pappilo:

@ duduspace

You get too much brain. You are one of the few Arsenal fans that I know who understands the morden game properly.

What has Reina won Liverpool, What has Given won City?

Soon you would ask What has Cesc won Arsenal, What has CRonaldo won Real, What has Ronaldo Lima won for Inter, What has wenGAY won for Arse-anal, What has Emirate won for GAYYners etc

Debo haba you are better with your points than this. What lloris reports the same one that have had wenger increasing £2m to last minute £4m only for sparky to come out next day to say it was bullshit. Debo when wenger is desperate to get a player he unleashes ivan on their a$$es, he gets them. . .aka asharvin when we desperately needed creativity.
£2m that never went above £2m, how does that spell desperation. Wenger did want a keeper don't get me wrong, but desperate for the aussie. . . .meeeh. That was me, you, dudu, arseblog, goonerholic, little dutch, geoff and evry fuckin arsenal commentator. Not wenger.
Bob wilson did say we put in some substantial money bid for reina tho. Liverpool said no and that was that. We wanted a keeper but we were never desperate for the aussie.

duduspace:

It is all fine and dandy to ask me how much Cech cost, when you look at Cech in isolation but can you compare the defensive shield Chelsea's back 4 give to him to what ours have given Almunia? not saying Cech isn't a better keeper but you have to look at the squad as a whole, it is not only Cech who guarantees Chelsea's trophys or else he would have won something for the Czech republic as well by now.
Oversimplification of issues is your error in this instance.

Oh ok - Kindly explain Reina, Van Der Sar and even the Schwarzer we were chasing like Hot goats. 

I don't run the club but I can't imagine I can make a better decision as to what cash reserves the club needs for cash flow purposes than those who run the club on a daily basis. There is a reason why Barca had to go take a loan (with interest) to pay players at a stage. Or you are trying to tell me that the cash reserves was Arsene's decision alone?

Arsene decides what gets spent on the footballing side. We all know if he says he wants a certain player, he'll get him. It is his irrational stubbornness when it comes to spending (which gives him a reliable excuse when the team comes short) that creates problems.

I am not saying go gaga with spending, when there is such a GLARING gap in the side, why not fix it?  Why not go all out like we did with Arshavin? 

Well, its a difference in terminology then, what you call a cock up, I call prudence, an insistence to not pay over the clubs valuation of a player and that is keeping in spirit with the club's insistence on running the club sustainably.

It is being penny wise, pound foolish - the extra 0.5m that we'd have paid for Schwarzer dwarfs the potential benefit from having a trusted, experienced goalie in our defence.

If Arsene was really desperate, he would sign Schwarzer, the fact he didn't sign him shows he wasn't really desperate, isn't that a clear confirmation in itself?  

Don't try to be clever about this - he failed because while he was desperate, he felt he could drag it out to get him cheap. Wenger couldn't sign him because it was taken out of his hands by the injuries at Fulham.

Why not? exactly why not? This is a player who had to forego a contract offer from Bordeaux and was supposedly chased by Liverpool as well. I don't know the details of the negotiations but this player was negotiating from a very strong position.

This is all conjecture - we know from history that the best remunerated player at the Emirates is currently Cesc, so if he isn't getting more than 2m, I don't see how Chamakh would get more.

Even if he did, does your excuse become 'because we paid Chamakh the biggest signing bonus ever we couldn't afford to sign a GK'? Fantastic.

debosky:

Oh ok - Kindly explain Reina, Van Der Sar and even the Schwarzer we were chasing like Hot goats.

There is no need to, I expect a good manager to always look at areas to improve his team, he however has a budget to balance and if you don't know how the money comes or goes how can you claim to know better than the manager who sees it all? 

debosky:

It is being penny wise, pound foolish - the extra 0.5m that we'd have paid for Schwarzer dwarfs the potential benefit from having a trusted, experienced goalie in our defence.

Another statement you can't back up Debo, the financial results we see blow that assertion out of the waters, have you ever asked yourself if perhaps our financial situation would have been wholly or partly reversed with that of Liverpool if we were the ones with a net spend of 300m and they with -7m?

debosky:
Don't try to be clever about this - he failed because while he was desperate, he felt he could drag it out to get him cheap. Wenger couldn't sign him because it was taken out of his hands by the injuries at Fulham.

