You mention the possible lack of value in buying Huguain for 30M and Luiz Gustavo for 15m.
So how valuable do you think it was to pay these combined fees for ONE player that they didn't really need (Ozil) instead of these fees for players who plyed in positions that they did? :lol:
We (as football fans) may feel that Arsenal didn’t didn’t need Ozil as much as Higuain or Luiz Gustavo, but the transfer shows that Wenger disagreed. And like I’ve mentioned previously, this is a compelx debate.
But regarding why Arsenal fans wanted luiz Gustavo, they felt he was some sort of tough tackling no nonsense dcm. Which is highly questionable. But, more importantly, arsenal fans felt that this was what was needed for them at dcm. From the type of players that wenger has bought, it appears as if he views that a player’s ability on the ball is more important than the tenacity of someones tackling in dcm. And if that is the case, I can see why he decided to stick with Arteta and Wheelchair, and bring in flamini for free instead of splashing £15m on luiz Gustavo.
However, both Higuain and Luiz Gustavo are probably players that the top 5/6 clubs in the world wouldn’t start in their xi. Ozil arguably is, and from that perspective he added a real star quality to the team that Higuain and Luiz Gustavo wouldn’t have done.
Harry Redknapp and his limitations are irrelevant here; The fact you bring him up (and not, say the Simeones, Mourinhos esp at Inter, Fergies - remember he was often under restricted spending conditions) illustrates how far your stretching things to over-illustrate how good Wenger is.
Re harry redknapp, he was just one example.
Simeone (and Klopp) are just benefitting from being on the good end of variance. Dortmund are already regressing to the mean. And its only a matter of time for Simeone’s Atletico Madrid team too. I’ve been saying this on the forums for some time now, and for Dortmund, it is now just starting to become true. Football is a very simple game in that the biggest spenders are the most successful teams.
Dortmund and Atleti simply got lucky. They were able to amass a number of (undervalued) top players in a very short period of time. This requires some management skill obviously, but is largely down to luck. And its luck because they aren’t able to repeat these processes that enabled them to get these players.
Dortmund and Klopp are suffering from what Wenger has been suffering from. Having his best players taken from him because other richer clubs can offer them more money. This is what has happened to us to. Imagine if players didn’t care about money. And we could hold onto the likes of modric and bale. Who knows what we would be doing now. And soon enough Atleti’s best players will be taken from them too. And just like how Aubemayang, Mktariyan and Ramos are no Goetze or Lewandowski replacements, the guys that replace the likes of Diego Costa, Felipe Luiz etc will show that they aren’t good enough to compete with Real or Barca. This process has already started. They brought in Fernando Torres.
If we had vdv, modric, berba, carrick, king, Campbell, bale, eriksen, kane etc all in the space of 2-3 years (instead of spread over a decade), I have no doubt we could have done what Dortmund or atletico did. But alas, we weren’t so lucky.
Absolutely no manager in elite modern football has shown he can perform above his teams financial capacity long term. Hence how I knew Dortmund would drop down sooner or later and that Liverpool would be in an almighty fight just to finish in the top 4 this season. This is why I know that Atletico will regress to the mean soon too.
If you look at the history of the bundesliga or la liga, you will see that atleti challenging for the title or Dortmund doing the same is nothing unique. Every few years in la liga an outsider will compete with the top 2. In the past decade or so, the likes of deportivo and Valencia have done so. But they haven’t had the finances to make their position stick. The same is the case in the bundesliga.
Mourinho at inter? Are you serious? Moratti gave him all the money in the world. So much so that they are still suffering from the effects now. After mourinho had won the treble and left, inter had to clear out all of their stars. Etoo, cesar, zlatan etc etc. But Moratti is a football fan, who wanted to win the champions league with his club, so spent to chase this dream. At arsenal, this type of spending strategy wouldn’t even be considered. This is why its so difficult to actually win much with arsenal when compared to other top English clubs. Arsenal are not aiming to maximise their sporting potential.
Ozil: i see you are still trying to justify that deal in respsct to what was required and also the ammount spent? You are now bringing Barca and Bayern into it :lol:
Firstly, those teams do not neglect for the length of time Wenger has key positions (even Barca wrt to CBs haven't) and secondly you can't say Arsenal cannot be compared to City and Chelski but then compare them to Barca and Bayern.
See my initial question to you above re the value of buying Ozil.
I compared Arsenal’s style of football and defending to Bayern and Barca, and to Chile. Whilst stating that Arsenal’s sporting performances would be worse than City or Chel53a because they aren’t competing on the same financial level, because the owners of the clubs have different aims.
If using Monreal as a CB was indeed planned then that shows why many Arsenal fans are tiring of Wenger:it's the equivalent of us saying when BAE was at his best that we coukd use him for CB cover! Do you REALLY think he is good enough as a CB back-up for more then 2/3 games, particularly games that you would expect to be close?
Do you think BAE would be a better cb than chambers?
How about if they hadn't made those attacking acquisitions but insteadmade more defensive ones, perhaps they would have a few more points even if a few ess goals? Scoring goals has always been straightforward for them; it's the soidity in defensive positions that has held them back from making better challenges.
