The player market is bullshit though.

In what sense Burnsy?

In the sense that for several years now it would have been challenging for us to (a) recruit and maintain a competitive squad (b) retain our best players - on the principle that whatever we have offered, our rivals have always been able to trump us.

That's regardless of the bell curve of expenditure.

But even Newcastle and Swansea are getting better players than us recently.....

Michu going to Swansea for 2 million while we paid 12 for Giroud is indeed pretty damning for our scouts/transfer negotiators. Fucking ridiculous.

Nobody else wanted Michu either, so whatever the reason, he just fell off the radar. Bayern were going to sign Giroud instead of Mandzukic...

Michaud was an exception because of his ties with laud rip, But there is no doubt we have been under performing in the transfer market. I can understand players going to Chelsea, city, Manu over us, but there is no excuse for the lesser teams consistently getting the best of the rest right under our noses. Recently Arsenic gave the excuse of unfair competition, is it Newcastle who is unfairly competing with us? What unfair competition when you willingly sell your best players to your rivals, what unfair competition when you were never in for the same players? We just heard the highest player at Swansea earns 35k, it's not that dissimilar in most premiership teams contrary to the belief that 100k wages is the norm. Yet we pay 70k to players who barely play 5 games a season and the nitwit talks of unfair competition.

If you can't compete with the top 3 ok, then make sure you get the best of the rest.......we aren't. Instead we pay top money for gervinho ,giroud and chamakh in transfers, wages or both. Wenger needs to get his house in order before he starts pointing fingers.

The highest paid players at the teams around us earn the same as the highest paid players here. Our squad players earn more and achieve more.

Why are you mentioning Newcastle? What have they done? Only Liverpool (despite their current position) are comparable to us.

Problem isn't the transfer fees. It's the wages.
I've been saying for 4 or 5 years now. We overpay the mid-tier guys, and keep non-performing high-earners too long. Look at the wages that teams like Spurs and Newcastle pay their squad players who are equivalent to our own. Much less.

As Kami said, you break the bank for Wilshere and one or two others. The others, you keep on a diet.

Yes Capi you are right, to everyone else, as I said..........

Great answer. It's a simple question: what have Newcastle done to even warrant being mentioned in the same breath as Arsenal? Absolutely nothing.

What do tottenham's top players earn? Everton's? what have they accomplished?

The problem is that Arsenal live in the real football world and for some reason many of you guys can't or won't accept that reality.

But yeah, as you said...

Capi, we are talking about individual players here.
How much does Gareth Bale earn? How much do the other top players at Spurs earn?
How much do Cabaye, Ben Arfa, Cisse etc., earn?
How much do players of equivalent quality earn at Arsenal.

You can, rightly, say that these teams have done nothing? But does that then mean that we should pay more in wages for equivalent players just because we are a bigger club? What am I missing?

No point talking about individual players because nobody here is privy to what they earn.

Why do we pay more? Because we slog through 50 odd games a season, every season. Because we need the quality of player who can achieve top four at a bare minimum, not as the holy grail. Because in order to achieve that in those circumstances, the quality from top to bottom of the squad has to be significantly better than those other teams. Quality costs money.

Those teams aren't on our level and don't have "equivalent" players. Our needs are entirely different.

Capi, how do you think we'd fare if we fell out the top 4 this season?

I think we'd be ok - few additions, no need to sell and next year we'd be able to focus primarily on the league

Agreed. A season out of it would probably make little difference on the football side of things, at this point.

Would have an impact on whatever emirates are giving us and (one would imagine) the new kit deal, but who knows how severe that would be.

think it could have a really bad impact.. not because of the decrease in revenue or effect on the team but the main problem is that the attitude of this board is extremly small time, they will always plan on worse case scenario, in other word always looking down instead of up.. Emergance of sugar daddys at Chelsea & City was always going to be a big factor of why we have slipped behind but our lack of ambition has has also contributed significatly towards it aswell... If we drop out of the top 4 i dont think it will change our tight arse strategy. We'll be relying on Wenger to work his diminishing magic.

