I also think the club deserve some recognition for building teams and pretty much breaking even doing so. Since 96/97 we have a net spend on £4.2m That is a pittance compared to the clubs around us: Chelsea: £504.6m Man City: £472.5m Man Utd: £250m Liverpool: £204m Even the Spuds have spent £174.6m and come nowhere near us in terms of success on the pitch. Don't get me wrong, I think we need to invest some money into the squad and I don't think we should be shy about spending £25m on one player if it's needed. And sometimes I think we are too cautious about spending. But some of the criticism is unwarranted.
We could comfortably have bought the £10m players and spent the extra on the youngsters, its not like an extra £2m or £1m would hurt us. We don't need to buy promising kids every year anyway.
I agree that it's not an either / or situation and to be fair to the club, this is exactly what they have tried to do. In most of those years where we bought players like Song, Flamini, Eboue - who were all £1m players, we also spent £10m (and more) on 'top' players like Henry, Pires, Wiltord, Reyes, Hleb, Walcott, Nasri, Arshavin, Vermaelen, Arteta, Mertesacker. I do however, think that we have needed to supplement the squad with youth and players to develop, so the club have been right to pursue this approach. There's no way we could have assembled a squad of £10m plus players in every position and for cover over the years without ending up with a massive debt.
having sat and listened to the 65 minutes (yawn) of mostly just Ivan - I came to the conclusion that he could have been a consummate politician. ie - he can certainly talk 'til you lose the will to live, he can lie ( we spend everything we earn) , and he remains unruffled when he is clearly waffling. Should I have expected more? -I guess not.
Arsenal have become also rans and nothing I see thus far tells me otherwise. The club are no longer interested in making us win things, they are happy to just exist comfortably. This is at odds to us football fans, such lack of ambition is not acceptable. We are earning more but spending less.
