9 years, no trophies, best players constantly being sold or wanting to leave doesn't sound like success to be honest.
Nobody is saying the last 9 years have been great, but it's not a COMPLETE failure, there was lot's of circumstances, dealing with the debt due to a new stadium, and lack of funds connected to that etc, while other rivals had much bigger-better budgets, all of that comes together, and in turn also makes it harder to keep your best players, but last summer we managed for once to keep all our players, so hopefully the trend will change.
This will sound sarcastic but isn't meant that way. You did keep all your players but who would anybody have wanted? I think the balancing the books argument is wearing thin. Your own board keeps saying money was available.
Walcott, he got 18 goals for us, and his contract was up, so he could've easily left, I'm sure many teams would've been interested in his signing, but for once we managed to keep one of our best players of the season instead of him leaving because he didn't want to re-sign, and just our luck, it's as if he did leave us as he's been injured for most of this season! Walcott has been a very big loss for us, in the few games he played for us, he grabbed like 6 goals and a couple of assists, he brings us a lot of pace-width, and if he could've regularly linked up with Ozil, Ozil would've been far more effective, yet he had to get stuck with Giroud for most of the season, and that in turn has made it harder for Ozil. On the continent, I'm sure Cazorla as well would have had a lot of offers for him if he wanted to look elsewhere. Kosielny was another one, he had interest coming from Munich, and eventually said he is staying.
Look it doesn't seem all grand us just consistently getting top 4 for the past 9 years and no trophy, and believe you me, I want trophies, and I do lash out at those who say well getting top 4 is great and like a trophy....But at the same time, it isn't the end of the world and being a grand failure, I think many people take the top 4 for granted, just look at Liverpool, they've been stuck in mid-table mediocrity for the past 4 seasons until now, and then look at United as well, just like that they've fallen out, so the fact we've managed to consistently remain in the top 4 is a success in itself, especially when you consider we did it with a total net spend of 9 million pounds, you have to respect that albeit all the frustrations and lack of trophies. Put it this way, would Arsenal be considered, say if we were like Liverpool, mid-table mediocrity for 3-4 seasons, but during that time we managed to scoop one carling cup, would that make us successful? So I'm not saying it's been GREAT, but I don't say it's a complete failure, after all, we could've been Liverpool, or how Manunited are currently doing, but it never went THAT bad for us.
