Nobody mentioned Carrick yet. Good player, available very cheaply from West Ham. You have to be selective, but there was always talent in England, Wenger just wasn’t necessarily that interested. Which was fine for many years when he could pluck equal/better talents from France for a song.
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I do look back and wish we were interested in those talents moving though, Rooney was the one. What a talent to get in whilst he was still a teenager! He would be with you until he retired and was unbelievable quality.
I only mentioned a few players but there were alot of good kids moving around, Chelsea and United could afford them, we couldnt so shopped abroad.
Feel like those 3 specifically were always going to go to the clubs they did. Rio may have been the one we could’ve gone for but the fee was out of our reach at the time.
There were other ones we missed that could’ve been useful, even the likes of Gary Cahill later on for example, but until 2010 or so our transfers from abroad were pretty damn good anyway.
United were always ahead of us for buying domestic but even then it was what - Antonio Valencia, Michael Carrick and Ashley Young on top of those already mentioned?
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Yeah that’s true, we should have been going for British talent in the early 2000s. By 2006 the talent pool had been tapped and from there own there wasn’t exactly an awful lot of really good in the pool.
Its nice to be doing it now though
Id always prefer players from the league over coming in from abroad, they may not all be British but they come in with a knowledge of the league and the game.
We’re still being linked with more domestically too so I hope there is more. That balance of English passion and foreign talent is what won us the league under Wenger a couple of times.
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Helps that the British/PL tax doesn’t seem to be as prominent these days as foreign talents are costing 100m anyway.
I think the price to value was a huge factor that put wenger off but that balance is coming back. Also we seem a lot more relaxed about spending generally now.
Nothing worse than excuses created for Arsenal not being a mediocre club without Wenger
Doing alright at the moment. Now his signings and influences have been dealt with by Arteta. Remember the words Arteta first used on getting this job.
The club needed a new culure. 
Feel free to twist it, but either way here we are.
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Arteta won’t be able to do jack shit without the money he was able to spend because of Wenger.
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We got one of the best in the league at that time in Sol Campbell
Jeffers and Wright were highly thought of youngsters
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Sol is a good shout
That was huge
Well if you believe Arsenal were a midtable club like you convince yourself of before Wenger, then fine.
The logic though falls down because that wasn’t the case.
We wasnt mediocre without Wenger
Before Wenger we were still massive club winning and doing well
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Gareth Bale was around this time too.
Was Bale highly rated prior to going to Spurs? I’d only heard of him in the USA because of that weird non-winning streak Spurs went on whenever he played.
He was spoken about as a very promising youngster as a left back
Arguably the most shocking transfer in England of all time
Only in terms of that most over used word in the game potential.
Can go the way of his progress or level out at Ross Barkley.
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Show some respect to Europa League winner Ross Barkley.
I actually argued against his potential on here. He’s in the trophy cabinet with Zaha and Potter now.
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