Areas still lacking you are the king of understatement my friend we got two brittle fullbacks and one stud DM who is always hurt as well. We are one Dodgy Partey knee from Xhaka anchoring our defensive midfield, bottom half teams were passing through that midfield like nothing remember 3 straight losses to bottom half teams at the end of the year?
Yes that what I'm pointing out the midfield apart from TP5 and Xhaka lack quality and they getting older too. Our wings apart from saka lack guy who gives you 20 G/A Martinelli and ESR are too young and inconsistent in final 3rd. Also RB it's major weakness because Tomi can't stay fit Cedric is championship level.
If Arteta is spending midtable budget and finishing top 4, I wouldn't want him out. Only an idiot would want him out if he's overachieving.
We are good enough for Top 4. Whether we get it remains to be seen, but we have a strong chance. We are not mid-table trash, far from it. The only trash is what’s contained within your post.
Did you watch us drop 3 matches to bottom half sides when Sp**s was trying to choke it to us? We are one dodgy Partey knee getting done from having the worst defensive midfield of any top ten team. Our midfield was garbage when Partey went down and Viera and Ødegaard can’t play box to box midfielder, I think I tackle better than Ødegaard. We are Europa league at best, Conte and his Italian transfer guru can’t remember the guys name is running circles around us and everybody else frankly this window.
I will bite..View attachment 8116
Clearly you are unaware of the financial restrictions that we were operating under post Emirates, we had one of the lower budgets in the division and had to sell to survive, you can see here that we were spending a healthy albeit inferior amount compared to our rivals before the loans kicked in.
Yeah? Operating on a nothing budget Wengers priority was to maintain Top 4 and keep Arsenal as a elite club until the loans were paid off and we could somewhat compete financially again, the moment the loans were paid off we won 3 FA cups in 4
The bulk of those players were bought when we were operating on a very low budget, to consistently get top 4 with them year in year out is something to be praised not condemned
Baseless statement with zero evidence, something you claim that I do
Leaving out a 79 pointer in 2013/14 and including the 63 point outlier with half empty stadiums and a attempted squad rebuild, absolutely atrocious that, 3rd then 2nd then 5th with multiple FA cups and CL knockouts every season, all with mass protests going on, you've convinced me, thank god we rid of the old goat, we've improved so much since.. hang on, what's this back to back 8th stuff and not being considered good enough to play against Welsh farmers in Europe?
Doubt
These are not excuses just facts, take a look at Chelseas/Citys/Utds spend in the above graph and compare it to ours, takes a exceptional manager to compete with them never mind overcome them when they are spending exponentially more
The board gave him a budget and he followed it. Arteta has been given the most to spend in Europe, something Wenger never came close to getting.
Well yeah, mass sabotage protests with planes flying and abuse being screamed at the manager/players all game have a negative effect. Not a coincidence our playstyle became safety first and we dropped out of CL for the first time in decades the moment the "discontent" began
Nice dodge
On the road to seis
That is why I was a AKB until 2015.. I bought into the “We are paying for the stadium. We have to sell before we buy. We want to be a self sufficient club. We have to adhere to the FFP regulations. The sugar daddy clubs are buying trophies. We will become very competitive once the stadium is paid off etc” talk. I accepted that narrative back then, hence why I tried to give wenger as much time and leeway as possible while embarking on his ‘“YOUTH PROJECT”. I believed in him and saw a proper plan and progress in that team.
Yes. But we’ve improved. To say we’re mid-table trash is ridiculous. So there’s absolutely no chance we get top 4 then? Chelsea are dusted, literally can’t sort their defence out. United are a mess. Ok, Sp**s have made decent signings, but nothing more than decent imo. But OK, we have no chance at all and we’ll finish mid-table.
Income and expenditure from 2004 to 2012
They could not attract them because they were not a CL club every season with elite training facilities/elite ground with a elite manager, agreed. I dispute afford, presuming we are talking about Stoke after they became a established PL side. Adebayor 3M, Theo 5M, Eduardo 7M, Cesc free, Ramsey 4.8M, Sagna 7M etc. If anything that list only furthers my point, the bulk of our side post loan debt was signed for cheap and again, funded by selling others.
