Zut Alors! Pat, get off ze internet, ze posters, sacre bleu, zey are aware!
True, but a) the trophies they've won recently and the big signings they've made have somewhat softened the reality of the situation, and b) even though he is their icon and longest-serving manager.....I think the prices are set by the board, not him. This is the same guy who advocates budget and wage caps for every team in the division, in a manner similar to the US: I find it hard to believe that he'd also advocate charging prices waayyy in excess of what is necessary to run the club and its transfer business, as is happening now. My suspicion is that he doesn't agree with it, but that the huge salary he gets and the (undoubted) need to maintain a cash reserve to hedge against income disruptions (and they do need to maintain a large one given their long-term debt) have combined to keep him constrained when it comes to speaking out over board policy. That, however, is just my opinion.
He's got the cushiest job in football? Perhaps now he does, but I doubt that was the case when his team routinely came within inches of being turfed out of the top four by....Harry Redknapp/Andre Villas Boas' Tottenham Hotspur. Looking back now at his sustained achievement of finishing 4th ahead of us, it seems like an easy enough thing to achieve: but back when we were actually ambitious on the field and came within a point or so of turfing them out (often taking it down to the last day), I'd say his place was looking far more insecure. Whether he would have stayed had we achieved a top four spot at Ar5ena1's expense is one of football's great what-ifs, imo.
Would I accept idealism, if we were in the gooners' position? I'm tempted to just shout expletives and profusely deny it, but, having thought about it a bit, it seems more complicated than it first appears.
Would I accept idealism if we were in the Gooners' position? So, just to visualize it, if Tottenham Hotspur were the third biggest club in the land, with the third biggest trophy cabinet, the third most fans (worldwide as well as at home), the third-most income (possibly even second-highest income), the second-largest stadium, having just won back-to-back FA cups and signed superstars like Ozil and Sanchez, and with a legendary manager at the helm who's led us to an unbeaten season (the only one in the history of the modern game in England) and is our most decorated coach, and who's assuredly happy with the backing the board gives him (although he doesn't use it)....
....if we were in that situation, would I accept an idealistic pursuit of glory in a sustainable manner (conducted purely due to idealist impulses, not through necessity)? D'you know what, I'm not sure. A considerable amount of my current dissatisfaction stems from where we are fundamentally compared to where we were: whatever the circumstances (Chel53a, City, et al), we've lost ground on our competitors just in terms of titles and trophies won, and have slipped from being arguably the fourth largest club in the land at the beginning of the 1990's to the 6th largest club now, having only won two puny League Cups between 1991 and 2015. We have a board which (seemingly) provides insufficient backing to manager after manager even when the opportunity is there for us to really progress, and which then sacks them when they inevitably underperform (although that last bit is changing now). We have had a succession of managers come and go, our most successful one of modern times being chucked, his replacement storming out after the sale of his best player and a disastrous reinvestment of the proceeds into players he claims he largely didn't want, and now the current incumbent who's far more sedate and seemingly content to float around (having been offered the job security to do so) than his predecessors were. And we have a stadium that's been in the works for a decade, and will likely take another three or four years to complete, and that's before even starting the process of paying it off and building a cash reserve to hedge against income disruptions down the line.
In that light, it's easy for me to grouse about our lack of daring, our self-defeating cautiousness and slowness when faced with opportunity, our parsimony and supreme unwillingness to extent ourselves whenever fate deigns to offer us a chance to claw back our former status. But if we were already successful as can be, having suffered no great fall from grace and regularly playing in the CL as well as having a semi-regular stream of trophies and big signings to make up for our relative underinvestment throughout the lean years after the construction of a stadium (2006 to about 2012)...would I grouse about idealistic self-sufficiency as opposed to a bit more daring in our approach to securing trophies and signings?
Like I said, I'm not entirely sure.
