Burnwinter™ wrote:

The financial disparity between the clubs in the top leagues is a key factor in keeping football enjoyable.

In what sense? What do you make of the NFL or the NRL model?

Wilshere wrote:

Hleb was an excellent player for us.

At least he won a league cup. 😆

Which is more than Wenger ever has.

Biggus wrote:
Wilshere wrote:

Hleb was an excellent player for us.

At least he won a league cup. 😆

Which is more than Wenger ever has.

Which league cup?

Alfonso wrote:

Adebayor>Giroud

Definitely.

I never thought Gallas was that bad during his time with us.

Biggus wrote:
Wilshere wrote:

Hleb was an excellent player for us.

At least he won a league cup. 😆

Which is more than Wenger ever has.

Yes, I'm sure that's what keeping Wenger awake at night. He'd swap the unbeaten season in an instant for some Carling cup glory.

Gallas wasn't a shit player but he wasn't a team player either and wenger ballsed it up by making him captain.

Gallas was for the most part a quality defender.....but a massive twat. So, are you referring to his play or attitude?

Bold Tone wrote:

Gallas wasn't a shit player but he wasn't a team player either and wenger ballsed it up by making him captain.

Playing it safe. This seems like almost the least controversial opinion it is possible to have about Gallas.

I thought Gallas was a pretty good captain. Still deserved to be stripped of the armband, mind.

@ BW
True but i've got all the abuse out of my system and can now discuss him as a historical figure.
I didn't like the trade with chelski and never ever trusted gallas even when he kept scoring crucial goals.

Klaus wrote:

I thought Gallas was a pretty good captain. Still deserved to be stripped of the armband, mind.

Agree with that.

Anyway

I would put a peak Hleb of 07-08 in any of my Arsenal dream team easily.

The 2008 season derailed with injury to Gallas compounding the earlier loss of Robin, and not because of the Brum incident.

Timothy wrote:
Burnwinter™ wrote:

The financial disparity between the clubs in the top leagues is a key factor in keeping football enjoyable.

In what sense? What do you make of the NFL or the NRL model?

NFL model is a fairer system. More socialist which is weird for USA.

I wonder what smaller pl clubs like Villa think of all the media attention of the top 5.

Tony Montana wrote:
Timothy wrote:

In what sense? What do you make of the NFL or the NRL model?

NFL model is a fairer system. More socialist which is weird for USA.

It's horses for courses. Draft and cap models make sense for sports with attritional scoring and low variance of results.

Among popular sports, football has very high variance of results, meaning upsets are still very possible for clubs with an order of magnitude less financial resources.

Meanwhile, the slow-moving ordering of the leagues contributes to a sense of identity and drama among supporters that has become quite absent from draft and cap sports.

For example, the preferential draft picks for weaker clubs in the AFL mean it's common for today's cellar dwellers to talk about the "five year cycle" after which a string of favourable draft picks will make them competitive again … and by the same token it's nearly impossible for a currently strong club to establish a dynasty of success.

This churning cycle is downright tedious to me, but you couldn't remove draft and cap from AFL, because the small margins required for comprehensive dominance would quickly make the league unwatchably predictable.

Although cash doping can be a shit, football doesn't quite have that extreme financial determinism yet—which means we get the colour and shade, the riches and poverty that make the sport entertaining, even if we have to gnash our teeth at the petro-clubs (or the old money Arsenals).

At the moment we're all on a post-2005 journey with Arsenal that has shaped all of our lives, in which all of the club's financial efforts over the last decade may be about to accumulate to the point, a climax at which we return to winning major trophies. It's the stuff of a good novel, unlike three or four bureaucratic third round draft picks.

With the money that's been floating around in recent years distorting things quite a bit, I'm now hoping FFP is the right set of measures to keep those narrative virtues going longer term.

@Tony It's no coincidence that the US understands socialist principles of justice and fairness perfectly when organising its sports, but conveniently forgets them when ordering its society! I'd prefer things to be the other way around myself.

@Tony It's no coincidence that the US understands socialist principles of justice and fairness perfectly when organising its sports, but conveniently forgets them when ordering its society! I'd prefer things to be the other way around myself.
[/quote]

Thats quite profound! Seems true prima facie.

Everything I declare on here is not just prima facie, but ex nihilo a priori hard fact, mate. Ad nauseam, ad infinitum. Per argua ad astra 😉