Part of the reason for such anger from the fans is the fact we are kept in the dark on how the club is being run yet expected to blindly throw vast sums of our money at the team on the highest ticket prices and ever changing replica kits with the illusion that we are trying to challenge. I (and I think most fans) bought into the need to move stadiums to compete at the highest stage and were willing to be patient for the long term success. However, we were told that the move would NOT affect our transfer spending yet look at how we've been run since 2006. So now the club receives 60,000 home gates and increased merchandise spending to seeming only through it into a back room to create a Scrooge McDuck style swimming pool of money. It hurts to take our money with the lie that we are doing all we can to improve the squad when the truth seems to be the opposite. Fans might not have accepted the 6% ticket increases had they known 2 of our best players were going to be sold with barely average replacements brought in whilst £50millon was available. We as fans will do what we can for the team but we have to be honest with each other. What other team that is clearly off the pace from being the best fail to invest sufficiently into the team when the funds are available? How much would Wenger have really had to spent to make a couple of stabilizing additions (left back and center forward) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/fo...Arsenal-fans-demand-answers-Stan-Kroenke.html http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/sport/football/4142399/Arsene-Wenger-has-50million-kitty.html
If your shareholders were simply out to make money they wouldn't be investing in a football club at all. But the only way they have any chance to get a decent return on their investment is by continued success so actually their interests are aligned with those of the fans. The Board might be incompetent but there is no conspiracy.
I thought the figure would be around the £50m and not the £120m mark as some had claimed. There was a strong rumour that Wenger gad bid £30m for Goetze and £24m for M'Vila last summer, so it may not be true that Wenger is simply 'refusing to spend'.
It comes down to how he values players. Others pay more and challenge for success, we seem to accept defeat and buy second rate, or hope potential comes through.
Had we bought quality as opposed to merely potential we might have garnered a few more trophies, raised our marketability and still have achieved those financial targets, perhaps even exceed them. If you have a cottage industry mentality you remain a cottage.
Thats just their estimate In 2008 Hill-Wood said there was £90m in the bank and since then we have spent FAR LESS than we have earned.
If you read Arseblog today its talks about our forthcoming financial results. It is expected to show a profit of around 40 million overall, however the vast majority of that is from player trading, if you take that out we break even. So to me that suggests we dont have much money to spend unless players are sold first.
Please don't judge this as blind defence but the club have no obligation to tell the fans anything, it's up to us whether we buy tickets or replica shirts and whether we think they're value for money. At the end of the day plenty of people buy Torquay, Rotherham and Stockport tickets and shirts, I doubt any of their fans are expecting league titles/cups. Football is at a crossroads - 'fans' like us are what have created the games popularity and convinced Sky to spend billions to screen matches, however the future 'fan' may not possess the same level of passion as previous generations.
Apparently 400 members of Club Level used their tickets once or less last season.That just shows the type of "fan" we attract now.
But that is 400 wealthy 'fans' out of attendance that was 60k - now at low 50s. It may well be similar at other clubs where the 'fans' can boast of facilities - but don't use them. a bit like you and the First Class train travel......
It's funny how Man Utd always sell out but they are always advertising in the media for "matchday packages" Since the opening of the stadium there are very few games i've been to where there aren't plenty of empty seats
Real Madrid are top of La Liga a long way clear yet they have 10-20k empty seats every week, the impact the global economy can have on football shouldn't be underestimated.
This is before we even start to sell. The one 'big' player that I will sell will be Walcott then also get rid of usual dead wood we all know about. That could an extra £15-20 Mil to the kitty.
I think the malaise in the team run deeper than Walcott, so singling him out for criticism is a bit unfair!
He is the only first team player I would sell because of his performances this season and also the issue with his contract.
There will be no huge clearout whilst Wenger is in charge - any wholesale changes will be an admission of past mistakes/failures and as we all know AW is as stubborn as they come. It would take a monumental change of strategy for AW to buy the 3/4 established stars that we need to make us a better team and also to unload the half dozen or so that have failed to reach the mark. And remember that this Summer is Euro's, only around half a dozen of our first team squad are unlikely to be involved which means we lose players after the last league game and don't have contact with them again until end July, and as for buying new blood the window of opportunity for this is very reduced....
Lets recap: Bendtner, Denilson, Squishy, Almunia, Djourou, Arshavin, Walcott Vela, Chamakh, could all be let go and end Benayoun loan. Its also my guess that we could easily let another similar number of youth players go. Trim the management of these and make further savings.
So you keep saying but you are the ONLY person I know who gets tickets for £35 ! I just found a breakdown of original costs, I was trying to work out what percentage of tickets would ever be available at £35, I didn't get anything conclusive but I did find a site that outlined what the costs would have been - in 2005 - a year before the stadium opened. Club level seats: 1060 X £4750 = £5,035,000 1352 X £3,500 = £4,732,000 1776 X £3,250 = £5,772,000 2520 X £2,500 = £6,300,000 Boxes: 25 X £65,000 25 X £70,000 20 X £75,000 20 X £80,000 20 X £90,000 10 X £100,000 15 X £130,000 15 X £150,000 Diamond club: 84 X £12,500 = £1,050,000 Normal Admission: UPPER TIER (28,000) Upper centre 2240 X £1825 = £4,088,000 Upper next to centre 3920 X £1370 = £5,370,400 Upper behind goal 6720 X £1295 = £8,702,400 Upper next to centre 1400 X £1190 = £1,666,000 Upper wing and corner 10360 X £1165 = £12,069,400 Upper behind goal back rows 3360 X £1060 = £3,561,600 LOWER TIER (23,000) Lower wing and corner 16,300 X £885 = £14,425,500 Lower centre 6,700 X £990 = £6,633,000 The prices are ex VAT and for a season, clearly I am noty privvy to any inside details on pricing but looking at the breakdown it is clear the cheapest tickets are the Lower Tier - lower wing and corner of which there are 16,300 tickets but we don't know how many of those are set as season tickets.
