by the manager, yes. Agree, not massively disadvantaged, neither of us. And I doubt many managers in the world would’ve kept our club sailing with 0 spend between 2007 and 2013 to stand in top 4 at the end of it. 2007 is when City started spending. Suddenly there’s United, Chelsea and City claiming 3/4 top 4 spots with their monnies. The 4th was the battle and everyone laughed at us for it but they shouldn’t have. The squad we had going into the Emirates lasted us up until the 2013 mark right about, probably, but with a manager who excels at that kind of stuff which Wenger did. Not saying he would’ve won the CL, but he excelled at that and the owners knew it and surely loved him for it.
Either way no other class manager would’ve taken the fucking job at Arsenal knowing those were the conditions anyway lol
Yeah but same could be said of Liverpool (or even vastly worse, Spurs, who basically just… don’t… spend)… and yet here we are looking up at both of them and a FAR distance to Pool.
They are there not b/c they spent more but b/c they did EVERYTHING better and basically spent the same (actually less).
FWIW (massive, massive grain of salt), Transfermarkt has market value of our 2011-2012 squad much higher than Pool’s… and that is with ridiculous valuation for both RVP and Suarez and a 5.4 million valuation for Ramsey (for example).
They looked up at us for 30 years straight bar perhaps the CL win for Liverpool 15 yrs ago or w/e and the odd 2nd finish with Suarez maybe 5 years ago or w/e. I mean you keep mixing up time frames here, Liverpool and Spurs have done great in the past 2-3 years, not 7, and was not building on what they had before. Things can change quickly though, just because Leicester win the league doesn’t mean everyone can or should throw their model out and copy theirs. We’ve still done better than both of those clubs in many aspects, except for very very recently. I mean scum topped us by 1 point in the league because we couldn’t get a fucking point from the last three games lol so now we’re out of the CL and everything’s horrible. They should be out of the CL. Liverpool did worse than us a lot of the time, and recently did better than us, I just don’t see it as dramatically as you do I guess.
I am talking about the argument that we don’t spend relative to those… that is it.
The fact that we had AT LEAST as valuable a squad as they did (that finished much higher) 7 years ago AND we have a higher net spend in last 7 years combined should put to rest the myth that they are beating us b/c they spend more…
Well the argument for me is rather that we definitely do not outspend them and didn’t have a much better squad and shouldn’t expect to do better than them. That is a different thing from saying they outspend us
Then that Liverpool hit gold, that’ll happen. Most of the time it doesn’t. Great season for them. 2 years ago it was a fucking joke. 2 years from now it can be again.
And I said I agree it is execution, just like it was for Leicester. I just don’t agree with the idea that we have a great squad and should expect success, because we don’t, we didn’t 7 years ago and you’d have to go back 15 years to when we did and you could. Then whoever else gets success out there, that’s a different thing.
yeah I’m not suggesting YOU have made that argument, but it is a popular one around here.
I would expect based on things we would be more/less in the same position relative to them we were 7 years ago, or perhaps closer (to your point - which I might quibble with), yet they are miles from us.
Agree also there is a lot of luck involved, but you make your own luck. We have just been shooting ourselves in the foot repeatedly wrt transfers and managing contracts. Its almost as if our manager in the last 7-8 years had no economics background.
Yes the point is the concept of things being necessary but not sufficient conditions. Getting a keeper and a defender for £120m doesn’t mean you win anything. If it did all teams would do it. But it worked for Pool this one season, it’s been 15 years since it did last. And again, our manager in the past 7-8 years did brilliantly with what he had, few could’ve or would’ve done better I imagine. The question is rather why he only had what he had (I mean, up until that one shite window with Mustafi and Xhaka that didn’t work out).
I agree we weren’t that badly outspent, but what I keep getting back at is that you’re talking about single data points in recent times for these clubs that just popped in and make it sound as if it is a great trend we should get on because it is sure to work lol
I mean I agree with your core idea, money is not the decider between us, scum and pool, and execution is key, that much we can agree on.
that they’ve been doing things right since the 7 year period you chose as a metric leading up to the first point of success they’ve had since (insert what success?-joke about scum), when it’s not the case, but I tried to make sure I agree the spending wasn’t that central, execution was, but it’s not like this has been a strategy for 7 years culminating last week. They’ve been plenty of shit back and forth meanwhile lol
Right but people have argued that some period going back is relevant to where we are today… A4t uses the absurd argument that you should go all the way back to start of EPL, which that analysis shows is stupid even if you think it is the right way to do it.
