• ! ! ! IMPORTANT MESSAGE ! ! !

    Discussions about police investigations

    In light of recent developments about a player from Premier League being arrested and until there is an official announcement, ALL users should refrain from discussing or speculating about situations around personal off-pitch matters related to any Arsenal player. This is to protect you and the forum.

    Users who disregard this reminder will be issued warnings and their posts will get deleted from public.

Hypothetical Of The Week: What if we hadn't left Highbury?

Jury

A-M's drunk uncle
Idea for next week @Aevi what would have happened if we signed Ronaldo, Yaya Toure and Messi in 2003?


Jesus ****ing christ... :facepalm:

We should have done better post Highbury, and had the chances to. We had to move, as crushing as it was. whenever I'm passing through I always make sure I drive down Avenell Road and poke my head in the housing development to look at the North Stand apartments, and remember goals flying in from different parts of the... communal garden.
 

Gegen Pressing

Well-Known Member
Simple:
kroenke would never have come anywhere near us. We got his attention with all real estate around highbury re-developmnent and a big shiny Emirates stadium.
Everything changed after that, downhill
 

EmeryCouldnt

Established Member
I didn’t see anybody mention that the money used to build the stadium could have been used to buy players at a time just before the market skyrocketed. If we would have invested in players and continued to win things, there’s no doubt we would have earned more money. Emirates is a lot of overhead.
 

Oxeki

Match Day Thread Merchant
Trusted ⭐

Country: Nigeria

Player:Saliba
Moving from Highbury didn't hurt us. Not spending some of our cash reserved did. Wenger and the board was banking on the fact that transfer fees and wages was going to decrease. They didn't anticipate that some oil states were going to be pouring massive amount of cash into football.

Even spending at least 100m would've been enough to give us three world class players. That should've won us at least two league titles.

Besides, we had the chances to sign some world class talents for relatively cheap prices but we declined.

Moving from Highbury was the right decision.
 

Rex Stone

Long live the fighters
Trusted ⭐

Country: Wales
Jesus ****ing christ... :facepalm:

We should have done better post Highbury, and had the chances to. We had to move, as crushing as it was. whenever I'm passing through I always make sure I drive down Avenell Road and poke my head in the housing development to look at the North Stand apartments, and remember goals flying in from different parts of the... communal garden.

2006/07 would have arguably been the greatest team of all time.

Ronaldo and Messi in their early primes either side of Henry in front of Cesc, Yaya and a just about functioning Gilberto.
 

Notorious Big

Drunka In Friend Zone
We lost many big players that summer as well.Pires,Bergkamp,Cole and Campbell left club while Henry,Lehmann and Gilberto were in decline.

Team at start of Emirates era was definitely behind Chelsea and Man Utd in terms of quality and top 4 was about right in those times.
 

Trilly

Hates A-M, Saka, Arteta and You
Trusted ⭐

Country: England
I used to assume that staying at Jigbury meant not having to sell players but really and truly the Invincibles were getting to the age where we couldn't have squeezed that much out of them anyway.

We would have remained competitive and had a nice pull for players but there are never guarantees that you can sign the next Henry, Vierta etc anyway. Roman/Abu Dhabi would have still come into the league and blown us out of the water financially regardless.

Shouldn't have hoarded those cash reserves though. Ffs.
 

tap-in

Nothing Wrong With Me
For the long term we had to move. Highbury was just too small for the modern game ie the money and media attention associated to it. If you know you can fill a 60k seater stadium why continue with 40k. The Emirates is an amazing stadium, we should all be proud of it.

On the footballing side, we would have stayed at or near the top for a few years longer but would have probably dropped away as the money/business side grew elsewhere ie City, Utd, Pool. With limited gate revenue we wouldn't have been able to compete.
 

GeorgiaGunner

#FreeClaude
Chelsea and City takeovers changed the league’s complexion and dropped us (permanently) 2 pegs in the table. Totally outside of the new stadium, inevitable knock-on effects were: i) trophies much fewer and far between, ii) Europe no longer guaranteed, iii) heightened recruitment issues vs. domestic competition.
 

Maybe

You're wrong, no?
The move to the Emirates wasn't a problem at all, we've had bigger revenue which covered for the costs of the loan.
What did hurt us, was the bad long term commercial deals that we've had to take at the time, and the need to stash a lot of the cash.
Instead of making massive commercial profits on Henry, Vieira, and our invincibles reputation, we've had to sell top players and couldn't reinvest in their equal replacements.
I think we negotiated the loan at the wrong time, just by doing it a couple of years later would change a lot for us. My guess is we would never sign such a bad deal with the banks if we did it later, commercial/tv revenue exploded, something that would surely put us in a better position to build a stadium at more acceptable conditions.

Wenger was probably the only manager at the time who could pull something like that through. Definitely a masterpiece from a management perspective that probably won't be repeated again in my lifetime, at least in football. To work under such financial constraints, challenging top teams in Europe, and playing some fantastic football, it's definitely not a job for everyone.
It makes me laugh when I see a fraud like Pep, moaning after spending 200m on defenders, and people still consider him a better manager than Wenger :D
 

Trofton

Active Member
Moving from Highbury didn't hurt us. Not spending some of our cash reserved did. Wenger and the board was banking on the fact that transfer fees and wages was going to decrease. They didn't anticipate that some oil states were going to be pouring massive amount of cash into football.