Captain wrote:

It's a simple question: what have Newcastle done to even warrant being mentioned in the same breath as Arsenal?

Neither side has won anything in the last 8 years and both are mid table selling clubs.
Granted, I can't mention Swansea in the same breath as us now

Captain wrote:

Those teams aren't on our level and don't have "equivalent" players. Our needs are entirely different.

This is what some people refuse to accept. Our players are actually quite good. Our wage structure should be adjusted to better reward players that are more important on the pitch, but we still won't be able to retain our best players when someone comes with a 200k p/week offer.

Our players and finances are not the problem here. We could do with a MF and a ST, but the rest should be easily making top four if not challenging for the title in the right circumstances (its not all in our hands, rivals have to slip up to some extent). We should have 1 League win, 2 League Cups and probably an FA Cup in the past 8 years. It hasn't been due to lack of playing staff.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/MQ6iJUnvRt4

Wenjer out!

Biggus wrote:

Captain wrote:

It's a simple question: what have Newcastle done to even warrant being mentioned in the same breath as Arsenal?

Neither side has won anything in the last 8 years and both are mid table selling clubs.
Granted, I can't mention Swansea in the same breath as us now

Yeah but you define midtable as 2nd to 17th

A generation of Biggusians think that "midtablesellingclub" is only one word.

qs! wrote:

Biggus wrote:

Neither side has won anything in the last 8 years and both are mid table selling clubs.
Granted, I can't mention Swansea in the same breath as us now

Yeah but you define midtable as 2nd to 17th

Well how would you describe 4th place then, the minor top spot? the type 3 trophy winning spot?
That spin and bollocks is just an invention of the Hill-Wood and Wenger supporters to delude themselves that we are still somehow a successful team.
And is it not true that we sell our best players ever year replacing them with cheaper substitutes?

Due to CL qualification, spots 2-4 are the second most important in the league in terms of material value, and are therefore clearly defined as better than mid-table. Mid-table, speaking in concrete terms, is anything below Europa league and above relegation.

All the rest is prestige.

But you know this already and you're just being difficult.

midtable is 5th to 17th.
if youre not going to Champions League or the Championship, you're midtable.

Not really, 2nd and 3rd provide automatic qualification to the group stages and 4th provides entry to the last qualifying round- Unless the previous years winner has come from the same league and finished even lower than 4th.
And of course this arrangement depends on a country's coefficient and is subject to change.
Also unless the teams that qualified subsequently go on to actually win the CL their positions are just prestige too.
But you know this already and you're just being difficult.

@Claud, That's making a judgement on the Europa league, which is fine and all, but subjective nevertheless.

@[deleted], Only way I can see that the objective value of league places can be determined is by what you actually get by achieving that place. The idea that places 2nd-17th are equal is wholly incorrect in terms of their material value. Opinion, of course, cannot be dictated, but there is an objective hierarchy that should probably go some way to better inform our opinions. It's not "spin" or "delusions", it's very much a reality.

Claudius wrote:

midtable is 5th to 17th.
if youre not going to Champions League or the Championship, you're midtable.

Whats so magical about 4th place? It didn't even provide a path to the qualification rounds last season.

Tend to agree with Claud on this one.

Also, the relative fixity of the Champions League places (top three, four or five) suggests a persistent quality gap.

Coombs wrote:

@[deleted], Only way I can see that the objective value of league places can be determined is by what you actually get by achieving that place. The idea that places 2nd-17th are equal is wholly incorrect in terms of their material value. Opinion, of course, cannot be dictated, but there is an objective hierarchy that should probably go some way to better inform our opinions. It's not "spin" or "delusions", it's very much a reality.

I never said that 2nd-17th were equal in material value Coombsy, every finishing spot earns more prize money than the one below it so 2nd would earn significantly more than 17th, at this present time they also earn a spot in the group stages of the CL (think of it as a free lottery ticket) but if you don't subsequently win your ticket is worthless.
Just because you got to stick your snout in the CL trough its a mistake to think of it as an achievement (unless of course you do subsequently win then its a magnificent achievement)- I don't buy all this Wengerish type 3 trophy bollocks- Thats just a cover for his failure.

