I'm quite happy with as many people in the game as possible, even Sutton, being as brutal and clear as that. He is absolutely spot on too.

Sidenote, but why is Sutton seemingly so disliked in England? I've seen a lot of animosity towards him.

I always liked him personally, especially during his time at Celtic. He was one of few strikers who were actually meaner to English defenders than they were to him. It was funny seeing self-professed hard men complaining like little babies around him.

Rex wrote:

I'm quite happy with as many people in the game as possible, even Sutton, being as brutal and clear as that. He is absolutely spot on too.

Should have uses the 'irony' emoji! Chris Sutton's not exactly out there in the media and well known. I want others - other Jose - toe say it. Lee Dixon did in a milder tone during the Villa match.

No concrete transfer news for us in last two, three days.

With the season fast approaching it is concerning.

Minimum for the rest of the summer should be: sign Lyon striker and Musafi. MINIMUM.

Let it out Dules. Breathe in .... aaaaaannnnnndddd relax. It's all over.

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Scrap that. It's now abundantly clear we have no intention to strengthen the squad further.  Wenger has failed us badly yet again

Specialist in failure...?

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Scrap that. It's now abundantly clear we have no intention to strengthen the squad further.  Wenger has failed us badly yet again

He'll go next summer mate. Cheer up.

Cannon wrote:

@lorddulaarsenal wrote:

Scrap that. It's now abundantly clear we have no intention to strengthen the squad further.  Wenger has failed us badly yet again

Specialist in failure...?

First van Persie, now Mourinho. Can't wait to see who you'll be quoting next from the conveyor belt of cunts.

goon wrote:

Cannon wrote:

Specialist in failure...?

First van Persie, now Mourinho. Can't wait to see who you'll be quoting next from the conveyor belt of cunts.

Wenger at the presser today

'we are working very hard, buying calms the fans down'

Well played.

He is taking a dig at fans dules. You seem to have missed it.

Full quote and question:

on if fans will be happy to hear that (we are ready to spend money)…
"Buying calms the fans down, but it is important to spend but even more important to spend it the right way."

It's not a dig at all. The 'working hard' bit was a part of his answer to a completely different question.

goon wrote:

Full quote and question:

on if fans will be happy to hear that (we are ready to spend money)…
"Buying calms the fans down, but it is important to spend but even more important to spend it the right way."

It's not a dig at all. The 'working hard' bit was a part of his answer to a completely different question.

I think its a silly and disrespectful way of looking at fans by wenger, considering how it has been with our transfers and squad

EDIT:

It depends on the context, the fact that he follows it up with 'it is important to spend' suggests to me it's not said flippantly but I've not seen it live and can't watch from work.

Yeah well don't waste you time. Its not worth it.

Don't think he was mocking the fans at all. It was a generic statement not necessarily aimed at Arsenal fans. He is also right in that managers and clubs need to be above the impatience the fans can show.

In this case though Arsenal fans have shown a lot of patience. He needs to address squad needs. If he doesn't buy, the players already here need to give results. If they don't, he needs to be accountable for being wrong that there weren't better players available.

Qwiss! wrote:

He thinks we are all slobbering morons 

Someone needs to tell him we're not all like Rex, those kinds of generalisations are dangerous.

Qwiss! wrote:

I think it falls very much in like with his comments like "we could sign 20 players and everyone would happy for a few months" or "people expect us to sign Messi". He thinks we are all slobbering morons who want big names for the sake of it, not because the squad is desperately deficient in certain areas.

Since we spend very littl elast season we have 100m now.

We've spent 42ish million on Xhaka, holding ect.

I guess he knows we want a world class CF,CB, RWF and a back up RB minimum. With 58M to play with.

speedy wrote:

Qwiss! wrote:

I think it falls very much in like with his comments like "we could sign 20 players and everyone would happy for a few months" or "people expect us to sign Messi". He thinks we are all slobbering morons who want big names for the sake of it, not because the squad is desperately deficient in certain areas.

Since we spend very littl elast season we have 100m now.

We've spent 42ish million on Xhaka, holding ect.

I guess he knows we want a world class CF,CB, RWF and a back up RB minimum. With 58M to play with.

Where does that very nice and round £100m figure come from?

Xhaka didn't cost £42m did he? Thought it was about £10m ish lower than that. Are you mixing up euros and sterling?

If he knows we need all those things and only have £58m to play with then he should have sold a couple of other players or made some shrewder signings for those positions by now. Waiting until the season is well under way is costing us points.

xhaka cost £30m, holding cost £2m and asano cost less than that, it seems.

we also probably did not pay xhaka's fee all at once. and we probably had more than £100m to spend this summer if we wanted to. wenger should be able to buy a ST and CB for £65m. the rest of the squad needs are peripheral to those 2 positions

£100m was the guess after the swiss ramble looked at our figures. Great if xhaka was cheaper, maybe we have 70M left. Nearly enough for a WC striker. Certainly not enough for a world class CF,CB, RWF and a back up RB.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

we also probably did not pay xhaka's fee all at once. 

