That’s partly due to teams underestimating Leicester and leaving high lines for them to run into much like Man City did this year. All while Leicester had a week’s rest between games and playing out of their skin every game. Liverpool did something similar in 13/14. Chelsea are having that luxury this year.
Yes he did in the end but lets not understate how he delivered us to top club status.
Again on style of football, how do you become fucking boring to watch with Ozil, Sanchez etc.
This is probably the saddest part of Wengers last few years. We have become boring and ordinary to watch as hes lost his way completely.
We went out of europe at the usual stage last year. So how come we could not go full throttle till may once out with a superior squad.
Plenty of other teams win the league competing on two fronts.
The fact is we were not and havent been serious contenders in either for years.
I’m not sure Graham brought us to be ‘a top club’ more than Wilkinson did with Leeds or Daglish with Blackburn. We’re fortunate to have had good management for 3 decades now as Leeds are historically a huge club, overspent banking on CL football, lost it and went bust.
As for unattractive football objectively this group of footballers are some of the least skillful and most limited we’ve had. Not long ago we had Fabregas, RVP, Ade, Arshavin, Hleb, Nasri, Rosicky with Wilshere coming through. Technically only Cazorla, Ozil and Alexis are up there with those and Santi is now usually injured, Alexis plays a very selfish style, overdribbling and losing the ball or passing to the opposition, while Ozil is often scared to shoot. And then Giroud, Walcott, Chamberlain, Perez aren’t nearly on those players level technically. Welbeck and Iwobi maybe have the potential to be so. So no wonder we play less attractive football now.
How can winning 2 titles in 3 seasons and winning a european not be considered making us a top club.
Also without labouring this point that would of persuaded Wenger hugely in accepting the managers job as our status was much higher than it had before Graham.
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It depends on your definition of ‘top team’. Between 69-92 Leeds had as many titles as us with more second place finishes. Everton also won the title twice in 3 years in the 80s and in truth were probably a better side than ours. Forrest won the European Cup (Champion’s League) twice and won the league. Villa won the European Cup. Football was a level playing field back then and smaller teams could win. It’s not like now, with Leicester being the exception but that won’t happen ever again.
We weren’t as good as Liverpool in 88/89 too if we’re honest and benefited from their aging team not being quite as good any more. After '91 we weren’t close to a title race until Wenger took over.
Also Graham abolished our youth team, which set up back.
In truth the reason we went on to do better than Everton/Leeds/Forrest was a combination of investment, fanbase and Wenger. In the 90s United, Liverpool, Newcastle, Blackburn, Leeds, Arsenal were all investing massively but only 2 of those maintained top club status.
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In a way we spend that amount also…just on different things, all of our money went on a stadium not on players. It was the best option but to say we have not spent is clearly wrong, We spent on infrastructure and housing developments and training facilities and staffing etc instead of the team that is what gets a lot of peoples goats because we spent all that money to only fall behind and not only that there are better facilities out there so we were ahead of the curve so to speak but now all the tv money came in we were kind of behind because all the clubs that spent on players have decent squads and have also done the facilities also some people may even say better than us but meanwhile they are winning and getting other things as well, we sacrificed the squad and we are still playing fucking catch up.
FFS people, I have done this analysis exhaustively… you need to use:
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Wages; and
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NET transfer spend
They have spent more than us in some periods, but it is minuscule in the grand scheme… and worse, we have pretty substantially higher wages and financial means overall. Even if one argues they spent a little more than us (on an annual net spend average basis), that simply begs a different question of why - and I’m not talking about overspending our means but rather being as aggressive as possible.
Again, beat to f*ing death this issue - even SwissRamble argues that we aren’t perhaps being aggressive enough on PURE FINANCIAL BASES…
Anyway, Arsene’ is a legend of the club and our greatest ever manager, but he has turned increasingly into an anachronism and the game has passed him by - he doesn’t seem to know when to stick or twist with players or get the deals we need done to push us over the line - we have been close for 3+ years and yet we always fail in the same few ways.
Added to that (making the analysis of comparison far more complex) is the gulf between the rich and the not rich… while Arsenal is slightly behind the dopers now, the teams below us are miles and miles behind us - far more than ever before. it will be interesting to see how the new TV deal shapes this - will it continue to stretch this gulf or actually start to close it a little bit (i.e., diminishing returns of the rich 10-12 clubs to massively overspend and compete with eachother and the next tier being able to lure more international talent to try to find ways to compete).
The most expensive player was 900k, and Graham spent less than almost any other manager.
Nearly all the players we had were from the youth team and were all English.
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When he bought Wright we had already won the League twice.
Also he might have been a big signing but Graham was possibly the tightest manager in the League, and Wright was one of the best signings made by any manager for a player.
I don’t know where you’re getting your information but Graham was one of the lowest spending managers in the League.
[quote=“arsenescoatmaker, post:4970, topic:125”]
We weren’t as good as Liverpool in 88/89 too if we’re honest and benefited from their aging team not being quite as good any more. After '91 we weren’t close to a title race until Wenger took over.
[/quote]We were twelve points clear of them in the second half of the season.
I can’t believe you’re trying to take away from what we did by making an excuse like Liverpool had, “benefited from their aging team not being quite as good any more.”
