braineclipse
Willie Hall
A) Previous managers have said so. And one manager having a bias I can understand, maybe two. But Ramos, Redknapp and Villas-Boas have all come out with much the same thing: promises were made that weren't kept, ambitious talk was replaced with the cheap option, etcetera. Now all of them might conceivably also be biased, but I'll take the testimony of three men over the testimony of one, especially when that one person has also shown much the same behaviour with our newest manager as well. So yes, that is the relationship Levy has had with our managers, who have achieved in spite of him rather than because of him, a situation that has been in evidence from about the summer of 2010 onwards.
B) Not a dead link anymore, I checked. (The problem with linking anything with 'Arsenal' in the web address is that it gets the 's' and 'l' replaced by 5 and 1 automatically, but I think milo's fixed that). However, for convenience's sake:
Like I said before: did we even try before scarpering away in glee because we as a club wouldn't have to put our money where our mouth was? We made another profit in the window, as per usual, which has rapidly overtaken everything else in terms of paramount importance to this club. And then you're surprised when our managers blast the chairman for lying to them about ambition? (As an aside, I agree Lewis is as much to blame as Levy: again, you know this given how I often I harp on about it. But Levy is the point-man that our managers seem to dislike, so he's the obvious target.)
We have none: our ambition is to tread water until ENIC can gain their massive profit from selling up. What drive we had to climb up the table evaporated about five years ago, and now we're the proverbial 'flash' lads - wowing managers and players alike with promises of backing and ambition, and then revealing the ugly truth once they've signed on. And yes, Redknapp did get himself reined in by Levy - to the extent where he asked for Cahill, Samba, Tevez or someone and was given (repeat after me
Please don't conflate our basement buy approach with strategy, ambition or backing the manager in charge, braine: it is none of those things. I'm glad we've found a seemingly brilliant manager who seems to be able to surmount all the obstacles Levy (advertently or otherwise) tosses casually into his path, but that doesn't excuse our glorious leader, not at all.
A) Managers getting the sack then going on to blame others to keep their own reputation and profile high is bog standard though. This happening doesn't tell us anything. "Not getting the players I wanted" is about as standard a response to getting sacked as Wenger's "I did not zee that inzident" or Mourinho blaming the ref after a loss. You're ignoring the base rate of these occurrences.
B) Meh... Journalist speculation. And even within this you're cherry picking what you want to believe. "club directors decided that they would refuse all offers". Wasn't that fairly widely speculated and reported? That Southampton reached a breaking point after which they wouldn't sell any more players as they'd already brought in more money than they would realistically spend and keeping some sort of continuity was key for the upcoming season. That's your source by the way, not mine. Saying that they essentially entered a Levy Modric to Chelsea like stance of "nope".
The "Redknapp refined by Levy" comment is just bizarre... Seriously. Palacios, Defoe, Keane, Kaboul, Crouch, Bassong. All PL proven players, most past 25 and on solid wages. Then, after it seems likely that Redknapp is on his way he only gets two loan deals and that's all you can focus on...
We're not threading water though... We've been outperforming our financial constraints fairly regularly. Despite investing money in long term projects like the training ground and stadium project. This for you is threading water? We're a point off 4th and we're threading water? If there was a face-palm smiley this is where I would put it.
Can I at least, if nothing else, ask you to stop equating Lewis and Levy then?
