Lol you are using multiples instead of the raw delta - you cheeky bugger… you know full well we undersold both Cesc and RVP, regardless of how little we spent on them…
The difference is Pool sold for insane numbers, especially in case of Coutinho. Coutinho profit alone wipes out what we did for Henry, Cesc, and RVP combined - and then some.
By the way, I agree with you - those were lucky as much as they were good… it isn’t common to make 50 million profit on a player.
But Weng lost his touch of buying the young starlets and turning them into gems… unless you count players like Gnabry (oops) or Ramsey (oops)… also, turning Sanchez somehow into basically a squad player at best on high wages was an absolute diabolical shambles…
and you think they’re groceries in a convenience store without their own opinions
RvP and Wenger said they talked and Wenger said nah we can’t really spend much and RvP said ok but I want to win things so I’ll go somewhere then. Cesc always said he’d go back to Barca eventually and just like Henry and RvP and Ramsey and the other good ones who left you have to consider that there is little to keep them here. Liverpool has made some great business and some crap business, bigger numbers than us. They bought a striker for £50m in Torres when we bought Chamakh. They also bought Andy Carroll for £35m at the same time. Then they bought Benteke for £35m or w/e. And yes maybe we could’ve gotten another few millions for RvP and Cesc I agree but I doubt that was down to Wenger saying naaaah we have enough cash just let them go. Coutinho is an extreme case that shocked the whole footballing world and an absolute mistake by Barca, that’s not a policy again. Selling Suarez I’m sure they would have wished they didn’t as he’s been the best #10 in the world probably in the past 5 years.
I agree he lost his touch on youngsters, but in a way I think rather he had a head start being one of the first ones to be so good at it, then other scouting teams and clubs and managers caught up. Chelsea have been doing it probably better than anyone lately but it is often not talked about, they’ve been buying kids and selling them for a while now and made huge profits.
Absolute bollocks wenger underspent when everyone and their dog even the board was saying to spend but he preferred his cheap projects to show the world he could make world class players instead of buying them!
his transfer fee is still lower than Cutinhos and he is the best wide player in the world, from an economically independent club who don’t have to make shit on a transfer whatsoever, they could literally let him rot with the reserves and not give a hoot. Then you don’t sell for cheap. If you are purely reliant on what you make from sales you’re the sucker at the table bro. We’ve been the sucker at the table for a decade now
You believe that shit…haha fucking hell! You are telling me that the board will sit there build up cash reserves let the club crumble with all that money built up devalue it the very last thing an investor would want…utter tripe!
But we WERE NOT catching up to our rivals… we WERE ahead of them… again over those FOUR years leading into the last 7, we were clearly ahead of Spurs and Pool and pretty competitive with Chelsea and occasionally City, etc.
Plus, LC won the league a couple of years ago… we were 3rd, behind Spurs… were we ahead of City, Utd, Chelsea, Pool? No probably not, but this narrative that we were massively hamstrung starting 7 years ago is massively overplayed.
you can be in front while heading behind. functional derivatives you know The squad was going downhill. Look at SAF’s united in 2013, won the league, squad was crap but he did so well with them. fyi I never argued we were massively hamstrung as I’ve said before, just that we weren’t economically infront either, certainly not to any remarkable degree, we were reasonably even the lot of us (scum+Liverpool) below United, Chelsea and City and that’s where the expectations do not align, fans of those three clubs should expect to take the top 3 spots every year. Liverpool and scum should expect to battle it out on fairly even ground.
On that premise we are not doing that badly over the past 7 years you chose as your metric has us as the following in some internal league between us, scum and liverpool:
We’ve finished first 3 times, Liverpool and Scum twice.
Our average league position in such table has us first tied with scum and liverpool 3rd (Our average regular PL league position is 3.9, Liverpools is 4.9, scum’s the same as ours, 3.9).
So we’re fairly similar. Obviously our best positions came in the first 4 years, they’ve both outdone us good in the last 3 years, so we’re naturally trending towards shite and need to get our act together lol
But this is my point.
It was seasons like this where, with a bit of investment by the board, we could have won the title.
The same a few seasons earlier where we were so desperate for some defensive quality and we bought no one.
This is why all our top players want to leave.
They can’t all be wrong because they have gone to clubs that do actually invest.
The seasons after we moved into the Emirates are the reason we have got into this mess.
With some backing from the board, this wouldn’t have happened.
That is just Fing depressing as fck… I hope I am incredibly wrong about Granit… but that just makes me seriously sick and despondent about going into next year.
A bunch of teams “threw away the chance to win it” though… basically the entire top 6…
Not disagreeing with the criticism of “surgical” upgrades btw - this is definitely something that I have been frustrated by as well… I attribute it to Weng moreso, but it is fair to blame Gaz and board/ownership a bit on that as well. That criticism could be leveled at any of the top 6 though - at least that season.
If you were super critical you could say that Pool had record profits last year and if they had just invested a tiny bit more they would have been able to take over Man City - they were only a couple of points off first…
This only happened because emery wanted to work with him and felt he was better than he was but now we are looking to sell it seem so in a way the renewal might have been with it because he isnt on a huge amount and we can actually get a fee for the fucker!
He’s fucking shit and I want rid of him, but his contract ran down and we lost him for free or a pittance then that wouldn’t suggest we’d learned any lessons from the valuable assets we’ve lost for free.
Or the regime rate him highly. Obviously I fucking hope not haha
The squad was going downhill. Look at SAF’s united in 2013, won the league, squad was crap but he did so well with them. fyi I never argued we were massively hamstrung as I’ve said before, just that we weren’t economically infront either, certainly not to any remarkable degree, we were reasonably even the lot of us (scum+Liverpool) below United, Chelsea and City and that’s where the expectations do not align, fans of those three clubs should expect to take the top 3 spots every year. Liverpool and scum should expect to battle it out on fairly even ground.