No Bear this wasn't aimed at you - apologies if you took offence. And I meant with wages that our wage structure currently is structured in a certain way, to offer someone £300k, which is double our highest earner, would smash this, and would lead to most of our other 1st teamers demanding more money, or players we've developed since youths, leaving for better deals elsewhere. But as you say that is another conversation.
We need to spread goals around, as it is sensible to do so, makes us more potent and makes us harder to stop. One of the major complaints we had - especially among us fans, when RVP was playing well and scoring shed loads was, that if a team stops RVP they stop us scoring and they win/draw, or if RVP was having an off day then we wouldn't score. It's no coincidence that as soon as RVP left and we stopped playing everything through one player, we scored more goals and became harder to stop, even though we had the 'average' Giroud upfront. It's ridiculously over-simplified to say 'we're rich, we can spend huge amounts of money' - it doesn't work like that, you have to match your outgoings to your income. Same as everyone else. I never said we were struggling to make ends meet like Everton/Villa, but my point still stands we can't go out and pay players £300k and smash our wage structure or suddenly all our money will be leaking away.
Harder to stop? Have you watched us play these last few years? How do you know we can't afford those wages? Because Wenger and Gazidis say we can't?
Ahh Ok, I don't think you HAVE to offer those wages though. It's only if you are already buying a player from the likes of Real/City/PSG/Monaco etc.. that those wages come about. If you get them before they go to a big club the wage bill will much much smaller. Lewandowski for example is earning £110,000 at Bayern. Suarez was on 100k at Liverpool.
Exactly i agree Bear, and i think thats what we should do, which is why i used suarez as an example. Liverpool bought him from Ajax with not huge wages and he became world class with them. Whereas we cpild never have out offered Chelsea, man c or man u for the likes of Falcao, di maria or Costa
Problem with that then is, you run the risk of them getting their head turned by a bigger spending club once they have hit the heights with you guys. Ala Suarez and RVP. Sign a nobody, he becomes a worldie, sees people like Falcao earning 3 times his salary and think "I want me some of that, **** Arsenal"....
So you think if we offered Costa that amount of money, you don't think that Chelsea would have upped the amount by a large amount?
Equally the problem with the other way is you see someone like Man U offering ridiculous amounts for players, so you think I want some of Di Maria/Falcao so you offer ridiculous wages as well, and when you start overing all your star players huge wages, suddenly you find you can't afford them, but equally your dependant on CL football, so you need to spend more just to stay in it, and before long you've done a Leeds and it's all come crashing down coz you hugely spend beyond your means. I think you need to find the happy medium...
Maybe, maybe not. We'll never know because we didn't try. The moral of Arsenal under Wenger. If you might fail then don't even try. You're right. We should never aim to buy anyone top class. We should be happy that Giroud is playing for us.
Yeah coz that's exactly what I said isn't it? Genius. I think it was obvious that Costa was going to Chelsea anyway, but equally obvious that they can offer a lot more money than us in wages. As such we have to be smarter in the way we do business, and it worked for the 1st half of last season. But you can keep slagging the team off if it makes you happy, I mean whatever, it's not like Wenger isn't the most successful manager we've ever had, and it's not like we didn't just win a trophy and come pretty close to the Prem last year. And of course I'm annoyed we didn't win the Prem, but at least I can see some positives, rather than just say everything is rubbish like some child, until it starts working (like Ramsey) and then you can cheer.
That only really happens when you don't win things. At Arsenal we constantly brought through World Class players who we then sold on.(partly because the club was relying on that money) This became a vicious circle because players don't want to stay if you appear to lack ambition. Money motivates some people more than others I guess.
I'm referencing your posts over the site, rather than just this thread, but even on this thread you've said Giroud is average, which I take as rubbish.
Surely you mean Giroud is rubbish, which I take as average. Seriously though, he is no world class striker, but he is a lot better than others give him credit for, his goal scoring ratio is pretty decent to be fair. Would make a good second choice/back up striker for any top 4 club, as would welbeck (Though we haven't really had enough time to see what he can do as the main man, he could step up to the plate), but you need that 25-30 league goal a season striker. Thats neither Giroud or Welbeck imo. Just imagine if you had gotten Suarez! A front 4 of Sanchez, Ozil, Cazorla with Suarez up front! That would have been some attacking line
Disgruntled Gooner, have you seen the Chelsea board lately? its like an 86 year old's funeral. There's always one on every board, its NoF on the United board, foredeckdave on the Liverpool board, guess you're the Arsenal equivalent. That one guy who is all "You don't support this team, you cant post on here", lemme tell you lad, I've probably seen Arsenal play live more times than you have. Half my family are Arsenal (mum, who is fanatical, brother, grandad). My mum invaded the pitch in 89 when you won the league in injury time against Liverpool, with same points, same goal difference but won on goals scored.
Hmmm, a Chelsea fan versus a former Arsenal season ticket holder. Yeah, you've definitely seen more Arsenal live games than i have
