OK, I'll work with you: when Gazidis kept "Wenger has funds" (and people like PHW uttered stuff in that general direction), do you think the boss was aware- or unaware of those statements? do you think he was talking - or not talking to Gazidis about the reality behind the statements? do you think he was supporting - or not supporting Gzds (and board) scheme of letting it slide like he does have money to spend?
Do you also think that any of the above was unaware of our real economic situation, and how much money was really there to spend?
I think it would be highly unlikely to suggest that there was no coordination at all, and that the statements were not uttered for a purpose. I think these people are more slick than you give them credit to be: you yourself accuse them for years that their only purpose is to make money. Well, give them credit for doing that quite well: their charade, the smoke screen, the carefully planned ambiguous zone, the flexibility afforded by not directly contradicting statements - all these buy them time, muffle cries of outrage, ease dissonanced season ticket holder's tortured souls.
You buy it that politicians master that art for a living, why don't you accept - what seems to me more than just plausible - that those people out to suck millions out of our pockets, those who aren't really good for much else (according to you, surely), have mastered the (rather simple) art of talking ambiguously on purpose? "we have money if the boss wants to spend" - how can you determine if he does? he could want a bit (1), want much (5), or want enough to actually demand the board to allocate the money (say 8 or more). But the truth value of the original statement is the same for all cases - surely you see that. And this before we even got to the art of the boss himself - an unending maze of what starts with "real quality", "add to the squad if we find ___", and ends in the frozen tundra plains of what is a prize, his conception of the club spirit, his long term vision and his football philosophy (I've left out about twenty others).
It's not something you can actually hold down against them in the way you describe it, is my point. you think you can come up and say: gazidis, you say we had money in 2011 - I'm taking you to the fan's court on this, and I'm going to prove you were lying. You're dreaming - it is never happening (suppose the court thing itself is possible, and he is willingly coming). You can't make the "lie" accusation stick, cos the shtick is too thick (couldn't resist). He'll always have enough grey there to tell you "but there really was", exactly because that grey didn't just happen to be there. It was an uttering he knew he could back - in a slimy, slithering way, if you want, sure. But he always could (and so did the others).
Now let me take you back to where all this started: when qs said (and I followed) that "there was always the sense of tension between the statements" (not his exact words, but hey) - it was exactly because we all felt the entire time that this charade was going on, and we couldn't hold on to any of it. How many rivers of words about "do we-don't we have money?" ran in the past few years? We knew Gazidis was selling us something, we knew wenger was not being completely revealing - but what could we do? we were just following our instincts, following events and connecting the dots. And they knew these are the rules of the game as well.
In this light, I can't see how you can honestly believe their statements were not carefully calculated, and designed to give them the necessary scope to work - to survive - in.
