind him. ” This is the biggest problem.If we somehow scrape through and reach fourth this season this season will be considered as some kind of success.
not being funny but it will be a success
Its great when you know you are going, and you dont need to kiss up to the bosses to keep your job safe. Helps to free the tongue. Chippy is Arsenal to the core, and is obviously sick of seeing Arsene hung out to dry by the Board.
To answer a point above, would you publically contradict your boss, and tell the press you havent got any money to spend? Wouldnt be the best way to stay in a job. We actually lose money based on standard income, and have only made a profit on Transfers.
Good to geta little clarity on the situation from someone that really knows……
I can’t find the source now, but i am sure that Wenger has said that he has asked the board to stop saying he has resources to spend.
Hear hear. But I think Wenger knows that the corner will be turned in the next 15 months. I reeeeeally hope we get that top 4 spot and these new deals don’t just end up replacing the Champions League money,leaving us in the same spiral.
Generally agree with you North Bank Gooner, however I’d love to see a detailed analysis of our wages structure and how much money is being wasted throughout the squad, perhaps comparing it to Man U’s. my understanding is a player like Jonny Evans earns £25 pw but gets a big win bonus, whereas at Arsenal he’d probably be on £50k pw. Arsene has total control of his playing budget and how to spend it.
Hopefully when Brady leaves we might find out more.
dont think the board would allow that info to be printed off, too much paper for our fragile finances to bear
I’ve been on about performance related pay for ages MC, imagine Theo’s shop window form week in week out, because no goals/assists=no dough. Should focus minds a bit! Give players HUGE bonuses when they actually achieve something, rather than huge wages for showing up.
I wouldn’t read too much into it because I could be wrong but would Laim know if Wenger has the fund available to him? I would say no but then I am not there and can only guess.
I would say that there are funds and its a mixture of Wenger being cautious and the board being a little tight arsed. But sooner rather than later we must start making the best of the resources because its so evident that at the moment that’s not the case.
He’s spent money….he’s spent it on total shite though. Santos, Gervinho, Giroud, Podolski, Mert….the most expensive bench in the Prem. I wouldn’t trust him with any more money!
Giroud, Podolski & Mert are not shite, they’re are all good players, not world class but definitely not shite.
They are good players. A Cavani style signing would bring the best out of Giroud and Poldi. As it is Giroud is left on his own and that’s too much in your first year. He plays best with a partner.
To me that’s Brady saying ” Arsène is not being backed bay the board ”
he knows Arsène won’t say it but to me that sounds like inside info.
Over the last ten years we have spent hundreds of millions on players who Arsene swears are top top quality. Yet most have flopped. Is it bad scouting or bad coaching. Both probably.
It’s true. Over the last ten years Arsenal have spent around £250m. In that same time frame Chelsea have spent £704m, City – £605m, Liverpool £441m, Tottenham £369m and United £365m.
Every single one of those clubs has also had less sales than us. So how on Earth can we expect to finish 1st or 2nd. Judging by our Gross Purchases we are 5th and going by Nett we are 20th.
Because of our lack of money Wenger has to spread bet. He can’t buy 1 £50m signing, what if he doesn;t succeed or gets injured, we then have no money, no squad depth and we’re fecked.
His transfer skills have kept us in the top four. I’m not defending his coaching or tactics because I think he could do a lot better in this area (although it is hard with a new squad which is effectively what we have now), but I strongly believe if we had anyone else as manager we would be declining a hell of a lot faster than we have.
Great point, but with Wenger’s willingness to develop youngsters, I’d still like to see him make that one huge purchase, just one. There are plenty of guys in the squad for cover now.
Also, I really liked Wenger’s idea of not having a ‘holding midfielder’ in our system. But then I saw the job that Javi Martinez does in Bayern’s team.
Great point Pete, & that’s 1 of the reasons Arsene is still the manager
What he’s achieved with that budget as well as the new stadium is remarkable, but unfortunately the quality of the squad is at an all time low.
Completely agree Pete. What I would add is that he is also betting on his ability to squeeze more out of players than they have shown before. You can insert a huge list of examples over the years of players that have come to us, excelled, then left and never been the same again.
