y va marquer wrote:

Hmm. Sorry Clrnc but I reckon it's a bit demented to really want to sell Robin this summer.

If we can't convince him to stay with whatever wage offer we're making how are we going to tempt Benzema, Higuin even Cavani?
(As if we'd pay the kind of money needed to buy them in the first place 🙂)
None of the others on that list are 20 plus goals a season strikers so we'd need to buy two out of that list to replace him.
It's demented to think that Wenger would even contemplate that when he's still got Park, Chamakh, Bendtner, Vela and Campbell on his books.
Gawd help us.

You would keep him and let him leave on a free with him giving one half hearted season for us?

Biggus wrote:

No, in those days there was no spin and bollocks no subjective redefining of success, you ether won a trophy or you didn't.

So Brady's FA Cup counts but van Persie's don't?

Biggus wrote:
General Mirth wrote:

Liam Brady will be gutted to hear that.

Personally I started supporting Arsenal after we won the fa cup in 2002

Why all the doom and gloom in here though?

Van Persie is great and I want him to stay but if he leaves so what?

I'm not going to bother anymore with caring about players who want to leave the club because at the end of the day they have to look out for their own interests and if Van Persie thinks that leaving us is the best thing for him then good luck to him

Life goes on and the club will move on, probably slip into 5th but move on none the less.

if van persie's not re-signing, then we have to sell. it's a no-brainer, just like it was with nasri. not selling him wouldn't somehow not make us a feeder club - the decisions by henry, fabregas, nasri, hleb(!) and van persie that we don't match their ambition would have already done that. by keeping van persie, we'd just be a feeder club with 30m less money.

our choices are between making the top signing(s) to convince van persie to re-sign, or selling him. anything in between is foolishness.

He's not going to sign.

kamikaze wrote:

if van persie's not re-signing, then we have to sell. it's a no-brainer, just like it was with nasri. not selling him wouldn't somehow not make us a feeder club - the decisions by henry, fabregas, nasri, hleb(!) and van persie that we don't match their ambition would have already done that. by keeping van persie, we'd just be a feeder club with 30m less money.

our choices are between making the top signing(s) to convince van persie to re-sign, or selling him. anything in between is foolishness.

Is it? Don't think so.

Let's not kid ourselves, we won't spend that 25-30m we get for him on a quality player, it won't happen. We should stop priotising making profits for once. I'd rather keep our best player and lose money in the end than lose a player of Robin's quality(ie weaken the team) just to make more profit.

Personally I think we should force him to see out his contract. We'll be in a much better position to cope with his depature IMO. We'll have a much more settled team by then(very important!) and I personally believe Wilshere, The Ox and Chesney will have developed enough to lead us to a title challenge. And who knows the likes of Walcott could be hitting 20 goals a season by then.

Keep at all cost.

Whats the point in keeping Robin for one year though? We need him to sign a contract to keep him here for the next 3 or 4 years. Delaying the inevitable at the cost of £30m would be pointless.

Keep him so that we'll have the best shot at winning trophies.

Plus, as I said earlier, we'll be in a much better position to cope without him.

Lagos wrote:

Success has many fathers and failure is an orphan! People gravitate towards success, no one with self worth wants to associate himself with failure. Whether it's for money or for glory it doesn't matter we offer neither! No one scans a gathering of women/men and looks to pull the ugly one, you only settle for the ugly one if you have no confidence in yourself or you know you aren't that attractive to the other sex and just thankfull you managed to pull something with a pulse. The only players that never want to go are the players nobody wants, even some of our losers who begin to believe their own hype and want to leave find out nobody of substance wants them. If you go to an ivy league university, work hard and graduate with a 1st class you don't want to waste your talents in a mediocre employer, you want the best where your talents can bring the professional and financial recognition it deserves. . This is a recurring theme, it's a systemic problem so it can't be about the individual players! It will continue next it will be Kos or Jack or Sagna! You don't see top players wanting to quit the top teams the way there always seem to be an exodus from Arsenal, that alone speaks volumes.