A budget is a budget, it doesn't matter when the money leaves the account.

yes it does matter. if your projected revenue is £350m in 2016 and £375m next year, you factor that in when planning your expenses.

Of course it does.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

yes it does matter. if your projected revenue is £350m in 2016 and £375m next year, you factor that in when planning your expenses.

Right, but revenue has nothing to do with when the cash leaves the account, neither does a budget.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

yes it does matter. if your projected revenue is £350m in 2016 and £375m next year, you factor that in when planning your expenses.

Exactly wage increases will chew a lot of that up. Kos Sanchez and ozil all need end contracts and for each of them it's there last BIG contract. So they'll want the money they deserve.

goon wrote:

mdgoonah41 wrote:

yes it does matter. if your projected revenue is £350m in 2016 and £375m next year, you factor that in when planning your expenses.

Right, but revenue has nothing to do with when the cash leaves the account, neither does a budget.

think of it like this. lets say that arsenal enters this summer with £200m in cash reserves, and they determine they are willing to spend up to £60m of actual cash this summer. no team will only plan for the current window. arsenal probably has 3 and 5 year models internally to forecast revenue, increases in wages, other ancillary costs. the cash reserves that we have will always fluctuate and there will be increases each year to the cash coming into the club from sources like the tv deal, commercial revenue, our foreign tours, etc.

so what arsenal probably have, on a rudimentary level, is something that looks like this (i just made up the numbers for this exercise, dont treat them as actual reported numbers obviously)

if you take a transfer fee like xhaha's, lets just assume it was £30m. the real world value of £15m in 2016 will be different from the value of £15m in 2017 due to inflation/currency exchanges and whatever else. that is why teams (not just football teams, but all companies) try to spread out costs over multiple years. if you lock in a number in 2016 and then you can pay that number off over 2-3 years, there is a chance that £15m in 2016 is really only "worth" £14.8m in 2018 dollars. just as an example.

so if we set up the xhaka fee to be paid in 2 installments of £15m, one this year and one next year, that absolutely does impact how much money we can spend. that £15m due in 2017 counts against the 2017 projection, not the 2016 projection. the 2017 projection is likely to be higher than the 2016 projection. whether the £15m is 4.0% of our projected revenue or 4.5% of our projected revenue is not inconsequential, especially to an entity run in such a fiscally conservative manner as arsenal is.

Qwiss! wrote:

I think it falls very much in like with his comments like "we could sign 20 players and everyone would happy for a few months" or "people expect us to sign Messi". He thinks we are all slobbering morons who want big names for the sake of it, not because the squad is desperately deficient in certain areas.

i hear you, but unfortunately a good chunk of fans are morons mate, of the slobbering/talksport phone-in variety, and they make it easy for someone like wenger to make excuses to ignore the fans

remember this guy?

just saw that welbeck will be back 3 months early. so, no need to sign a striker now. another coup for wenger

mdgoonah41 wrote:

goon wrote:

Right, but revenue has nothing to do with when the cash leaves the account, neither does a budget.

snip

Without wanting to get into technical details of accountancy expenditure isn't measured about how much money is leaving the bank account, but I don't want to bore everyone. Ultimately though if you're given a budget of 50m that's what you have to spend. It doesn't matter when the money is going out except for a cashflow perspective, but that doesn't impact the budget. Would be an insanely difficult to manage a budget in that manner.

Though even if we accepted your approach, then surely it would mean this years budget is cut by prior year transfers? 

Fact is, we don't actually know what the budget is. It's all just guesswork. On top of that, we don't know how that budget measures up to whatever our maximum potential budget would really be. We don't know much, but we do know that we can afford to buy a striker and a centre back. That's all I really ever wanted to know, tbh.

You don't need to get into details of finances and accounting to know that we are way too conservative and that it is actually costing us in terms of achievement and success, which in turn makes our conservatism counterproductive. It's been the same way for years and seems ingrained in the club culture. Massive changes are needed to shift that. Getting rid of Wenger will just be the critical first step.

Ugggghhhh this section is so unbearable dead. Where the fuck are the links? The saga? The drama? The llama? I hate this.

No rumours?

Just pay 60m Euros for Lacazette and be done with it ffs.

It's all looking rather glum isn't it? I still retain hope but part of my worry is that one of the reasons Wenger has been so grumpy when asked about transfers is because he's got nothing up his sleeve, he hinted as much when saying they're finding it very hard to identify players.

I think we'll get a decent centre back and a (relatively) mediocre striker.