I am fairly sure that was his intention with Giroud. Wenger was taking the risk that the guy could step up to play in the PL. For me the jury is still out, and probably will be until next season.
The hard bit is that you don’t know if it will work out– for every Koscielny you get a Squillaci. The interesting question is whether he has been unlucky and got more misses right now, or we are just looking closer at what is going on right now.
On the big signing, I’d put money on the fact that the wages are more of an issue than the fee– spending the 50 mil is less of a problem than the 200k a week that comes with it. Its why clearing the dead wood is such a priority, and our struggling in recent transfer windows is in part down to the fact we cannot get rid of them.
Surely if Wenger had the money he’d buy the likes of Cavani or Vidal; no manager would want their team to be 2nd best, or in our case 4th best if they had the resources available. It does make me think that Wenger is only saying what the board tell him to say.
I don’t think money is purely the reason behind our recent problems, there’s clearly an issue with poor coaching, poor tactics, and terrible defensive organisation, and the inability to remove constant individual errors.
As many posters have been saying this morning, Wenger has had money to spend, and he has spent some of it on garbage. This is the reality.
I for one am totally against giving Wenger more money to spend in the hope he’ll magically change the team into a winning side. Winning comes from hard work and getting the basics right. In the last three seasons he’s totally failed to do this, so he should go.
Money can only go so far.
Absolutely agree. We simply are too easy to play against that every team knows what we will do and nullifies it. It has been happening for years and years, even during the Invincibles. The exception was that we had much better players back then who had the creativity and skills to make that irrelevant. We no longer have that quality of player. So we need to alter your tactics to the players that we have now and defend differently. We do not do that and this is why we are seeing the results that we are seeing today.
I do not think that Wenger is the man to rectify this. He has had years to do it and hasn’t, so why should we expect that this will suddenly change this summer if he has some money.
We got about 18 players at the club that could leave tommorow and wouldnt affect us in the slightest. We need about 3-4 players of great calibre. Promote a couple of youth players. And only then can we compete against other top four squads. Will his happen? I guess some of it will but once again we will be left in August feeling that once again, we could have done more.
Players out.
Squillaci, Park, Bendtner, Santos, Fabianski, Mannone, Arshavin, Eastmond, Djourou, Yennaris, Chamack. Plus a couple more reserve players that wont step up. Look at this list of dross. You could argue Diaby and Rosicky could leave with their injuries/age.
Promote Eisfeld, Gnabry possibly another one like Bellerin or Akpom.
Go buy a GK, CB, a ST and Possibly Winger. Let bould actually coach defence……. Surely if this happened its a win win situation.
..how can we possibly be any worse off? Feed back please guys not just thumbs up/down!
@rossi88
We definitely have to try new things until we find a winning formula.
Arsenal crying out for an experienced gk, and commanding cb’s.
A clinical striker that is also good in aerial attacks. Villa is an option.
Thing is our defense is littered with experienced internationals, but we keep making the same mistakes, which makes me think its down to the coaching or formation. We were saying the exact same thing five years ago with Almunia in goal and Gallas/Toure at CB. Personally I think it’s just time to freshen things up but no one above Arsene has a clue how to do that.
AW educated in Economics yet still fails to understand a fundamental principle.
Big players can win us games, don’t spend it on rubbish.
‘Big players’ also cost 30m+ and yearly wages that would be around 5-10m a year, for 4 years. Thats about 50m on a single player, which is a gamble… which is poor economics.
Wenger came out two weeks ago and said that the money was there now which alluded to it not being there previous seasons. He said that we could afford Falcao is we wanted to buy him, and he specifically stated Falcao as to give the impression that we have a lot of money.
I think big changes are coming this summer, signing of players and I feel it will be Arsene’s last season next year. I don’t see him extending beyond 2014 regardless.
“He said that we could afford Falcao is we wanted to buy him…”
And if we really could afford Falcao, the reason for not buying Falcao would be, er, what exactly?