The writing has been on the wall and it's about time we stopped deflecting our anger towards players and focus it on the root cause of the problem. It sickens me that we are now starting threads about 2nd best player, who had a better season Liverpool or arsenal, that in a bid to keep players we are now talking about legacy, what fucking legacy, the great leader of losers? how about bloody trophies, how about comparing ourselves to the winners? A jockey in a horse race doesn't look at the horses behind him but those in front, you only look back when you are leading to ensure you don't get caught! We are burying our heads in the sand, as a club , as fans we are thinking and acting like losers! As far as the Liverpool comparison it doesn't matter who had a better season, we both had crap and we shouldn't be talking about who is less crap and deriving satisfaction from that. We are both big teams fallen from grace what's more important is what Asa said, they've sacked the man responsible for the rot... their manager, if anything it's a statement that despite winning the CC and getting to the FA final, their season was unacceptable, we on the other hand carry on as usual and expect different results!

I don't want RVP to leave but I won't blame him in fact quite honestly I'd question him if he stayed, just like Nasri, Fabregas and others worth their salt, they all know this is a sinking ship that won't win anything, I'm a fan I don't have a choice I'm stuck but if I were a player, I would have left ages ago! We can mock all the good players who left call them names, Cashley, Cashri, Moneybayor etc but the truth is Cole, Henry, hleb, Adebayor, Nasri, Clichy, Toure, have all won trophies after leaving and earned more money while we have won the grand total of Zilch! You can console yourselves and say they are bench warmers not regular starters, but that's just a round about way of saying while they were at arsenal they were big fish in a small pond, emphasis on small pond. You don't improve by being surrounded with the mediocre and having your place guaranteed! We need to stop being a small pond, someone somewhere (I think the malcontents thread) posted a list of about 13 players that should leave, I urge people to have a look at that list, 13 useless players, what team carries 13 useless players? this is on top on another 4 or 5 1st team regulars that have no business being 1st team regulars. You expect and elite player to look at these roughly 18 players and say yeah this is where I'm gonna win trophies and create a legacy?

Lastly when Theo Walcott is holding you to ransome, you know you've lost the plot!

Post of 20 years of the premier league!

kamikaze wrote:

not selling him wouldn't somehow not make us a feeder club -

Err but we are a feeder club we exist only to make money, thats our raison de toast.

If he goes fuck him.

All of this pain:

At seeing Chelsea and Man City winning the two biggest prizes in Europe

Watching all of our big players leave season after season

Seeing Nasri with a premier league winners medal.

Winning nothing for 7 years

Seeing Vieira tap up our best players

Watching this team bottle it for 7 years

Losing a league cup final against Birmingham of all teams

Losing 8-2 vs Man Utd

Losing 3-2 to Spurs at home.

Losing the Champions league final in 2006

Seeing Wenger fail season after season.

All of it, all of this will make when we win our next trophy all the sweeter. I for one plan to celebrate like a mad man.

In the meantime I'm off to listen to some rap

😆 Looks like you're reaching the breaking point Kid, welcome aboard.

Vantastic wrote:

Keep him so that we'll have the best shot at winning trophies.

cos we came so close to winning a trophy this season? lets be realistic, the team is not good enough. if we cant convince our captain and best player of that, then we have no chance.

Van, we're crap.
Wenger is a shit coach.
We aren't winning anything of importance so long as he's still here.

Can't possibily let him run it out.

Sign him up or ship him out. If you think it's bad watching the PL's current best player leave for £25m this summer, think of the other two options:

  • has another superb season, leaves for free—still losing the PL's best player, but for jack-diddly-squat
  • has a shit or injury-stricken season, leaves for free—there was no point keeping him

Option 3
*we sell him and his replacement isn't good enough, we have a crap season and finish 6th. Meanwhile RVP bangs in 30 goals for somebody else. Failure to qualify for the CL totally negates the money we made when selling him.

Option 4
*we actually, against all the odds, come up with a really good team. We lead the table all season, but fall at the last because we are lacking that extra bit of top quality up front.

That's 17m a year. With a minimal tax rate.

Oh lawd.