• The Arsenal

  • what is the money for? what is the long term plan?

Cannon wrote:
Mirth wrote:

You may be right, but this isn't a football related decision. This is a financial one which is intrinsically linked to the valuation of the club. If we suddenly decided to extinguish our entire cash balance, Kroenke would have something to say (even if he may not oppose it).

You are saying this NOW. It became a financial decision only when it is becoming apparent that we are under performing on the football front. Which is what a lot of people had been saying for the last 5 years but were being dismissed by citing various reasons including financial ones such as need for CL places.

So pardon me for pointedly blaming wenger for all evidence points to him being solely responsible for all football related matters.

I'm not disavowing Wenger from blame on any football related matters at all.

However, you're using football related matters as an extremely broad term based on a throwaway comment from Kroenke. Until you clarify the scope and extent of football related matters that you think Kroenke stays out of, this won't go anywhere.

Rex wrote:

All the evidence points to Wenger on this. Kroenke isn't likely, ever, to put extra money into the club, based on what he has done with his other teams, but he doesn't appear to have ever been a stumbling block preventing the club to use its own money. Wenger himself said, only a few weeks ago, that he sometimes has to calm Gazidis down regarding transfers! Gazza wants us to buy and invest, but Wenger is reluctant. Several board members have over the years spoken of never, ever refusing Wenger funds. Probably not entirely true, but probably not entirely false either.
There is of course a limit to how much we can spend; spending beyond our means doesn't seem to roll with what has been decided at board level, so that seems to be a no go. Wenger isn't anywhere near spending close to our limit though, and neither does he seem to want to. That is my take on the current situation at Arsenal. I don't think the overall policy regarding spending is likely to change with a new manager, but I'm also pretty sure a manager who asks for more money to spend will receive just that.

Do you have a link to that bit about Wenger calming down Gazidis? Would be very interested to read it. 

Pretty sure Gazidis has said Kroenke encourages them to spend money. They have to inform him before pulling the trigger on bigger deals, of course, but I doubt he is the one slowing us down here. Gazidis spoke of this in an interview, and said of the Özil deal that the only thing Kroenke said when informed was 'do it'.
No, I can't be arsed to track down this particular interview. 🙂

A lot of it is PR too. It's upto an individual to chose what to believe. What I don't get is how can an owner be so indifferent to lack of success. For me, Kroenke is more culpable than Wenger. Is he scared of Wenger? To confront him, to ask him to do whatever it takes to try and get a trophy home.

Wenger is good business for someone who sees Arsenal as an investment. Every year he continues to grow the club brand, puts money into the bank, and seems unswayed no matter how competitive the league gets. We'be never missed out on big commercial opportunities like the Champions League. Kroenke's shares are worth more today than what he paid to get them.

Our line of increased spending is roughly in line with everyone else's outside the big teams in Premier League. It got bumped up when the new tv money arrived, and our frugality in previous windows left us with some extra cash on top when a wild Özil appeared. Rightly or wrongly we operate a certain way and people, including Wenger, go about doing their job. I don't think things are going to be vastly different under a new manager next season (or whenever Wenger goes). Maybe we'll be quicker to sell some players again to recuperate fees, but it's not like we're going to start signing Pogbas.

Klaus wrote:

Wenger is good business for someone who sees Arsenal as an investment. Every year he continues to grow the club brand, puts money into the bank, and seems unswayed no matter how competitive the league gets. We'be never missed out on big commercial opportunities like the Champions League. Kroenke's shares are worth more today than what he paid to get them.

Our line of increased spending is roughly in line with everyone else's outside the big teams in Premier League. It got bumped up when the new tv money arrived, and our frugality in previous windows left us with some extra cash on top when a wild Özil appeared. Rightly or wrongly we operate a certain way and people, including Wenger, go about doing their job. I don't think things are going to be vastly different under a new manager next season (or whenever Wenger goes). Maybe we'll be quicker to sell some players again to recuperate fees, but it's not like we're going to start signing Pogbas.

Maybe five years ago. Not anymore. His failure on the pitch is directly impacting the clubs revenues and brand. For example had we won the league anytime in the last three years we would have not only increased our income, the club brand would have been boosted significantly. Coaches like Simone, Anchelotti and arguably even Mourinho would represent more value at this moment.

If we had sorted ownership issues, it would not take a genuis to figure out that prepaying our outstanding debt and investing in the team/squad would significantly boost our income and club valuation.

Agree on that, however Klaus' point is that the value of the club is increasing year on year anyway which is what Kroenke seems to care about.