Uhh that he’s a great player and if he were available to buy there would be at least 5 clubs ahead of us in the pecking order, money or not. We cannot just buy him at the moment, and I feel that Wenger said this sort of name specifically to point out that financially we actually have that clout now, so whether it be Falcao or someone else, we could well see a Berkamp-esque signing this summer to get us back on track, now that we have the money to do it and all. It is at least the most likely season for it to happen, as it was an outright impossibility for the last 8 years.
the reason for not buying him would be that city or chelski or united would offer him a better package so you can forget about your dreams of falcao. you can only sign players like that when you are super-rich and we are some way from being that so have to do things differently. at the moment we have potential (with a couple of big question marks) superstars in wilshere, chamberlain, scz and ramsey, all signed up to long term contracts. we also have a good group of quality established players around them and some other bright prospects coming through so the squad is overall in pretty good shape. if we can shift a bunch of dead wood off the wage bill in the summer we can add 2 to 4 10-15 million pound players comfortably and still probably reduce our overall wage bill and not blow all our cash. that would give us a squad with a chance to have a tilt at the title over the next 3-4 years which is as much as we can hope for until the debt is reduced significantly. i still don’t understand where all the panic is coming from.
The problems aren’t purely lack of spending. This club hasn’t been the same ever since obefemi Martins put the ball in that net. But fuck me atleast spend money when we need too ..teams like aston villa have dug deeper in their pockets than we have even when they couldn’t afford too. For footballing reasons over financial. We always have everything focused on the latter these days
‘even when they can’t afford to’
Go check out Portsmouth and Rangers and ask them if this is a good strategy.
Worked tremendously well for Leeds as well.
And what money have villa spent? About 8 million on benteke hardly count as spending big.
£10m Benteke
£9.5m N’Zogbia
£18m Darren Bent
£8m Stephen Ireland
£7m Warnock
£8m Davies
£7.8m Cuellar
£7.5m Reo-Coker
Overspending on British players is out of control. That money could’ve been spent on better players from abroad, but every mid-level to relegation team are deluded into thinking they can start the next British football revolution.
And Villa are where exactly? Poor point, awfully made.
this probleme is steve bould.its very clear that he cant balance the team,motivate the players.look at these days with pat rice,arsenal were more balanced,attack,defence,high line……..but now bould dont understand the philosophy of wenger,and i am sure that we need a world class(coaching staff)algonside wenger. thanks
those who dislike my comment dont understand what the meaning of coaching staff.
Guys hes practically saying AW doesnt have money and its obvious anyway.
When your selling players to avoid making a loss each season your not going to get a lot of money back to spend.
Common sense.
Wenger has actually done a remarkable job in keeping Arsenal ‘competitive’ by just recycling money he generates by selling the top stars.
However even he can’t do this forever (run out of stars!) and its about time NEW money got invested into the playing staff.
I hate to point out that the problem is expectations and what’s even more puzzling is where they came from.
In 1998, we won the PL because SAF screwed up the end of the season, we were nowhere at Xmas and caught them up massively over the last few weeks.
In 1999 we were one point off, that was a close run season, you could argue that United were distracted by their CL campaign and didn’t put as much effort into the league.
In 2000 we were nowhere, we might have been second but that owes as much to the other eighteen teams being rubbish.
In 2001, see above.
We won it in 2002, failed to mount an adequate defence in 2003 but started a decent run that continued into 2004 and 2005. Midway through 2005 the wheels came off.
We’ve always been horribly inconsistent, our defence has always been vulnerable to the best players, whether it included Tony Adams, Sol Campbell or Chuckles the Clown (whoever you want).
Didn’t the bookies pay out on Arsenal in 2003 only for us to balls it up after Fergies bitch Fat Sam kicked lumps out of us in a 2-2 draw?
That’s happened more often to United than to us though! They paid out on a United title win after we beat MCFC at the Emirates.
My point, for those who thumbed me down, was that if you’ve actually supported Arsenal for longer than the last nine years is that we’ve never been as good as people seem to think we ought to be, the team has actually gotten better in some ways during the trophy drought (and worse in others). Watching Arsenal in the Champions league used to be like going to the dentist, you’d do it but you never really wanted to because some striker with an unpronounceable name was ready and waiting to punish our static defence.