That’s like saying we are a better team than Chelsea, but the only reason they are top of the PL is because they have better players a better manager and score more goals.
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Over the last decade Liverpool have outspent us and if Spurs haven’t they’ve matched our spend.
Over past 3 years maybe we’ve had a high net spend but a squad isn’t built over 3 years. Before that our net spend was below zero over the space of a decade and the lack of investment means you’ll be weakened even 3 years after of decent spending.
People point to our net spend being high over the last 3 years but because of 10 years of zero net spend we’ve had less player capital to sell. Where as Chelsea could flog KDB, Lukaku, Oscar, Schurle etc after buying up all of Europe’s top talent and reinvest huge amounts.
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That isn’t the price of Ian Wright who was either an English record or close to it.
900k at the time of 88/89 was the same price the best player in the country cost, John Barnes, even if it sounds like peanuts now.
We had a very good youth team that was disbanded by Graham.
I would say these Graham/Wenger comparisons are going beyond the men who actually build this club up (again); Dein and Fiszman. I think it’s not a coincedence Arsenal started winning again when Dein bought himself into the club. It all starting with that 1987 League Cup. He, along with other board members, probably created an environment for Graham and Wenger to excell in.
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Yeah but their net spend in the last 10 isn’t actually that high on an annualized basis… if you were to do full analysis of that with factoring in wages, etc. over the time, we really can’t claim poor wrt them… and we have much, much higher cash balance (even factoring in loan) and cashflow so it still begs that question - they are being more aggressive to try to compete than we are wrt their resources, especially considering they haven’t had the advantage of CL every year to use for attracting talent.
Anyway, the data is out there. All I am saying is that we aren’t that different from any team other than the big 3 spenders and the gulf below us is pretty massive once you get beyond 'Pool.
Quick analysis - their net spend last 10 years is just under 23 million pounds per year. Interestingly, it is about the same number in the last 4 years… so while they had an advantage in transfer fees (for the first 6 years of that period) and a disadvantage in wages over the last 10 years, we have certainly closed any gap on transfers in the last 4 years and still pay more in wages. Looks like our total net spend in transfers in the last 4 years is around 218 - in other words, more than double Liverpools - outspending them by about 127 million on transfers alone in the last 4 years.
Used transfermarket for this analysis and did the math quickly so let me know if I got anything wrong.
Ozil - 42m
Xhaka - 38.25m
Sanchez - 35m
Mustafi - 35m
Perez - 17m
Welbeck - 16m
Chambers - 16m
Debuchy - 12m
Gabriel - 11m
Cech - 10m
Elneny - 5m
That’s about 230m there alone and that’s all off head.
Cech
Debuchy - Chambers - Mustafi - Gabriel
Elneny - Xhaka
Welbeck - Ozil - Perez
Sanchez
That’s the team Wenger has purchased since 2013. Couple the transfer spending with the fact we didn’t sign a single outfield player in the summer of 2015, have one of the highest wage bills in Europe and I think that should eliminate any notion about the board not backing Wenger. It’s clear as day he just isn’t making the right signings, and setting his team up in the right way.
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The player that cost 900k was Alan Smith and he was the most expensive player in the squad, and it was no where near the most expensive player.
The whole squad only cost just over 2m and it was one of the cheapest in the league.
Whatever you think about Graham as a manager, he didn’t spend much money, and he was successful.
You say we had a very good youth team that was disbanded by Graham.
Where are you getting this information, because it simply isn’t true?
It was his youth team, and bringing through players that cost very little, that won us the League title twice, as well as several other trophies.
You can’t just make up stuff and use it in an argument when it’s not true.
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He might not have spent like United or Liverpool but Graham did spend even if it wasn’t in the millions bracket before he won the title. But Smith for instance cost as much as Alderidge around the same time. During the 90s when he seriously started spending he got some very right and some big money disasters, while wrongly forcing decent players out to cover the costs. Prudently he built from the back though.
The 89 league win was epic for us, the best end to a league campaign ever and a great moment I’ll always remember as a child. But objectively at their best they were the better team that year, the year before and the year after. It’s kind of like Atletico edging out the league in La Liga now. Liverpool’s football back then was on another level though. with all due respect to our lads.
We were a better unit after that Liverpool team got old and fell off their perch when Hansen retired and their defense fell apart (1991). Everyone around that time remembers it the same way. Liverpool were easily THE team of the 80s, we were the plucky underdogs. They failed to replace ageing players though.
It boils down to investment in the squad. Prior to '14 Liverpool constantly doubled our transfer record investing in striker after striker. They hit gold with a few Torres/Suarez and sold both for huge amounts again hitting gold. Spurs also hit gold when Bale left. Meanwhile we got robbed when Fabregas/RVP left.
As for net spend, well it’s no wonder after spending 100s of millions on strikers, compared to our Chamakh Bosman deal that they managed to flog Suarez for a hell of allot more than Chamakh. Our current high net spend is subsidising prior underinvestment.
I can’t overemphasise how poor the investment level was from '05-'13 and how it created a massive rebuilding problem in an overinflated market.
As for wage bill, Liverpool at times have had a higher wage bill than us IIRC. And a CL club needs more decent players who are paid decent wages than a none CL club because of the greater fixture list.