Of course winning titles would provide more of a boost but Kroenke is just as conservative as the rest of them

have you ever heard a manager from a supposed top club explain his lack of spending is down to having the pay the gardener, the cooks, and the parking attendants? im seriously still trying to comprehend how he could have said that yesterday.

the question is still unanswered, and i really hope there are tough questions asked at the next shareholder meeting.

He's just worried Tennyson will write a scathing review of his managerial decisions.

Noble 600.

mdgoonah41 wrote:

have you ever heard a manager from a supposed top club explain his lack of spending is down to having the pay the gardener, the cooks, and the parking attendants? im seriously still trying to comprehend how he could have said that yesterday.

the question is still unanswered, and i really hope there are tough questions asked at the next shareholder meeting.

I think he overdid the sarcasm part. I would like to think he is not serious.

he says so much crazy, bizarre shit these days, how can you really be sure? the other day he counted sanogo as one of our options at striker

More money to buy better players to make the squad stronger in order to achieve more domestically and in Europe, which will then make us more money, then just repeat...

We have to improve commercially, we lack that so so much compared to the juggernauts in Europe.

Savz wrote:

More money to buy better players to make the squad stronger in order to achieve more domestically and in Europe, which will then make us more money, then just repeat...

We have to improve commercially, we lack that so so much compared to the juggernauts in Europe.

Anyone whos spent there way to the top has written off about a billion in debt. Proving that doesn't actually work. At least as a main plan.

The swiss ramble artice reckoned we had about 70Mish left after xhaka, holding. I really hope we spend it just to stop the moaning about it. Then we can continue to break even like we do now and develop players no matter who the manager is we can't buy 3 WC players on 250/300k per week. We're going to ahve to develop players. And pick up bargains. And get one bigish addition each year.

one of the biggest problems i have, right now, is the way we continually miss out on the top players when they are young and at small clubs. finding those types of players used to be something we really did well. considering wenger's hatred of paying market price for players, youd think he'd have diverted large chunks of our money into our scouting system and in paying fees for the best 17-18 year old kids in europe. instead, hes splashed out big money for young english players, and it hasnt really paid off yet. the £15m he spent on chambers could have been used to buy multiple young players. the spuds bought dier for £4m that summer. mane came in to southampton for £10m. calhanoglu moved for £12m that summer. atletico signed griezmann for £24m that summer. barca paid like £15m for rakitic that summer. sevilla signed krychowiak for £4m.

the point being, wenger consistently says that fans just want him to spend for the sake of spending, and that to find quality, you have to pay over the odds. europe is littered with top quality players who moved between the age of 18-24 for fees of less than what we spent on chambers. we're either just not identifying them correctly or we're not making much of an effort. paying £4m for krychowiak in 2014 would have paid for itself 8 times over in the last 2 years. where were we? why didnt we identify him before he went to sevilla and only became interested after his first season in spain after his transfer value had more than quintupled?

We should have sold out to Usmanov. #73 richest person on the planet.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing! It is very easy to pick a few success stories like that from around Europe, disregarding the real number of annual transfers concerning players in the 18-23 age bracket. It's not like we aren't signing players like the Jeff, Holding, Chambers, Gnabry, Bielik and on and on. Getting it right though, and getting a top player out at the other end, is something pretty much every club struggles with.

Rex wrote:

Hindsight is a wonderful thing! It is very easy to pick a few success stories like that from around Europe, disregarding the real number of annual transfers concerning players in the 18-23 age bracket. It's not like we aren't signing players like the Jeff, Holding, Chambers, Gnabry, Bielik and on and on. Getting it right though, and getting a top player out at the other end, is something pretty much every club struggles with.

bellerin is the only young player we've signed in the last 5-6 years that, at this time, looks like he would start regularly in a title winning team. that is sort of my point. we haven't signed enough of these talents. bielik and holding cost like £2m each, they are good gambles, but we havent really delivered in terms of volume. as you say, there is a high failure rate.

but that wasn't my only point. the other point is that established players who maybe werent stars, but certainly werent unknown, move for £10-15m every summer. they dont require breaking the bank, they just require clearing out some of the underperformers in our own squad to make room. given our manager's french pedigree, why was he not interested in griezmann when he went to atletico? surely we could have paid more than £24m for him. surely wenger saw the potential. now he would cost triple that.

In all honesty, it is tough to sign lots of cheap young potential stars. We've got one star we created in our ranks. City have none. United have none. And Chelsea have none. The reality is that most good young players are being snapped up early, particularly by teams that have greater financial constraints than us. What we need to do is be brave about the relatively established kids - your Gabigols and Inakis. These guys aren't cheap. We'd be spending 20-30m pounds easily on this level of player. So you need to be brave about how you accelerate the exits of failed players like Ox, Walcott, Gabriel etc., to bring them on board.