Brady’s comments and insight speaks volumes. He knows what he’s putting across. To me its an open-book in all legitimacy … of the happenings that the media puts forward with much exageration and negativity!
Arsenal NOW to build up a squad that will put Arsenal back in contention next season to be up there where it belongs. Challengers on all fronts viz the EPL, FA and CL arenas!
With at least a six out and six in of critical players Arsenal will a name to be reckoned again!
The potentials in the reserves and loanees must never be overlooked who can give the present first XI squad a run for their money and challenge for berth in the first team. One may be suprised when these ‘young guns’ take onto the pitch same as when Wilshere, Cesc, Van Persie were brought into the fold!!
Never ever discount their skills!!
This is an interesting point Roland..
Ive been surprised at how little players like Toral, Eisfeld, Yennaris, Gnaby, even Coquelin have been used this season.
Its very un-Wenger like not to be blooding his youngsters in. He’s just using what he sees as his ‘best XI’ every week – to the point of exhaustion.
I think he knows how key it is to finish fourth this year so we’ll be in a position to spend the extra money in the summer – which I think (and Brady seems to verify this above) HASN’T been available previously – despite the rhetoric we’ve all heard spouted.
I think we need to be pointing the fingers at Kroenke here, and to a lesser extent his mouthpiece Gazidis – who suffers a bit from being the messenger who we shoot at to an extent. Dont get me wrong, Wenger could be doing a lot differently, and he falls short tactically at times, and in the transfer markey occassionaly, but I think his hands are tied a fair bit more than perhaps Kroenke has liked to make out..
Having said all of that, if we get through all of this, start splashing the cash, and reap the rewards of these lean, prudent years, then we could all look at the way Kroenke and pals have managed the board in a completely different manner.
Time will tell.. Till then, lets get behind the team, and COME ON YOU GUNNERS!!!!
wanger dug his own grave let him be buried in it now have run out of sympathy that i had for him he is a stubborn cunt whom will bring no noticeable or sensible change to this team…..give him all that money and he’ll deliver a top four finish yes with no silverware is that good enough?
Perhaps that hole is for your gob.
Wenger has earned the right to spend the money. After all, he has played a large part in the financial stability of the club.
But the main reason why i want him to stay is because he can spot talent like no other manager.
Spend spend spend! We not stability on the pitch now
I agree Goon!
“the main reason why i want him to stay is because he can spot talent like no other manager”
…Squillaci, Silvestre, Gervinho, Santos, Stepenovs, Bendtner, Chamakh, Jeffers, Park Chu-Young, Denilson, Inamoto…and these are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head.
Yeah, real top draw signings.
That’s not fair. To be honest, none of those players cost very much – most of them were free, not like the £30 million Ol’ Red Nose spent on Veron. Or the £35 million spent on Andy Carroll by Kenny. Why don’t you remember some of the good signings of the top of your head – Fabregas was FREE. Wilshere was FREE. VP was only £2.5mil. Viera was £3.5 mil. Whenever he has spent ‘big’ money he’s bought in quality, so hopefully he’ll bring in quality when he next has money to spend.
Vieira, Henry, Pires, Campbell, Toure, Clichy, WIltord, Ljungberg, Cazorla, Petit, Anelka, Sylvinho, Lauren, Vermaelen, Walcott, Chamberlain, Na$ri (*spits), Adebayor (*spits), van persie (*spits), Cole (*spots), Wilshere, Fabragas, Song.
See I can make lists too!
Dont be so ignorant, of course he is great at spotting talent. Its goalkeepers and cunts he’s not good at spotting.
11 bad players in 16 years, Is not bad if you think about it & how many gems has he uncovered in that period?!?
Countless.
You can say what you want about Arsene, but you can’t accuse him of not being able to spot talent!
Silvestre… ugh. He’s with the Portland Timbers now.