Even spending at least 100m would've been enough to give us three world class players. That should've won us at least two league titles.

Besides, we had the chances to sign some world class talents for relatively cheap prices but we declined.

Moving from Highbury was the right decision.
Agree with this 100%
 

albakos

Arséne Wenger: "I will miss you"
Administrator

Country: Kosova

Player:Saka
The move to the Emirates wasn't a problem at all, we've had bigger revenue which covered for the costs of the loan.
What did hurt us, was the bad long term commercial deals that we've had to take at the time, and the need to stash a lot of the cash.
Instead of making massive commercial profits on Henry, Vieira, and our invincibles reputation, we've had to sell top players and couldn't reinvest in their equal replacements.
I think we negotiated the loan at the wrong time, just by doing it a couple of years later would change a lot for us. My guess is we would never sign such a bad deal with the banks if we did it later, commercial/tv revenue exploded, something that would surely put us in a better position to build a stadium at more acceptable conditions.

Wenger was probably the only manager at the time who could pull something like that through. Definitely a masterpiece from a management perspective that probably won't be repeated again in my lifetime, at least in football. To work under such financial constraints, challenging top teams in Europe, and playing some fantastic football, it's definitely not a job for everyone.

It makes me laugh when I see a fraud like Pep, moaning after spending 200m on defenders, and people still consider him a better manager than Wenger :D

Top post, fully agree with it.
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
The move to the Emirates wasn't a problem at all, we've had bigger revenue which covered for the costs of the loan.
What did hurt us, was the bad long term commercial deals that we've had to take at the time, and the need to stash a lot of the cash.
Instead of making massive commercial profits on Henry, Vieira, and our invincibles reputation, we've had to sell top players and couldn't reinvest in their equal replacements.
I think we negotiated the loan at the wrong time, just by doing it a couple of years later would change a lot for us. My guess is we would never sign such a bad deal with the banks if we did it later, commercial/tv revenue exploded, something that would surely put us in a better position to build a stadium at more acceptable conditions.

Wenger was probably the only manager at the time who could pull something like that through. Definitely a masterpiece from a management perspective that probably won't be repeated again in my lifetime, at least in football. To work under such financial constraints, challenging top teams in Europe, and playing some fantastic football, it's definitely not a job for everyone.
It makes me laugh when I see a fraud like Pep, moaning after spending 200m on defenders, and people still consider him a better manager than Wenger :D
Superb post. The move was inevitable, Highbury was too small. But nobody anticipated that oil money would arrive and that clubs would get £1bn injection straight into player purchases. United borrowed to the hilt to match them but Arsenal fell way behind.

Any other manager and we would have been bottom half of the table matching our spend between 2004 and 2013. Wenger remained loyal and took the hit from fans who thought we should be Barcelona. By 2014 the Stoke train station incident showed what idiots football fans are. No idea about the role money plays in football.

Ferguson spent 11 times what Wenger spent over their their rivalry period, Chelsea 10 times between 2004 and 2014. Wenger should have left.He took the heat though and we enjoyed champions league football for 20 years straight. Even today many fans are still ungrateful and got sucked into that nonsense about Wenger being past it. His mind was as sharp as ever until the fans made it impossible for him to operate. The players were a nervous wreck, 2016-2018. Gary Neville calling them cowards on TV, it was all painful to watch.
 
Last edited:

Manberg

Predator
@Makingtrax If squad cost is so important how do you explain Leicester winning it in 2016?
I’m pretty sure our squad cost over the last decade is higher than Liverpool, yet we’ve been finishing outside the top 4 while they’ve been competing. Our squad cost has always been higher than Sp**s so how have we let them overtake us in league positions?
 

Makingtrax

Worships in the house of Wenger 🙏
Trusted ⭐

Country: England

Player:Saliba
@Makingtrax If squad cost is so important how do you explain Leicester winning it in 2016?
I’m pretty sure our squad cost over the last decade is higher than Liverpool, yet we’ve been finishing outside the top 4 while they’ve been competing. Our squad cost has always been higher than Sp**s so how have we let them overtake us in league positions?
Were you never taught about odds in school mate. Leicester have won the league once in 140 years. Man City in just 10 short years since their injection of capital have won it 4 times and come 2nd three times.

Our squad cost is not higher than Liverpool and has only been higher than Sp**s in the last few years, before that well below. And they've won nothing.

What is there about posters on here that keeps them wanting to deny our spending position in the league or that money increases your odds of finishing higher in the league.:rolleyes:

The CIES squad cost figures should be out at the end of October, lets see how far behind Liverpool we are again.
 

Manberg

Predator
Were you never taught about odds in school mate. Leicester have won the league once in 140 years. Man City in just 10 short years since their injection of capital have won it 4 times and come 2nd three times.

Our squad cost is not higher than Liverpool and has only been higher than Sp**s in the last few years, before that well below. And they've won nothing.

What is there about posters on here that keeps them wanting to deny our spending position in the league or that money increases your odds of finishing higher in the league.:rolleyes:

The CIES squad cost figures should be out at the end of October, lets see how far behind Liverpool we are again.


Show me accurate figures comparing our squad cost over the last 8 years (from 2012 to 2020) with Liverpool’s and Sp**s, and if they prove you to be right then I will agree with you.
Liverpool’s net spend has to be lower than ours.

What is it about fans who won’t admit that we spent so much money in the last 8 years, but we spent it poorly?
 
Top Bottom