When can we next realistically challenge for the league title?

To be honest you make him sound like a volunteer when you word it like that, not one of the most highly paid managers in Europe.

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I miss the days when I had this kind of optimism about Arsenal.

I really do.

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As I said, the players then were earning about Ā£25000 a season and if they werenā€™t seen to be giving everything, the other players, the manager and the supporters would let them know.
Wenger was earning 8m a season and while dragging us down and wouldnā€™t change.
But I have never criticised him as a person, or what he did for the club when he first came here.

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We are now beginning to feel the full extent of wengers Arsenal . The legacy he left was one of an overrated squad which fails time and time again .
Unai has his work cut out , heā€™s shown more ooomph on the touchline since August than Wenger done in -a dozen seasons.

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Personally Iā€™d be happy if Emery turns us into a top 4 side again during his reign before he hands it off. I realistically donā€™t see Arsenal winning a title under this owner while Stan is alive. Rumors of 50 million been touted for our transfer kitty during the summer (take it with a pinch of salt of course). I could see things getting worse then better, and itā€™s not Emeryā€™s fault but the people running it, they want a Leicester type title winning squad. I canā€™t see it ever happening again.

Wenger and Gazdis have left this club in a mess. Expecting Emery to work a miracle to get this sorted in 3 years is a joke. With the likes of City, Utd, Chelsea and Liverpool will go big again, Spurs can sell off one of their big assets to bring in funds. Arsenal penny pinch and hope we find a gem will see us not even challenge for top 6 no matter top 4.

A big portion is definitely the lack of success but the money distribution has spoiled it for me.
Back in 2006-12, We were also not winning and there were heartbreaks but I was still looking forward to football but now the desire has gone.

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Money has ruined the beauty of the game that goes without saying. You know when I grew up in the 90s yeah football was a rich sport but it was never this bad. A Ā£20m player was considered a huge investment back when I was growing up. European football was so dense in terms of teams youā€™d consider tough. I remember Italy having Juve, Parma, Fiorentina, Milan, Sampdoria, Inter, Roma, Lazio as being the teams everybody had to watch out for in Europe. Spain had Valencia, Madrid teams, Barcelona, Villarreal, Real Betis, Deportivo (what a team they were circa 2000) and even Germany had a dense outlay of teams.

Now you draw an Italian team and itā€™s almost a walkover if it isnā€™t Juventus and in Spain, youā€™ve got the mega rich two and Atleti. You know sometimes you look back at the 90s and you see this:

Milan, Benfica, Red Star, Marseille, Barcelona, Sampdoria, Ajax, Juventus, Borussia Dortmund, Real Madrid, Valencia

The above teams were all European Cup (and subsequently CL upon its creation) finalists in the decade. Could you imagine a team like Red Star or Marseille making the CL final now? Those teams donā€™t even make it out of the group stages these days.

The only way to be a truly competitive and elite team these days is to spend hundreds sums beyond our wildest dreams.

I love football and that will never change but thereā€™s a sense of serious enjoyment thatā€™s missing these days. I donā€™t follow other major European leagues anywhere close to the extent that I used to because it almost seems a pointless exercise.

And all FFP has done is create an ever wider gulf because the major teams like Milan and Inter have rich owners but canā€™t spend a lot of money whilst teams like City and PSG have just circumvented rules because of the sheer arrogance of the Middle Eastern owners (and the sheer sums of money they undoubtedly invest into lining peopleā€™s pockets).

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Good article along the lines of @Electrifying post above

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Great post man. Watching teams routinely rack up 95+ point seasons is pointless. The richer the game gets more joyless it becomes. Its why i will take positives wherever i can with Arsenal because as time goes on they will become less and less.

Having my local team to go support (first home game of the season this Friday!!) is great though. We can never be a team like Bayern etc so i get to watch us unworried about tying to achieve anything remotely resembling that.

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This isnā€™t just about the money. Or actually it is about the money. All this is (also) a consequence of UEFA protecting the big Leagues (i.e. their cash cows) and the Bosman-ruling.

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I think this was probably the most stupid thing Iā€™ve posted on this forum @SRCJJ

To be fair Aussie, youā€™re not wrong :laughing:

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Hahaha I think 20/21 even at earliest is looking rather optimistic, weā€™d have to close about about 20 points over the next 2 seasons.

With a strong transfer strategy itā€™s very feasible. Liverpool have made up nearly 40 points in 3-4 seasons under Klopp.

Under Klopp being the key component. I have no faith in our board appointing an elite manger or our transfer policy being is savvy as Liverpoolā€™s has in recent times.

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Klopp hasnā€™t won a trophy in 7 or 8 years now and seems to be a perennial runner up so Iā€™m not really sure he belongs in any elite manager bracket just because heā€™s amassed a high points total this season.

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Yeah well thatā€™s up for debate, but if someone said in October 2015 Liverpool would have had a CL final, CL SF & amassed a 30-7-1, 97 point season with a GD + 65 by 2019 not many would have believed it.

Put it this way, if in the next 3 seasons Emery has us make a CL Final, SF and 90 + point season Iā€™d definitely change my tune about him.

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We will retuen to be competitive when our board change modus operandi. Liverpool became an UCL & PL contender signing top class players in key roles.

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I think Klopp can be described as an elite manager because although he might not have won a trophy for a few seasons he has taken, either Dortmund or Liverpool further than any other manager could have.

He might be runner up, but look who heā€™s runner up to.
Bayern Munich, by far the best and richest club in the Bundesliga and Man City, arguably the best team ever seen in the PL.

If we could have any manager in Europe to take over from Emery, I canā€™t think of anyone else that would be above him on the list of replacements.
Who could do a better job for us?

What he has achieved and the way he has done it, with what he had to work with, puts him in a very small group of elite managers.

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Klopp is an elite manager.
He lost CL finals to Bayern & Real Madrid, not Wigan.

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