No, that's not what I meant though. We need 2-3 TOP quality additions brought in. It does'nt really matter wether they are cheap or over-priced. The key thing is that we can no longer use the 'lack of money' as an excuse.
Any chance of you sharing his official job description with us? I gather from the way you talk about it with such certainty that you have seen it? You talk of 'pre-preparing' and this is exactly what you are doing. Casting out wild assumptions disguised as fact so that you can refer back to them if we don't sign someone that suits your criteria. I can picture you licking your lips at the prospect of laying the blame at the feet of AW, whether justified or not.
I don't think it is quite that simple. I think there are a lot of variables at play which determines where the top 3 team finishes, and we cannot say Chelsea finishing 2 points above us represents a poor return on their investments. Let's not forget, Chelsea have had a change of Manager almost every season since Mourinho left. I don't know how many games they played last season, I know it is a lot more than we played (They finished in 3rd, despite having a coach most of their fans hated and won a cup). I hate to think where would have finished if our current squad had been involved in that many games. I also refuse to use the the second half of the season as a barometer to measure future success. We have to wonder, why in so many key fixtures, we only began to play when a goal down or as in the champions league when the tie was seemingly over. I think it was the same a couple of seasons ago, kicking it in the second half of the season. Furthermore, it is never the Arsenal/Arsene way to spend crazy money and buy Grade 1 players on par with the ones we have lost over the years. Would we go out and buy a player of RvP and Fabregas stature?
No, but there are plenty more. We have to face facts that Chelsea and Man City have enough money to outbid us on any player. If you see a player go to one of them for 30M+ then there is a pretty good chance that they outbid somebody. It is quite interesting looking back on the summers and seeing those that Wenger brought in. http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...fer-spending-year-by-year-under-arsene-wenger Very, very few what you would call players at the top of the game. Even in his spending years, he just didn't pick players that were scoring 25 goals a year or established in their side's midfield in a top 4 club. Now even Wenger has admitted that the transfer market has changed, but I just don't see us buying an outright 40M player. We have a lot of players to bring in, between 4 and 6 by my reckoning, we can't afford to spend 30-40M on each one.
To add to your point, I don't think it is just local teams (your Chelskis, Manure and Citehs) that have the capacity to outbid us and sign Marquee players above us, abroad we have Barcelona, Real Madrid and Bayern, PSG and NOW Monaco to do a number on us with respect to beating us to these afore-mentioned "made players"! I remember not long ago when we (fans) harboured the thought of signing Hazard and Goetze..... Well we look a bit silly now. We cannot even think of players of those ilk now. I am happy for us to sign prospects, hidden gems and polish them up.... Who would have said Bale would have turned out to be worth 50mill? I think finding such talents and keeping hold to them is the only way way we can compete!
omogooner, with regard to your signature line, I don't think we have seen Arsenal's golden age yet, and if I may borrow a line from the film Apollo13, "With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour." (I was going to change gonna to gooner, but I could hear the retching start even through the Internet)
Really? Reckon those Wenger years when we played sexy football, played a whole season unbeaten will come back? Reckon we'll witness those acheivements again in our life-time? LOL, about changing the gonna to gooner, that would have been pretty bad! I think I would have felt sorry for you, coming up up with a line like that!
As good as they were, it was really just one team. I think to be a real "Golden Age" we need to have a run like United have just had (two decades), or like Liverpool had in the 70s and 80s.
Really? I thought Wenger did it initially with the team he inherited and then with his own team when we went the whole season undefeated. I doubt if any team can dominate the way united have done. However, I see what you mean, I will take 50% of those achievements right now!
To be fair i think Arsenal's only golden age up to now was the !930's.Then we won a hat trick of championships.Even with Wenger's best team we were unable to win back to back titles.If there had been European competitions during the 1930's i have no doubt Arsenal would have been European champions at some point
We should've won the title in 1999, and certainly in 2003 :-(. I would classify the years from 98-2005 as a golden age for Arsenal. 3 league titles, 4 FA cups, 2 doubles, back to back FA cup wins, winning one of those league titles without losing a game in a whole season, setting an English record of going 49 games unbeaten in total, winning the title at Old Trafford. We were right up there with United and it was either us or them as the top dogs in England.
That's not an excuse either Chelsea and Man City can massively outbid Dortmund and even Bayern, Juve and Barca too. Has'nt made them more successful. As i've said in other threads I think signing youth is key for Arsenal but at the moment if the Club want to push on next Season re-inforcements need to be made. We have the money to do it - but what concerns me is wether Wenger is actually WILLING to spend. Also with our squad size we will NOT being brining in 4-6 players. 2-3 is more likley. I think the Club/fans need at least one 'marquee signing'.
How about Fabregas and Lewandowski? That would be what £60 Million of our rumoured 70-90 Milliion budget. Financially it's not beyond us to do this - not even remotely in fact. Would it be worth it?...yes. (obvioulsy Im not expecting this to happen)