Ok Ok chaps, the bottom line is if you are in a competition with no real chance of winning it, and with no chance of relegation, you exist for the sole purpose of giving legitimacy to the eventual winners. Qualifying for the CL is only relevant from a financial perspective especially if again perennially your sole purpose in that competition is to legitimize the winner.

We are not mid table in the true sense of the word but we might as well be and I think that is Biggus's point. A Spurs fan can argue with pride they are not mid table. An Arsenal fan should be too embarrassed to even try and defend it, we shouldn't even be in a position where even our worst rivals in trying to taunt us would even think of using Arsenal and midtable in the same sentence.

Burnwinter wrote:

the relative fixity of the Champions League places (top three, four or five) suggests a persistent quality gap.

Comment?

So now "the relative fixity" of the top 3 (or is it 4 or is it 5?) "suggests" a persistent quality gap......Thats where we draw the line between those born to rule and the middle classes in 6th place is it?

Everyone seems to have a different opinion where the aristocracy ends and the hoi polloi begins.

Biggus might claim that 3rd (our most recent place) is, for all intents and purposes, equivalent to 10th, but you can imagine with what reserves of sangfroid he'd react if we actually did finish in 10th place.

And that, to me, is game set and match in this argument.

@Biggs We very rarely finish below 4th. If all the clubs between 2nd and 17th were roughly equivalent, you'd expect our results to be uniformly distributed across that range.

And at any given time there are other clubs in a similar position that tend to do well. A vast amount of cash (to spend, if not to actually have) has, historically, been the only thing to much disrupts the PL status quo.

I've shown that qualification for the CL is not a trophy and therefore doesn't entitle you to claim superiority any more than having 100% possession and failing to score does.
So at the end of the day putting aside the material (as Coombsy puts it) benefits, and from a fans point of view whats the point of material benefits if they're not subsequently put to work helping to win a trophy? 2nd is no better than 17th.

Heh heh people are so desperate to defend our relevance that nobody has bothered to challenge the other half of my assertion- That we are a selling club.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I wasn't aware that "Hey! You're not disagreeing with EVERYTHING I said!" had become an actual strategy of argumentation.

So at the end of the day putting aside the material (as Coombsy puts it) benefits, and from a fans point of view whats the point of material benefits if they're not subsequently put to work helping to win a trophy?

In our case: better players, better football, bragging rights over Spurs, romantic European Cup ties, and, though trophyless, closer to a trophy than the club would otherwise be.

If places in the table mean nothing to you you certainly don't speak for the majority of supporters out there, for this or any other club.

The Oscars is full of celebrities, some current, some past stars, some up and coming, some has beens
Some get a limo sent to pick them, free clothes and jewelry,
Some have to make their own way there
Some forget their invitation at home
Some have to get their agent to fight for an invitation
Yes you were at the Oscars and you might even have been A-list at one point but if the press are not scrambling for your interview and the only reason we at home know you were there was that we caught a glimpse of you as the camera panned to zoom in on someone else, then you were just a part of the audience, "keeping Hollywood afloat". You may argue where you sit on the B-D list, but you certainly are no longer the A-list celebrities people really give a shit about.

http://voices.yahoo.com/a-list-z-list-celebrities-lists-mean-318894.html?cat=7

We are not an A-list club, whether we are mid table, upper mid table or whatever is mute!

Let me fix that analogy for you (AntG would be proud! If he's sober anyway)

• Winning the league is like winning a Best Picture Oscar
• Domestic cups are like the Golden Globes or the Palme d'Or
• CL places are a Golden Bear or a BAFTA and a couple of nominations
• Europa League's the Audience Award at Sundance
• 6th to 17th means you made the Official Selection
• Relegated? Straight to DVD

Nice!

all I know is I used to get lots of banter as recently as 2-3 seasons ago. We are such a joke now, I watch Arsenal games in BBM silence. When Bayern scored the 2nd goal I got one happy smiley face from my mate, he couldn't even be bothered to type a single word, that's how pathetic we are now.