If you are still nursing the idea that we are strong enough with chasing players: Messi-even before Barcelona, Wenger had scouted him, but his fairweather parents wanted the fair weather Ronaldo- before Man U, you know the drill. I believe Wenger had even produced a shirt with his name on in expectancy. Xabi Alonso- he was heavily linked to Arsenal before going to Madrid, imagine a midfield of him and Fabregas. Glory. Yaya Toure- we were SO close with this one, should have been ours We genuinely could by now have had a line up of: Messi---RVP---Ronaldo ------Cesc----Xabi -----------Yaya --------Back Five To look at it now, it appears delusional. But with better decision making, that would be our midfield and attack. And I know you might question RVP in the centre but Messi and Ronaldo would need a team player to help them play together well.
I know this isn't the point, but Yaya Toure is not a DM, as has been shown at Man City this season. Also, I do not think we would have managed to sign all of these players anyways, as some of them would have wanted to go to other clubs anyways due to personal reasons. Xabi Alonso was far too expensive for us, as remember, this was not when we had lots of cash.
I don't know about should have had, Barcelona were always more likely to get Messi and the odds were never in our favour that we would sign Ronaldo. I think its a bit simplistic to name all the good players that we scouted and could of got as at the time nobody would have know how good they would turn out. Potential is a tricky think to measure, how many times have you seen players who looked exceptional in their youth turn out to be mediocre? If we tried to buy all the players who we thought there was a possibility of being a star then we would end up with an awful lot of average/poor ones with only a few good players.
Yaya is, however, a capable DM. I know Xabi was very expensive, but our alternative was Denilson, and that just isn't good enough.
Yes, but players like Ronaldo were more likely to sign for us. I believe there were even verbal agreements. Messi was more of a gamble, but even so. Your argument rests on us taking risks on talents we're not sure on. Arsenal rated Ronaldo, Messi and Yaya extremely highly.
This happens for every team though. Atleti were offered money plus Iniesta for Perea in 2004 and turned it down along with David Silva for Gabi straight swap in the same year.
If Wenger knew how Ronaldo and Messi would turn out he would definitely have made large offers for them.
