That’s it exactly. Liverpool, Chelsea and especially Spurs have been able to parlay less money into so much more through smart, competent transfer dealings. Arsenal’s have been a mess for years. Some seem to want Arsenal to throw good money after bad, but it really doesn’t matter how much they spend if they continue to do it incompetently.
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Ehhh. Have been bashed on this board with the notion that 2008 - 2013 Arsenal were very poor and had no money te spend.
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Yeah one of the greatest lies Arsenal ever spun its fans was that we had to operate under a tight budget after the Emirates move. We had plenty of money to spend and this was evidenced by the hundreds of millions we ended up banking in our reserves.
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Not recently from what I can remember. I think most of us have come to the conclusion that our poverty was always self inflicted and false. We kept cash by choice when few other clubs did. We were taught to treat debt as some evil thing that would be the end of us.
Every time anyone has said we have no money, there’s been at least £100m of cash in Arsenal banks. That’s the opposite of no money, especially with how football accounting is recorded. Unless we signed up to some terrible kind of loan where you need to keep £100m of cash at all times, nobody has ever explained why we won’t spend any of our cash.
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Yep Dick Law said this in the last part of his exclusive interview with goal.
What the fuck is wrong with this club 
Law admits Arsenal did have the capability to spend more to bring in potential targets during that period, but the risk factor involved held them back.
“We had the financial muscle, but the risk reward calculation wasn’t clear,” he said. “Spending a lot of money on a player that didn’t work out would have really put the club in some financial straits.
“Did we miss out on talents? Certainly. I remember sitting in meetings with Steve, Ivan and Arsene and gnashing our teeth over Thibaut Courtois. We knew he was good.
“Eden Hazard as well…
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Thanks for quoting the relevant part, was about to abuse @Calum for being a cunt and not being clearer
Edit - also love the coincidence of your gif choice.
Me currently:
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JakeyBoy? More like LazeyBoy 
It always seemed like we wanted to spend money on sure things, but that’s not really how it works.
I think we made actual attempts at the likes of Hazard and Gotze when it looked like they were definitely the real deal, and we bid for players like Ozil, Reina and Suarez when they looked at their peak, but then our next best efforts that were risky were guys like Chamberlain and Chambers.
We don’t even go for sure things, Kante was the best midfielder in the league and we let Chelsea snap him up.
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I’m loathe to take Wenger at his word, but like a little bitch he whinged about Kante choosing Chelsea money over us. Obviously that’s bullshit, because Chelsea was also the ambitious move, it’s not just a money move, but I’m not sure that was a case of us not going for him. Everything seems to indicate he made a sensible decision and chose someone else over us.
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It was worse than that! We opted for Xhaka over Kante!
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I can’t believe the reason Wenger gave was he wanted big wages when he’s on like £10k more than Xhaka, and then 12 months later we were making £300-400k offers to Sanchez and Ozil 
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loooool so it wasn’t us that backed down to Ozil’s requests, it was him agreeing to our initial offer after having the audacity to ask for significantly more than that outrageously inflated wage we gave him after stalling on that offer for 18 months. I guess that puts the how in demand Ozil’s ever been discussion to bed.
Oh yeh no doubt, it was absolutely the right play for Kante to go there, same as Hazard many moons ago. It’s annoying when I hear quotes like that, where they comment on being too cautious because it would cost the club. The reality is they were just cowards, they cost the club far more by not acting. Look at how much the likes of Courtois, Hazard, Suarez, or Kante go for/went for in today’s market.
Though obviously we’d have let them all run down their contracts and go for next to nothing, because these suits don’t even seem to have the slightest idea how to run a business or football club.
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Seems like we actually owe Ozil an apology. He saved us a fortune there.
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Wenger and Gazidis were fools at the end, werent they?
Just at the end?
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of course we did. We could surely have spent money if Messi said he wanted to come as it is safe investment. The idea that “we have money” doesn’t mean anything. Who exactly has money. There is an owner who decides how much we spend of what we make, that shouldn’t surprise anyone. At our club it is about what we make. Shouldn’t surprise anyone either.