thing with Arsenal losing RVP is that they replaced him with the French leagues top goal scorer and the German national teams top goal scorer (...i believe) so it isn't as though they have purely lost RVP without replacement, like some are making it sound. they also brought in a player of top class quality in Carzola to strengthen their midfield. Song was allowed to leave rather than forcing a move through so you would have to believe that Wenger thought it was a decent deal in order for him to allow it to go ahead.
in my mind that's a fairly similar set of circumstances to us losing Modric & VdV and replacing them with Dembele, Dempsey and Sigurdsson (id say ours would be a bigger drop in quality overall tbf) - in losing Modric AND VdV in one window i would also say that it has a bigger effect to our style of play than Arsenal losing their main goalscorer, especially when you take in to account the disruption a new manager with new ideas will bring (as opposed to the same manager being there for 17 years or whatever and the continuity that brings) that's even without looking at the injury situation which, again, i also believe we have had a rougher time of than them.
had we had the same starting XI as last year as well as the same manager then i think it would be a lot more realistic to say that we should be aiming to finish above them (or that we are favorites to do so) as it stands i don't think we can say that we should be aiming to pip them to 4th - hopefully we can and it's not an impossible task by any means - but in order to do so i think it will mean us (&AVB) having a great season
This about sums up how I felt when I read through
SUIYHA's posts over the last few pages. He has put forward a number of what I think are good points, though in my opinion is that it could be better if he cut down on the use of subjective examples.
Let me recap what I gathered from his posts:
- Scum was an one-man team last season and they lost their "one man"
- Good managers should be able to deal with changes (quoted many examples, most of them with adequate or compensating replacements though, eg. Henry with RVP)
- None of the difficulties faced by AVB are valid as other teams have their problems too
- AVB made some terrible mistakes, most tangibly not doing anything in the first half vs. Scum
- A significant reason why we are in 4th now, is because other teams f*ck-up and got themselves into sh*t
Well, if we consider AVB's managerial opponents (as argued by SUIYHA, the other teams all have their own share of problems and we should not use them as excuses. So, if using that logic, the relative squad strength or club wealth or continuity, injuries, successful/unsuccessful transfers etc would sort of even out, and anyway, good managers should deal with changes) of the sides that neutral fans would expect us to compete with are:
- an UCL winning manager (Chel$ki, later became two UCL winning managers)
- multiple league titles winning manager who had been in the job for decades (Scum)
- experienced and even well respected managers (Everton and Saudi Sportswashing Machine)
- an up and coming manager (Liverpool)
Of the above list, I personally put AVB in the same bracket as Brendan Rodgers of "up and coming", though AVB might have won more trophies but after taking into consideration what happened last season, they are about at the same level.
And yet, as we are closing in on the half-way point, we are only behind Chel$ki in the league table. Taken as awhole, should we not accredit AVB for doing his job thus far, or at least for not f*ck-up like our other league opponents yet? For every sickening Scum/Norwich result, there are equally good ones, such as Man Utd away and Swansea home.
I am not saying AVB is definitely going to be a good/classy manager for us, but it would be nice if we fans can back him by allowing more times and tolerance to him, also hopefully, Levy can also back him by signing our top priority transfer targets. (a lot of "t"!)
Though I won't exaggerated that AVB only got meager support in the transfer market this summer, the fact is our net transfer spending was about even (or even a net surplus depends on the source you use to value Modric's fee, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012–13_Tottenham_Hotspur_F.C._season). In short, Levy has only allowed our total wages bills to increase slightly (my estimate, not ITK information), and did not really spend extra funds to bring in new players. It would be fair to say a club of our stature should be looking at spending £10-15m at least.
One good thing Levy has done this summer was denying Loserpool the attacking midfielder (first Sigurdsson and later Demps) wanted by Rodgers. Though it has to be pointed out that Loserpool already incurred a net spending of over £15m (conservative estimate) before Fenway refused to sanction an extra £1.5m to get Demps.
