glorygloryeze
Tom Huddlestone
if i was offered the job of wenger's publicist, id drop my tottenham allegiance in an instance
i totally disagree. in any one given season, theres enough luck/variance in football for teams to acheive beyond their means. if you look at a teams' performances over 4/5 years, almost all the time, they perform relative to their spending capacity. liverpool are worse than us imo, and will not do anything like they did last year for a long time. look at dortmund. they performed above bayern for a couple of years. but the fact that they couldnt hold onto their players (due to lacking the financial might), means that they are regressing to the mean. they got lucky with their transfers and youth team players (goetze, reus, kagawa etc) and performed well, but at the end of the day you need the financial capacity to hold on to these players, and they didnt have that. hence in the last few years their performances are closer to that of leverkusen and schalke, which is expected given their finances. thats modern football. i say "lucky" because evidently, they cannot repeat those feats.
look at us: bale, modric, berbatov, campbell etc. all world class players. they left because we didnt have the finances to hold onto them. arsenal: rpv, fabregas, nasri, song, clichy, sagna, henry. again all worldclass players who left for teams offering more money. because of this, long term a team will only perform relative to its spending capacity. despite what football fans like to think, re man management, tactics, coaching, scouting etc etc, 99% of a football teams performance is explained by its relative wealth.
arsenal can buy whoever they want. thats probably true. but for the reasons mentioned in the previous posts, it wouldnt be financially wise to do so. the problem is fans see football through sporting success only. but the board have to manage the finances too, hence the conflict. espcially in arsenal's case, where the owners seem intent on running a yearly profit.
Just to say that the Anderlecht shambles that the Gooners suffered on Tuesday renders all the above excuses you've given for Wenger and his management redundant. The financial wealth that Arsenal don't have (or in fact DO have) is nit a valid excuse for the lack of shape, balance and tactical awareness for them on that night. Yes it is only one game, but there have been many of these games in the last few years. Even though the spend has gone up considerably, what has changed?
Looking at their CL performances in this year's CL: are they doing any better than last season, particularly when they have a far easier group, being led by a Dortmund team nowhere near as good as last season? A fair question has to be asked why? Especially when they have spent a lot in the summer (and generally have much more money than most at their disposal)?
Simple answer is that Wenger is holding them back; and that frankly is what keeps Arsenal within the reach of us so long may it continue