I thought it was pretty clear by budget we were talking about transfer budget, but ok, yeah, obviously as a CL team we needed to pay CL wages, I don't dispute that. If Stoke had appointed a elite manager whom rose them up to playing in the CL every season they would have gradually transformed to a similar wage structure as ours, taking funds away from the transfer budget if necessary. As they were only ever relegation scrappers they only ever paid relegation scrapper wages. Not sure how this is relevant to what we we're discussing which was clearly transfer budgets.
I only pointed out we didn't because you claimed it was a "excuse" by the Wenger lot that we could not compete with them during that period due to their vastly superior financial resources, never claimed anyone said we had the same funds as the Chelsea/Citys
If you are wonderng why i'm not going to reply to the bulk of your post it's because it is all just nasty stuff like this, unsubstantiated guff bringing up all the old DT Wenger tropes like he is arrogant and stubborn and refuses to listen and has a weak mentality and he gets paid this amount what a disgrace and blah blah, all personal character opinions about a man you don't know with zero supporting evidence. There is nothing to debate here since i'm not going to make weird claims that I know what Wengers personality is, I just go off undisputed facts like league performances/spend etc.
Eh? He is yet to match Emerys only full season and has dragged us out of Europe for the first time in multiple decades, record poor performances in the league all whilst spending the most in Europe. If Wenger/Emery had the luxury of Artetas spend I'd be expecting us to push for the league not go on about 5th being a success whilst not having any European commitments
We've been through this repeatedly, I consider going from 4th to 3rd to 2nd whilst starting to win trophies again with the 3 FA cups in 4 years a improvement, your claim is that because we were still in what you call the "stagnation" of the 70-80 points zone there was no improvement. I don't really know how to respond to that tbh, all i'll say is that I go off trophies won and league position to measure success, if Arteta finishes 4th then 3rd then 2nd all whilst winning multiple FA cups i'm absolutely going to consider that a gradual season by season improvement and will argue with anyone who say's otherwise
I think this is the crux of the issue really, either a genuine inability to understand or a desire to not want to understand that a elite manager who goes from having a healthy transfer budget, albeit inferior to his direct rivals, which allows him to compete for leagues, to one of the lower budgets in the division yet consistently massively outperforms compared to his spend and gets Champions league season season out is not declining and stagnating, he simply is being forced to operate on a far lower budget.
We are a predictable Partey injury from having a defensive mid field that struggles to be even mid table trash. We got two more injury prone but hood fullbacks. We were too thin to compete in one competition and get 4th. We needed 5-6 quality signings and gotten 2 or 3 ready to play signings of quality. Doesn’t take a genius this isn’t enough reinforcement for a squad too thin to get 4th playing 40 matches, will struggle to play 55. We need massive reinforcements and got a couple of ready for prime time players one of whom we already had. You are delusional mate if you think this team is a top 4 side
I lost a ton of respect when after 280 million transfers he claimed this was the best team he was allowed to buy. As if somehow the club hadn’t paid out enough; what does he want sell Kroenke’s paintings and have a go with Stan’s billionaire heiress wife? 400 million in what is enough money for Arteta to actually improve on our league finish?"If the market allows us". Textbook Tets, when all else fails, blame an intangible factor to deflect from your dithering and cryptic promises to reinforce the midfield in light of circumstances beyond the club's control.
This man's assured to be successful in a future political career that requires constant shifting of goalposts
Not saying you’re completely wrong. Yeah we need reinforcements, but outside out of City and Liverpool, we all do. Point I’m trying to make is, I think our issues aren’t as bad as the other teams trying to get 4th. I’m happier with our issues rather than Chelsea or United. Importantly, at the very least we have a strategy and a style of play we’re focussing on. Not convinced they do. In summary, we’re miles off top 2, but given the teams around us going for top 4, there’s an opportunity. Your statement was we’re mid-table. We’re not.
Objectively, Arteta should have been fired at least twice.
in your opinion, objectively, Arteta should have been fired at least twice
Even though your basic agenda is anti-Arteta, can’t fault the logic here. The starting 11 is a top 4 contender, but history has shown we need to be 16 deep with real talent given injuries and schedule. We are not there yet. We will find this out if we don’t sign a couple more players and then there is this built in excuse as to why we didn’t do what we should have done. The opportunity is now.
