It should be abundantly obvious to people that a lot of our “restrictions” are linked to Wenger’s philosophy. Even now, when he has money (and an abundance of it) he manages to not sign a single outfield player throughout the summer.
Who fucking cares? Their goals are to win shit. So the thought of not making the top 4 doesn’t cause their fans to crawl in to a corner and want to die or make it feel like their season was a failure. Not winning things causes that. But for us, well a lot of us anyways, we’ve bought the “top 4 is a trophy” bit hook, line, and Wenger. So of course it would feel like a failure if we missed top 4 but would it really matter besides less money to not reinvest in the playing side.
Yes, It would fucking matter to any non-oil club in the world.
Chelsea, United, City can afford to be outside Top 4, not us.
You only have to look at Liverpool to understand what a slippery slope it is to be outside Top 4.
They were out of Top 4 in 2010 and in 6 season since, they have only been in CL once.
We won’t be as pathetic because we have better resources than Liverpool but you can get a good idea.
I really, really question this. Making the budget (and debt payments) reliant on something as variable as the League position you finish in sounds like incredible ignorant business.
I don’t believe a multi-million corporation would go for that. Or the banks who provided the loans for that matter.
It’s not about the budget, It’s about revenue.
Prize money in qualifying CL group stage & Europa group stage & No Europe is (speculative) 50m, 25m & nothing respectively.
So we are looking at loss of minimum of 50m if we miss out on Europe.
For any corporation with 300m or so as revenue, 50m amounts to loss of 15-20%.
It’s significant.
Because you can lose that stream of income so easliy is why I don’t believe it. If I want to get a mortgage I have to show the bank, or anybody else you lend money from, for whatever you’re buying, a steady stream of income/guarentees in order to pay interests/debt.
I imagine with the long standing partnerships we made with Nike/Emirates at the time, the bond issues, the redevelopment of Highbury Square Arsenal made a much reliant package for the financing of the stadium than being reliant on possible revenue from European football.
No. That is not a loss, you can’t lose what you don’t have yet. If Arsenal are accounting with assumption of top 4 every year I don’t know the rules of English business but that would seem illegal to me, and completely misleading to shareholders.
This is why so much of the fanbase is fucked up beyond belief they think that money we MIGHT make is LOST if we don’t get it. JFC, if you think AFC is that much on the brink I don’t know what the fuck to tell you.
This guy is probably the anti-dote for everything about us now. I’ve given managers like Mourinho and Koeman a lot of shit for their ‘pragmatic’ football, but having an actual organization trumps being how disjointed we are right now on the pitch.
He played boring football the season before that but I guess now it’s testament to him playing the team he has available to it’s strengths. Now that he he’s the appropriate talent they score goals for fun. When they didn’t, they defended well as a unit and were very difficult to breakdown.
I don’t know if there style of play has changed that dramatically. They have more attacking talent this season. Germain and Falcao are back from loan and the latter is killing it this season and has found the goal again. Lemar and Mbappe are further in their development.