JazzG
Xabi Alonso - Not signed because of 1-2 million confirmed by many players
Zlatan was also penny pinching to make sure he was an effective use of funds with the trial, which he rightly refused
Very credible reports at that time that Mata was ours but again Wenger dithered, Chelsea swooped in, same year we'd made headroads on cazorla then he went to Malaga
But by far the worst summer AND winter window for arsene was 2013/14 - The club literally had no clue what they were doing - Let's see it starts with Higuain all but agreed at final negotitations for 23-25m, we keep dithering and negotiating, PSG sign Cavani and in that moment napoli come in and gazump us, then we go to suarez and there are legit quotes from rodgers himself that back up your comment about the 50m mark when rogers said cavani fee would be the ballpark - Then that get's done, meanwhile we are monitoring the madrid situation with ancelotti coming in and basically seeing who they are getting rid off b/w ozil, di maria and benz - make some cheap ass bid for cabaye that gets rejected and then end up signing Ozil who basically plays in the position our best player played - Cazorla
Winter now and we are thereabouts top in the league and wenger doesn't add anything to the squad - except kallstrom whose back injury we knew about We who were leaders till feb by april are at one point out of the cl spots when everton thrash us 3-0
On one hand cheap and miserly with fees but the gazidis/wenger combo led to a whole lot of trash collected decent fees but at good wages who would then sit out their contracts and equally wenger gave good contracts to a lot of players that didn't deserve either
This lead to squillaci, chamakh, bendtner and many other sitting their asses while we would get them a loan till they left on a free, our good players running down their contracts like rvp, nasri, ramsey and the semi-good players like walcott milking the board for v fat contracts - A complete clusterfuck - RVP last year on his deal, Nasri last year on his deal, Ramsey last year on his deal, Sanchez last year on his deal - Wenger was wanting to do everything himself and rejected the notion of a sporting director and this led to these situations especially once Dein left.
Another example of wenger's is the striker situation from giroud onwards - after 2014, he goes and signs welbeck who is not prolific, then perez etc. wasting money on 10-20m multiple signings just so he didn't want to pay 40m for a player - Lacazette who he got in at 50m was 2-3 years available at a 30m fee, On top of that they paid 60m to get auba in the same position - People are fond of lacazette and all but ideally we should have kept giroud and brought auba in the first place
