Didn’t want to pollute the Xhaka thread
@ljungbergkamp - I never understood this ambition thing. I’ve never thought that the people Arsenal only set out for 4th every year? This is a football club, everybody involved is ambitious, everybody involved wants to win things consistently.
The whole debate about higher expectation/pressure on Wenger from the board being reflective of ‘unambition’ is a different story entirely and a very unique situation tbh. I don’t think Wenger’s unsackable job security is indicative of unambition considering his stature at the club. However I strongly believe that it’s something that we won’t see after he leaves with other managers.
I can’t hate on Kronke for not pushing for Wenger to be sacked, I mean the guy has the football knowledge of the common supporter maybe even less than that. I for one wouldn’t sack Wenger either, I strongly believe if we didn’t win the FA cup he’d have walked alots of evidence points to that. I think in May 2017 he’ll take examine the last 3 years and come to a conclusion, there’s been lots of evidence pointing to him leaving. Without a PL or CL trophy what the justification of his new contract?
@InvincibleDB10 - Of course it is, Self sustainability is the most reliable and stable way to build a platform to be successful. Spending within your means enables clubs to focus more on improving the quality of coaching, management, training and youth development, these things are essentially what football clubs are meant to be all about.
Outside investment is a game of roulette Chelsea and City are definitely the tiny exception rather than the rule, there’s always QPR, Aston Villa or Portsmouth and many more examples to cite for it going horribly wrong.
In any case Chelsea and Man City have been building towards self sustainability for years now with the idea that their commercial deals will take over the external funding. Just look at the investment youth facilities and purchasing global talents. Chelsea more so than City have focused more on self sustainability if you look at thing like stadium plans and transfer policy over recent seasons. Also don’t forget Chelsea’s parent company still has somewhere near to £1B of debt attached to it which is likely to be reduce by siphoning the revenue from Chelsea FC in the future. Chelsea is practically unsellable.
Arsenal was and is still not a club ideal for external investment.
@SDGooner - the Board was definitely right to be sceptical of external investors. We were always going to be better off sticking to self sustaining principles. The current position we’re in is an extremely excellent one commercially we’re up there with other top level clubs. It is extremely unlikely that we’d be anywhere close to United’s level of income if we had won a couple of PL titles we’d be closer to where we are now.