I will be honest over the past few years I've become more and more sceptical of what type of club we are. I'm not talking about stature or how good we are on the pitch. But doing things with class "the Arsenal way" In the past few years this club has demonised Özil because they gave him a contract that he wasn't worth. Retracted Ramsey's deal, tried to force broken Koscielny to stay after he was promised a move to France because they didn't prepare. Hounded out Wenger. Forced a pay cut just to cut 50 staff. I saw an interview with Wenger a few months back and he strongly hinted that he felt the board leaked out false transfer budgets to the press when they felt necessary and that impacted him as fans placed blame on him for not spending when really it wasn't up to him. I will always love the Club but I can't wait until Kroenke is gone. He's the worse thing that ever happend to the club. Sorry for the rant just had to get this off my chest
Here's the Wenger quote. Arsène Wenger: ‘I always felt strongly that as a manager of a football club my job was to protect the club in every circumstance. And I did that sometimes against my own deep desire. I did it even though I didn’t completely agree with what was going on. I did it, even though people inside the club sometimes let that noise come out. You would see the stories that Arsenal had £100m to spend, but they were not true. They did it to protect themselves, but I never wanted to go into that game"
Kronke has been a very poor owner which our old board backed as a ‘our saviour’ to stop Usmanov from buying Arsenal - which is a shame as he is an Arsenal fan and would have invested in the team. Kronke likes owning sports teams and doesn’t invest heavily in them, as long as they trundle along and make him money he is happy. That’s the scenario you get when you let a businessman buy a sports club, they aren’t fans and get our perspective
The club was owned by the Hill-Wood family and people who were custodians of the club when I first used to go to Highbury. Kronke doesn't seem to get those values. And he's done very little to help us progress.
The club is a mess; it’s astonishing when you think that for years we were the model way to run a club. Im not sure what to say - we are sleep walking into being a mid table team where the only thing we’ll ever fight for is to stay in this league. The regression is real. I still think behind the scenes no one knows what the real plan is; Kroenke just guesses and hires more people that waste more of our money and bottle more of our contracts and sign the Pepe’s of this world. I don’t ever see a way out for Arsenal until we have a proper owner. Possibly when kroenke kicks the bucket, I’m hopeful his son won’t be as attached to keeping the club and will sell us off.
We're a long way from the promises the board made when we moved to the Emirates. It was supposed to be the move that elevated us to the pinnacle to compete with the likes of Real and Barca. But the Kronke years have seen player contracts run down, an unbalanced squad, some poor moves in the transfer market and a club that is now languishing in mid table. If you were to mark his work, Kronke would be a 3/10. I think Arteta is going to be a good manager however, but it is going to take 2/3 seasons to get the players in/out that he wants to shape this team in his own mould.
And yet will we allow him to buy players? Covid has destroyed us (and other teams) financially. It’s looking like we may not sign a single player this window; we cannot say ‘let Arteta build his squad’ and then not spend on any players. The irony is we need to spend the most just as we are at our weakest point financially.
Whilst KSE deserve ample blame for the ****show behind the scenes (which we're now seeing translate on the pitch), let's not forget who sold to him in the first place. Our beloved 'custodians' sold us down the river to get their prize knowing full well the type of man Kroenke was and how uninterested in football generally he was. They made calculated business decisions to line their own pockets at the expense of the club's future. KSE have been very passive when we needed them to intervene, they've hired the wrong people at the wrong times, afforded incompetent decision makers too much time and have tried as hard as possible to avoid scrutiny and accountability. There's not a hope in hell they sell up anytime soon, so the best we can hope for is for Arteta and the rest to overachieve with the resources and powers they have.
The thing about Stan Kronke (& family) is he basically does nothing. Thats good and bad - You can get a Mike Asley scenario where the owner gets involved and ****s alot of things up. But Stan leaves the footballing matters to the Club. It's just an investment to him. He gets blamed for alot of things that ar'nt his fault. He doesnt put his own money in - just lets it run as a business. On the otherhand the Club felt more protected and cared for when The Hill-wood family owned most the shares (Arsenal fans) and David Dein (Arsenal fan) was in charge of negotiations.
Anyway, a word about Ozil. Shame the way it ended, but good that he's now moved on. Still gave us 7.5 years and won some honours with us, and gave us some moments of magic. Wish him luck at Fenerbache. As much as the Spuds want to wum us about Ozil, he still won more at Arsenal than any single one of their players. Which @BrunelGunner pointed out on their board And then they started trying to claim Lloris' world cup win as an honour for Spurs
Well was listening to Charles Watts this morning and he's making the point that were are only now starting to see a team playing with the style Arteta is after. His first task was to stop our leaky defence - which to be fair he has done. We dont concede much anymore - then we struggled to score & create goals - which still isnt 100% fixed but were are looking more fluid and the goals are starting to come. Thomas Partey is key for this side. The guy has only played 25mins in the last 8 weeks and he comes into the side and looks fantastic. (In fact he only misplaced 2 passes yesterday - 95% accuracy, he was making tackles and got an assist)
You know our biggest issue in recent years has been sales. Look what Liverpool achieved on the back of selling Coutinho & Suarez etc.. It's an absolute crime that Mesut Ozil, Alexis Sanchez and Aaron Ramey left us on free transfers. How much money have we lost on just those players?! Gnabry left for just £5million? Wellbeck on a free, Carzorla on a free..We just terminated Sokratis's contract, Kolainac also left on a free recently. The Club has to sort this!
Sokratis and Kolasinac I can understand, as we badly need to trim this squad and they have been for sale for a couple of windows. Losing previous players on a free has though, as you rightly point out, been a total shambles.
Yes losing players for free is a pain, as soon as we buy players we should insert add ins for optional extra years like United have started to do - but they failed to do so for their biggest investment who is likely to leave for a second time for free oh and Ozil Ramsey Santi Sanchez is about £200m of non recouped investment as they returned zero to us.
Ozil, Ramsey, Alexis, Wilshere, Sokratis, Cazorla, Mkhitaryan, and soon to be Mustafi and Luiz. Amassed £0 in transfer fees on all those players. That is absolutely insane. I mean I seriously cannot think of a team to have done poorer business than us in terms of recouping transfer fees. Ever.
None of those players apart from Ramsay were 'gambles' who's value increases every year with good performances though, like Suarez, Coutinho et al. We bought established players for top price at the top of, or way down from, the peak of their playing careers. The only exceptions were Ramsay and Wilshere. Who are both not very good anyway. We have obscene value in some of our players right now. Tierney must be £75m+. Saka is worth £100m+. Smith-Rowe £50m+. But frankly I don't really care. Players are only worth **** loads when their clubs don't want to sell them. And clubs only don't want to sell players if they're awesome. I don't want to sell our awesome players. If we want to make loads from selling we simply have to start buying young gambles and hoping they turn awesome then be fine with selling them as soon as they do. Would you want to sell Saka, Smith-Rowe, Martinelli and Tierney this summer?
