I don’t necessarily disagree.
In context of 700m spent and more to come, how do we measure success?
I am glad we are no longer a meme club. At the same time, is that enough?
700m is like table stakes for a big club for that amount of time, its not a lot of money. Chelsea, United, and City have spent far more on transfer fees during that period. Even Spurs have spent more.
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And only one of them has escaped criticism - one which won trophies
Sometimes you need to spend not to win, but just to keep up.
Villa is a good example.
Since Emery took over and started spending, they were posting constant threat to top 4 spots.
If we take a look back and compare the squad of Emery’s squad when handling to Arteta… that was a team that needed huge investment to not just keep up, but to be relevant again.
I remember the days of “net spend” under Wenger.
Rival fans act like 700m was spent over one transfer window or something. What I like to keep in mind is if they could replicate what we have done they would be fine with spending even more money.
Plus to me that 700m spent is in the context of a 20 year period, for most of which the board had a policy of austerity. We’d often get excuses about paying off the stadium as the reason why the Frimpong’s and Yaya Sonogo’s of the world were in the first team.
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Keep in mind that, even we spent 700m in the past few seasons, we are still in good financial status and generating revenue.
Unlike some other clubs in negatives but still spending big.
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Yeah but the criticism is just silly.
Any club with aspirations to compete at the highest level needs to spend at least this much. Its like spending to the salary cap in the NBA or NFL, just something that comes with the territory.
Fine to criticize Arsenal for not winning trophies but stupid to criticize Arsenal for not winning trophies while spending on the lower side of what all big clubs are spending.
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You can’t call spending 700m including spending 105m on a single player- “lower side”.
With 700m, you can buy 14 players worth 50m each. If we include wages, the player budget is quite close to a billion euros.
How can you justify 5 years of trophyless seasons after spending that amount of cash?
It doesn’t matter how much other clubs have spent because more than enough money is spent to create a winning squad and to make that argument irrelevant.
If we spent 50m on Timber/White/Calafiori and others spent 70m on say Fofana/Gvardiol, you are still getting a high calibre player capable of competing with the opponents, despite spending on a lower side.
It’s not a criticism for a single season, it’s 5 back to back trophyless seasons while playing 2 seasons in Europa league.
5 trophyless seasons is still poor for a supposedly big club, no matter how it gets spun. That’s approaching peak ‘I’m happy with what I’ve got’ Wenger era.
That said, recent comments from Arteta and Kronke suggests they’re not happy with those results and they’ll be investing more to change it.
No more excuses next season imho.
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That is most definitely not representative of fan viewpoints during that era.
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Not from fans, I recall Wenger himself stating that before. After summer windows were shut and we brought in dross.
Well it does if those other clubs are the ones you are competing against. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have to have failed for us to have won something?
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Spot on.
Massive stain against Arteta. There needs to be silverware before we extend his contract.
Such an overstatement by using the word “stain”.
By spending that much, we are now even the deficits that stack up the years before, and on the same level of abilities to compete.
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I’m not happy we haven’t won a trophy but in the absence of an absolute cheating machine we’d be sitting on two PL titles. And Arteta has led us to comfortably the two best post Invincibles seasons as Arsenal fans with 22/23 and 23/24. And the best European campaign we’ve had since 05/06.
I want to win things like you but I’m just accepting that the landscape has been difficult and this season should have been our moment and we just got absolutely ravaged by injuries and lack of backing from the clubs higher ups in the transfer market. Arteta was practically begging for business to be done in January.
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https://x.com/HaytersTV/status/1926705831480803613
Fair play you bald prick. Got a squad Chelsea spent nearly 2 billion the last couple years back in the CL. 
Remember the days when Arsenal got accused of over celebrating top 4 because of a dressing room squad photo…
https://x.com/ibzsmo3k/status/1926690880611660267?s=46&t=eJpgg6uHWRsStnASv-OePg
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Double standard as always.
No, actually triple standard.
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The billion pound bottlejobs are celebrating 4th place.
Where are all the media stories about this!?!?
We all know why…
If Arsenal ever run into PSR troubles…
https://x.com/transfersector/status/1930301179671785505?s=46&t=eJpgg6uHWRsStnASv-OePg