Özil’s 350k contract, that seemed very unlike Wenger I must admit.
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So?
We had one of the highest wage bills in world football because our manager was a believer in playing mediocre players high wages. Stop rewriting history now.
Wenger could have easily stopped paying shit players £60k a week and given more money to established talent and still kept the wage budget around where it was.
We didn’t reward players for their quality and performance we rewarded them for the wrong reasons and that was a failure on Wengers part.
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Again Wenger is not the CFO
The model wasn’t dropped as you said. Özil was on 180k (the figure is probably lower tbh) a week and functioned as an exception.
You think Wenger is the man with full control over transfers & wages, and would go on to say this?
“Samir’s situation is clear for me,” Wenger said. “He stays. We are in a [financial] position where we can say ‘No’ and we will, in the case of Samir.” Wenger said that it was better to keep Nasri for another season and risk losing him for nothing than to sell him to United or City before the closure of the transfer window, even if it represented a £20m gamble.
“You are the same people who reproach me for not spending money and now you reproach me for wanting to spend it,” he added, with a smile. “It is in the interests of the club. Fábregas is in no-man’s land … Imagine the worst situation, that we lose Fábregas and Nasri; you cannot convince people that you are ambitious after that.”
The investment in the Emirates was supposed to provide Arsenal with the financial muscle to compete with Chelsea and Manchester United in the transfer market. According to the recently departed director Keith Edelman it has. He said there was £70m available to Wenger. If there is, it sits in the bank, gathering interest. Another transfer window is about to close and Wenger, as usual, looks like roughly breaking even.
Last week he said he could spend £30m on a player if he wanted to, but he does not need to. Results this season will demonstrate whether that is the case or not, but the reality is Wenger does not want to. This visionary is a stubborn one. The board would clearly give Wenger whatever he asks for, even if it stretched the finances, but the economics graduate will only ask for £30m in extremis.
Wenger was in charge of what the club spent and how they chose to pay the squad. He had a philosophy with regards to wages and how important it was for squad harmony that players aren’t paid excessively different amounts. These were his ideas and his beliefs. He didn’t believe in spending excessive amounts of money nor did he believe in breaking his wage structure unless in exceptional circumstances.
Wenger was a manager of the old school ilk not a head coach. He didn’t have a director of football working above him making transfers and handling contracts. Wenger was the alpha and omega at Arsenal. He had the final say on everything footballing related and when Dein departed, he effectively ran the show.
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What about Sanchez at 130k per week a year later?
Yet he never adopted this model prior Emirates and post Ozil season. I wonder why.
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That’s on Wenger though. He couldn’t do defence as the years went on. Liverpool had nothing really special in 05 or 07 out performing much better quite simply on the manager.
Again today’s argument starts on heavy losses and it’s simply down to lack of tactics.
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This is not an astronomical departure as you’ve insinuated. I think I’ve got the Özil figure wrong, but I’m on my phone so it’s difficult to check. Some random website had it on 140k.
Two high profile players on a similar wage per week. There were still financial disparities between the rest ‘but the gap isn’t as big as elsewhere.’
“We have something that is defendable in front of every single player.” The main base of the team was getting between 60k-100k. That never changed.
You are talking about a time when crossing 100k barrier was a big deal for Arsenal. Fabregas is the only player who touched 110k in 2010.
Persie was earning 70k in 2012.
Paying Ozil 140k is paying twice what Persie used to earn till his final season.
Wenger would never do that, if I have to believe this philosophy of his.
Fucking bollocks is what this is. We were one of England’s greatest clubs before Wenger and had won two league titles and various other cups within the seven or so years before Wenger became our manager. Including a European trophy too, even if it wasn’t the big one.
I don’t even say that to denigrate Wenger, he pulled a MAGA when turned up and added to our club’s greatness with lovely football and countless trophies.
But the idea that mid table is all we ever were before him or our natural level after him, is demonstrably utter bollocks. This has been demonstrated countless times yet you still come out with this bullshit.
Keep your arguments honest if you want to defend Wenger and his record in his later years.
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He rebuilt the defense just fine when we were investing in the squad when he landed Campbell and Toure. It was only when we went a decade of zero investment in the squad saw the squad deteriate so much. We’re still paying for that lack of investment to this day.
The supposed lack of ‘tactics’ is been shown up now. The tactic was generally to impose our creative playing style on other teams and produce as many chances as possible. Up until Fabregas left we were doing that regularly with most teams. It made the team massively over perform compared to it’s collective parts. Teams had to try and beat us on the counter most of the time. I’d rather see that than the absolute dross we’re looking at since he left.
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And I have proved to you guys time and time again.
10th, 12th, 7th etc.
Arsenal were lucky the league didn’t have clubs (apart from Liverpool & United) who were consistent, else it would have been perpetual mediocrity for Arsenal just like it is now for Newcastle, Aston Villa, Everton etc.
Only after Wenger, Arsenal got the consistency of United & Liverpool.
An occasional success papers over the crack over the mediocrity of this club. If not for Wenger, Arsenal would have been same as Aston Villa, Everton, Newcastle or worse.
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Impossible for him
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Graham had fallen off the cliff edge after 1991 in terms of the league. We were 10th, 4th, 12th, 5th in the PL seasons before Wenger joined. The league table doesn’t lie after 38-42 games. I don’t think we’re only a mid table side, but in the last 4 years we’ve replicated Graham’s Premier League experience. Including Wenger’s last 2 seasons we finished 5th, 6th, 5th, 8th and we’ll do well to be above 8th this season, while 10th or 12th is possible.
Everton won 2 league titles in the 80s too, the FA Cup and won the Cup Winners Cup. They got to 2 other FA Cup finals too. They would of been favourites for the 85/86 European Cup. Yet they haven’t won anything in 17 years
Right now players are coming here for the payday for the Arsenal brand but no one considers us a top club because of a decade of under investment.
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Yea that was an obvious message to the board. They’ll ignore it though. Just like the director who came out and said ‘Arsene wouldn’t complain even if we gave him the most minimal or no transfer funds’ or words to that effect. The director said it but they all just reject it because they somehow know better
In the eight seasons before Wenger, Graham won six trophies and got to two other finals.
He won two league titles, and FA Cup, League Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup and when Graham took over we were a proper mid table club and he did it on a very small budget.
He built a great Arsenal side which Wenger took over and built on.
As for Graham being lucky that the league only had two big rivals, what about Wenger.
He only had Man U to contend with until Abramovich bought Chelsea
Wenger has been our best manager but it’s simply not true that we were a mid table level club before he came here.
He made plenty of mistakes and lied to supporters about buying the best players with his “we tried,” after almost every transfer window.
Every top player we had left due to hie lies so perhaps they could see the level of complacency he was making, that is still here.
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You’ve proven fuck all, we all know that we had some mid table finishes right before Wenger and that he came in, vastly improved us and got us back to the top table again. We all acknowledge that to be true.
But citing 3 poor, mid table finishes in the nineties is not “proof” that mid table is the clubs “natural position” if not for Wenger, because just a couple years before those mid table finishes we won two league titles against an absolutely incredible and dominant Liverpool team.
Arsenal have always had periods in our history of not winning things, yet we’ve quite consistently maintained a position of being one of the countries most successful ever clubs domestically. So the idea that mid table is our natural level is bollocks, our natural position, if such a thing exists, is being one of the nation’s best clubs.
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