If you look at 3, 5, 7 - we outspend Pool on all 3, even more on the 5 and 3…
The point is that net spend deficit isn’t the reason for our worsening position relative to those 2 clubs… it is quality of spend and many other factors.
Yeah yeah we know we agree with eachother on that.
But ofc it is more complicated to fit net spend over some time period to success, teams have players that stay for more than 3 or 5 or 7 years for example, but I generally agree and I’m not in the camp where that is as much of an argument towards Pool and scum as it is towards United, Chelsea and City.
But the issue is again with when you say their success (insert what success-joke at scum) - it isn’t exactly reliable and connected to much method and our relatively worsening position is not on the same time frame as your money-one. 3 years ago Wenger finished above both of them in the PL and did better than them in the CL as they obviously weren’t even in it lol
Scum should’ve been out of the CL if Inter could fuck around a bit less with PSV, and we had 3 games in a row and a penalty to get above them in the league, Pool is the better example of relatively better position as they were 8th in the league 4 years ago. (I also hate them less lol)
This is the key point.
Wenger used to pride himself on not wasting money and getting good players for bargain prices.
But it was all a false economy.
He would haggle endlessly for a player he really wanted and then lose out for the sake of a few million and then we would get no one,
He would use the excuse that there was no value in the market or a player not meeting his valuation and, again, we would get no one.
How many times did we hear him say “we will only buy special quality players” and then do the opposite.
If he had bought “special quality” in the first place, rather than doing everything on the cheap, we might have had a world class replacement for RVP, instead of a procession of dross, which probably cost even more, certainly in wages.
How many DM’s did he have that were all not good enough including Elneny, Coquelin and Xhaka, when all those wages could have been paid to a top quality DM.
Because he dithered so much, the cost of buying a genuine world class player more than doubled and his lack of urgency meant that the other clubs bought top players and they held their value.
He then had a panic buy window, paying world class money for average players, and it’s that lack of under investment and pro activeness that has seen us with the worst squad of players I can remember.
It’s bad management, bad investment and a clueless owner that has made this happen.
It’s this kind of bullshit arrogance that I just don’t get. Here we are, 3 seasons in Europa League, struggling to find identity, can’t bring in signings, can’t dump the garbage… and yet our fans have the fucking sack talk shit about Everton and Westham? As Jakey would say, fuck out! We are a club plagued with issues from the top on down. Hell, even the award winning groundskeeper fucked off. So do yourself a favor and have a fucking modicum of humility.
Look I know we are in shed loads of trouble. Ive gone on here to say that we could end up seventh as I see Leicester as a potential threat if we fuck this window up.
However the 2 sides I named are clubs who the media love to bum up as both big threats to the six when the FACT is they are teams who tend to place between a distant 7 to 12 on a regular basis.
Everton 24 years without a trophy and WHU 39 years. Im not fucking fearing that anytime soon.
Well, there’s your first problem the media doesn’t give a fuck about those clubs or ours. They just want to drum up controversy to get clicks. That same media also touts sp*rs as The Invincibles, 07-08 ManU and Pep’s Barcelona all rolled up into one.
Everton and WHU are what they are. Mid table, solid teams who might challenge for top 6 every 10 years or might occasionally get relegated. It doesn’t make them shit teams and it doesn’t mean they are horribly mismanaged.
We have to look at the modern game with a bit of fucking realism. The big money teams are going to snatch up all the best players and the rest of us are going to be fighting over scraps. So I wouldn’t laugh. We’re about 1 more year of Europa League away from the same sort of status.
We are well ahead of them. Last 2 visits in the Europa they didnt make the group stage. Everton last effort they went out at the group stage.
Yeah were crap and in trouble but we finished 16 points ahead of one and 18 the other. So yeah as you said a bit of fucking realism needed.
@Stroller just said how many years they’ve gone without any sort of trophy, one more season of us being in the EL does not somehow mean we have the same status they do. Our clubs are worlds apart in status, particularly West Ham, who are a nothing club next to Arsenal lol.