Its not about the individuals. Arsenal are defensively “poor” because of the way they play. They’ve had some really good defenders over the years, yet always conceded the type of goals that only they can. Toure, Clichy, Sagna, Gallas, Cole. These guys all went onto to play for top clubs and won trophies. In gallas’ case, he came from a top side to arsenal whilst in his prime. And I have no doubt the likes of Debuchy (france 1st choice r ahead of sagna), koscielny, gibbs etc are also top players. As good as the ones that have left.
Guys like Matic, Terry, Cahill etc largely look good because Chel53a play in a compact manner. If those guys moved to arsenal, I have no doubt that they would like the current arsenal defenders.
Arsenal commit both fullback forward, and even their dcm is really a box to box player. That’s how the create overloads in attack and why they are capable of some incredible passing combinations. If they were to play more compact, they would score less goals and not retain possession as well. At the end of the day, its about finding a balance. But if you look at arsenal’s results, theres nothing really to suggest that they’ve got their balance horribly wrong. They either finish marginally above where they should or exactly where they should given their finances.
I suspect deep down if they HAD spent on defensive players and not on attacking players you would be defending Wenger in the opposite direction...
You’re right, I would. Because the crux of the argument (against wenger) is that he is underperforming. And this perception exists because people compare arsenal to city and Chel53a etc.
Whether he buys an attacker or a defender, the team will still be spending less than those teams and so cant be expected to compete with them long term.
Arsenal fans (and the media) need to accept that arsenal are not one of the top top sides in England anymore. Their owner isn’t willing to lose money in order to make them so.
The problem with your pro-Wenger essays is that they are now devoid of anything but financials; you have stopped defending him on football success grounds (as even you know you'd struggle on that score these days) and now explicitly say all the things that the club number crunchers would love to be able to pump out (but don't as they know their cash cow would cease to exisit when the Arsenal fans start realising that cash is all that their board are interested in). Football is a business now yes, but ultimately it's about Glory and Arsenal are in a great position to use the business side to increase said glory.
I totally agree that they are in a great position to use their business success to fund their fan’s sporting ambitions. Unfortunately for them, Kroenke doesn’t seem to want to. He would rather use the money to fund his bank balance, hence why they aren’t competing for titles.
And I would also like to think that football is about sporting aims rather than being a pure business. And would like it if businessmen could leave clubs alone to be run by owners who are fans etc, but when there’s big money to be made, that unrealistic. I guess as fans, we just have to accept this.
You are also somewhat right that I do emphasize on finances (perhaps a bit too much). But look at the successful sides in football, they are the ones with the most money. And the unsuccessful sides are the ones with the least money. Unfortunately this is what football has become. Even in our case, we can pick out micro management issues (after each game), but deep down, I think we all know the real reason why we don’t finish in the top 4 more often.
Unlike us, they don't fail on small margins, they fail on strange (and often incompentent) football decisions that should be easier in their very good financial position. Thye (and in particular Wenger) have very little excuse: their financial position is far stronger than it was years ago, yet their football competence gets worse (how many 3 goal leads do they lose now; how many times in the last 5 years have we laughed out loud at some of their football results compared to the first years of Wenger's reign? Many of these clownshoe moments are IRRELEVANT of financials)
Like ive said already, their actual financial position doesn’t matter.
They do concede weird goals, but ive said this before too, its simply the result of how they play. If they were to stop these “leaks”, they would probably not be as effective in attack and ultimately finish in the same overall position anyway.
These clownshoe moments are absolutely relevant to their financials imo. If wenger had spent the biggest budget in world football I suspect his unique football philosophy would have meant that he would be heralded as much as guardiola. Wenger is basically doing the budget version of what guardiola does. Guardiola finishes 1st with a unique style of play after spending the most money, whilst wenger finishes 4th with a unique style after spending the 4th most money.
Unfortunately people aren’t able to analyse football well because it’s a game of emotions. And so if someone wins, hes a genius, and if you don’t, then you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s the same for players too. A bad player can win motm purely on the basis that he has scored a goal. When comparing arsenal’s performances against their financial capacity, its exactly where they should be. Just like every other club in elite football.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt wrt whether you are indeed a closet Gooner;
I await your similar essays in support of any of our managers when many might turn on them after bad results :lol:; I know that anyone would be hard pushed to find an article written by a true Gooner that would be as apologetic about Wenger as yours always seem to be, even from a purely financial perspective..
I post my support of levy on these forums regularly. I think hes done a similar job to wenger, and also doesn’t get enough credit for it.
Levy is doing exactly what a club like us needs to do if we are to grow. When players are overvalued, he sells them ie. Modric, berba, bale. And re-invests those funds to hopefully produce more modric’ and bale’s. to then repeat the process at a higher level, slowly growing our clubs financial capacity.
This is basically what wenger has done too but arsenal are at a level where it is futile. Because if arsenal were to theoretically match Chel53a’s spending, Chel53a would just take their spending to another level anyway. And combined with the fact that Kroenke wont spend to win, Arsenal have basically hit their potential. And wenger’s job is to keep them at their current level, which he is doing with flying colors.
Obviously, the arsenal hierarchy cant say this publically. But if you look at how they act in the transfer market, you can see that they don’t have any genuine ambitions to further their sporting ambitions.
k:. but, i also do admire what wenger has done for arsenal. when i hear football opinions that i feel are wrong on tv, radio, magazines, podcasts etc, it annoys me to wonder how those pundits got their gigs. i feel i hear the most nonesense regarding arsenal though, and i just try to give the other side of the debate. as noone else seems to.