The other night I flipped on the opener between them and NYRB (Hey, I’m still a sucker for some Titi). Anyway it was early in the 2nd half and NY were up 3-1. I shot me friend who lives out there an email saying “I’m just going to assume that Silvestre is responsible for all three goals.” I was joking,
He emailed back, “Actually, yes. The second was particularly hilarious.” Fuck that guy.
SAF gives us Silvestre and we give him RvP. That about sums up the last 8 years.
Yes, we seemed to have hit a negative spiral. We probably hit it when we moved from Highbury and our finances were restricted.
I believe, AW has guided us till now, through hard times, without letting us slip down further. Without him, we may well have been even lower down.
So, if good times are around the corner, I want AW to get the chance to build back with the money now available. It would be grossly unfair to boot him out now after he had managed us through difficult times with his hands tied.
To add something to this discussion, our weekness in contract negotiations is well discussed on these board. Just think of the new contract signed by Rosicky. I dont know whether a pay-as-you-play deal for him was ever mooted.
I appreciate his abilities and enthusiasm but considering his injury record the board should have made an attempt in that direction. Should he accept it would be a win-win for the club and if otherwise I still feel it was a risk worth taking.
rosicky when fit is a fantastic addition to the squad and exactly the calibre of squad player we need to keep. offering him pay as you go and watch him do just that – go…..
sometimes you have to stump up and take a risk on a player. we need him, and he’s been more available than you would think, there have been some perfect times to bring him in and he’s been left out. I hear what you’re saying bro but rosicky is a bad example.
People talk about the greatness of the German economic model in football but I don’t believe it – Javi Marintez 35m; Mario Gomez 26.5m; Ribery 22m; Robben 21m; Neuer 19m; etc.
Spend to buy the best equals trophies in any league.
Yep, but Bayern is a bit of an exception even in Germany.
They basically have an income not far behind United, and as far as I remember, not debts. So they have huge amounts of cash to throw around.
They are the only German club in the top 10 earners (PL has 5) and pull in double the cash of any other German club.
Not saying they don’t follow the German model, but no other German club could do what they do.
they have the biggest commercial revenue in the world. they are a super club and we can’t compare ourselves to them… yet!
dortmund have won the last two titles on far far less money than there biggest rivals bayern. so much for clubs with smaller transfer fees not being aboe to compete….
sorry i’m eating an apple.
*their
*able
*compete
So you’re saying a lack of spending is NOT why we’ve been pipped to every major transfer we’ve been linked to in the last decade?
I’d say its not so much about a lack of spending as such, and more about what we can afford to spend, and what others can afford.
We’ve always been in a position where if Bayern, United, Barca, Real and until recently a few others seriously wanted a player, we were screwed. If you think of Arsene’s best signings, they have all been under the radar types to avoid that competition. How often have they been announced and people go Who?
To that you add City and Chelsea who cannot afford to outbid us, but do so anyway, because they can lose money with no consequences.
It has not helped that we have been either skint — I’m one of those who believe that the club has carefully put up a front and we have less money available than anyone thinks. — or afraid to spend back during the stadium build because of the uncertainty.
So why have we been pipped to so many major signings? Short answer is because other clubs can.
If we go after a high profile player and another big club want them; we lose. Even if as I see people suggesting, we throw all our budget on that one special player, or pay over the odds, Man City talk nicely to those Middle Eastern gentlemen, and they offer more.
Arsene’s (and Arsenal’s) traditional hunting ground has been squeezed by a number of factors:
Its harder to find the under the radar gems in the first place because more people are looking for them,
you get the feeling Arsenal’s moves are watched, because everyone knows the sort of players we unearth,
those nice agent gentlemen would never use an approach from Arsenal to push for a better deal somewhere else,
and we screwed a few up ourselves (Mata anyone?).
They all inevitably end up with us losing out to someone who can pay more.
If you look at our recent signings:
Cazorla — was a true true under the radar job; we got luck that we got in before anyone realised Malaga’s problems.
Podolski — pretty high profile, but his time at Bayern would make him a big risk; puts off the clubs that could outbid us.
