These are some posts that I've taken from another forum I am on, and they perfectly sum up Arsenal. A lot of fans aren't really in touch with the reality of our current situation, and hopefully this will open it up more to a few of you. I couldn't have said it better my self.
Like I said in another thread, as it stands at present, on purely financial grounds, we should expect an average position of 4th and a cup every 10 years.
Just been reading an article in the Daily Mail based on some councillors blog that explains the decline of the Arsenal football team....
I was going to write up a similar article. We are no longer a top side, both in the Prem and in Europe. We punch above our weight regularly but we are not in the same league as the teams above us.
At the risk of rehashing the whole 'are we elite?' game of semantics once more, I agree with you - certainly when considering short-term trends. City, United and Chelsea (though they'd better watch themselves) are in a group of their own in the league, while Arsenal belong in the tier below. They dominate that tier, but there's no great satisfaction to take from it. However, I really don't see how this will change unless the spending power of the bigger teams is capped or the spending model at Arsenal goes through the roof. Or if someone comes in and works a miracle, but miracle workers are hard to come by these days
Its been said that qualifying for the CL is worth circa £25million. Thats got to be £20m more than the likes of the spudfs and on top of that we've made more on sales of players and have a stadium that is supposed to raise more revenue than it costs to pay off (and at the prices we have I believe it). That should all add up to us being able to afford to stay as a top 4 side. So saying we are no longer an elite club is true but shouldnt be.
As I keep trying to point out 25M is a drop in the ocean these days, at least to the top 3. It does keep us a little ahead of the rest, but it only takes one of them to have an exceptionally good (or lucky) year and we will end up 5th.
By those terms I don't think we ever were. We hired a manager who had a magical formula, both for creating players and for winning games with them, on a shoestring budget. Then the rest caught up. It was a 5 year window when reaity was suspended. It needed 5 years before other clubs realized it wasn't a fluke. I don't have a problem letting Wenger go, but he should be applauded for his good years, rather than berated because the other teams woke up.