Giroud — one of Wenger’s punts on the hope he is more than he seems (as my post upthread somewhere)
Basically all players we could get without competing with clubs that could Gazump us.
Holy shit, apologies for the essay. I’ve never really put this all together and now I’m really repressed. Only upside is it might get better soon.
TL;DR version: We’re poor, other clubs are rich and take every opportunity they can to fuck us over
Repressed; Depressed, who cares?
Wenger isn’t the right person to spend the money in the summer. The problem is beyond buying players. He could put Vidic in defence and Yaya Toure in the midfield and they’d still be making the same dumb mistakes. The team is not being properly coached, drilled, instucted, motivated. Wenger has lost it and needs to go. Well, unfortunately people will still bend over backwards to make excuses for him even if we were relegated. If Arsenal is really serious about challenging for the league and other trophies and not just Champions League money, a new coach with fresh ideas is needed.
We need a leader mertesaker is prime example u pay peanuts u get monkeys vermalen not a leader ! We shud go all out for matt Hummels and lose sczezny the man was a fault for too many crucial goals this year !! To compete a goalkeeper has got to save and give u ten points a season when the rest are nt playing well ,I love carzola but yet again he goes missing for the big games its ok scoring goals against ur west hams & readings but put In A blockbuster performance when it matters , some of u may argue that Tottenham home he was good but he was absent til Adebayor got sent off
Look I’m not much of an economist. Never have been, never will be, but if this becomes Arsene’s strategy I will back him to the hilt.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY6fp95uGfM
To the hilt I say.
Blogs if you could kindly put up my post. That’d be great!
Dortmund seem to lose their best player every season and can still compete at a high level – 2 Bundeliga titles and maybe none this year, but looking very strong in the Champions League. How the fuck do they sell off their players and still compete while we sell ours off and the obvious effects are there for all to see.
Is it coaching. Their manager is quite highly regarded. Or is it just better use of the transfer sales. Lose Kagawa; Bring in Reus.
On another topic, I think it really is time to start Podolski up front. Giroud has had a run of games and does everything except score. If we can play them both, then we should cause I really like Giroud’s other contributions (passes, lay offs, defensive headers, knock downs, good hair) but he just can’t seem to fucking finish and we need our strikers to put it in that back of the net so lets give Podol a run at centre forward. He doesn’t track back anyway so sticking him up there won’t hurt us at the back.
Dortmund are in very good shape. Have a read of this. http://swissramble.blogspot.com.au/
How would you feel if Jack was made captain, Mourhinio made manager, and the Qataris buy us for 1.5BILLION and give us 300 million warchest?
I’d feel that Jack being made captain was the sugar cube designed to take away the bad taste of the medicine, and someone was hoping the bad taste would distract us enough that they could fuck us somewhere painful.
are you coming down from your high yet?
Ok great. Just open up the checkbook and start going to town.
Uh problem I see is we are are currently sitting on a 150+ million wage bill, which is among the highest. You cant just say ok sign a couple forwards and some defenders and after 75 million we are good.
You have to clear the squad of the wages/players that arent capable of offering the squad anything. I understand a couple are up this summer, but am sorry more than a couple need to be gone, so we can hot the reset button on those spots and get them filled with requisite quality.
But we seem very stubborn to cut our losses sell players for a bargain basement sum, swallow our pride and the loss…..and move the fuck on.
For fuck sake….everyday I have a headache now because of the mess our beloved club is creating for itself.
Id feel fucking excellent….then id wake up
Some very good comments made on this page.
Wenger is a change man. Due to his philosophy on youth, he will only invest money on youth, not on experience base. his youth invest is from midfield to striker while defenders are all experience base. We need player like Patrick Vieira who is a player that most scared off. Look at him when he leads the team, no one dares to interrupt his leadership or commanding.
santi, giroud, podolski, monreal. all over 25 all signed this year. think, then post.
” santi, giroud, podolski, monreal. all over 25 all signed this year. think, then post.”
those names you mentions are all persuade by former/players at Arsenal not buy with big money. those players last only for 4-5 years time then Wenger will offer contract year by year not yearS.
think before shoot at your own fans. ROFL!