I'm not being clever only saying it as I see it, even if we accept for some reason that what you state here are facts and not unfounded assumptions, they still don't matter, the issue is not whether he wanted Schwarzer or not, we all know now that he wanted him the question is was he desperate to get him? I say no if he wasn't willing to pay an extra 2m for him, whatever happened to prevent the purchase is not the point, if he was desperate for Schwarzer, he would have payed that extra 2m the minute Fulham demanded it, if you want to know what desperation is then look to CR9's transfer to RM, Milner's transfer to City or Ibra's transfer to Barca last season. All these are desperate transactions and the funny thing is none of them have achieved the desired effects so far.

debosky:

This is all conjecture - we know from history that the best remunerated player at the Emirates is currently Cesc, so if he isn't getting more than 2m, I don't see how Chamakh would get more.

Even if he did, does your excuse become 'because we paid Chamakh the biggest signing bonus ever we couldn't afford to sign a GK'? Fantastic.

Don't get me wrong and go on a flight of fancy assumptions I've not made, the whole point of pointing out a sign-up fee was to point out that there are other expenditure beyond the immediate transfer fees we see in the papers which you and I might never know about, and Chamakh's sign on fee wasn't the only expenditure I mentioned.
The full gist of the matter to avoid oversimplification is, there are decisions to be made and books to be balanced here, as a fan (and now part owner) I leave those decisions to the board and Arsene and I'm happy to see that they have an harmonious relationship which is delivering good financial results and will IMO soon translate to success on the pitch.

To surmise, the policy of Arsenal can be distilled into the following paragraphs:

We want to improve the team, but balancing the 'budget' is more important, (even though we were talking about less than 2m extra, while spending 3m on building fancier restaurants at the Emirates).

We are content to play patently MEDIOCRE players all in the name of running a 'harmonious' board-manager relationship which is 'delivering financial benefits'. Glaring deficiencies in the side are not worthy of an occasional departure from this 'golden frugality' even if this is clearly going to cause an incremental improvement in the squad.

The immense financial benefits to be obtained by signing quality when it is urgently required is not paramount, what is most important is keeping up the 'low expenditure - remaining near the top' [/i]mantra. While we will make noises like [i]'we want to win', in reality we won't act to plug the obvious gaps, because, God forbid we plug the gap and don't win immediately, we lose the excuse of blaming it on lack of expenditure. This is the strait-jacket we have locked ourselves in - the possibility of failure is elevated far above the promise of success - this is what a 'conservative' club like Arsenal is all about.

Hear our great manager himself :


To me, the main reason why we have not won anything in five years is the fact we play in the best league in the world against clubs that have unlimited funds."

To spend as required to plug the gaps would negate this over-arching principle of 'low spend - nearly there'. On the off-chance we win, this will be the crowning moment justifying the frugality and emptiness of the fallow years.

History tells us of the GK problems Utd had before getting VDS, and the titles they've won since then are clear to see ( I hear the accusation of being simplistic coming). Ditto with Chelski.

Even at Arsenal, signing Lehmann propelled the side to the greatest title victory in its history (no chance for a simplistic accusation here). . . . but these days, balancing the books* is of far greater importance than getting quality players on the pitch.

Ultimately Arsenal FC exists to peddle hope, while in actual fact more interested in making healthy profits and doing the minimum to keep the money rolling in - top 4 finish and regular CL football.

* Note the additional spend in this case of maximum 2m wouldn't have prevented balancing of the books and is less than 10% of our post tax profits.

Hurray for financial management.

Debo I sincerely hope you don't believe this excuse of an article you are insulting our club with. 'We won't spend because we want to have an excuse for losing'. Haba!!!

Schwazer the missing piece is busy making blunder after blunder, almunia is busy having solid posting and we are here discussing why we didn't buy the aussie.

I once said it before the problem with arsenal is that we have not won anything in 5 years. And evrybody believe their's is the real reason why this has happened.

^^^ Wenger has driven Debosky to the brink of insanity

Go to the United thread and see how O'Shea is being slaughtered. . . maybe SAF didn't sign a right back so he'd "have an excuse for losing", ridiculous!

The bitter truth is, when at a crossroads, Wenger will always err on the side of caution when it comes to spending money - he'd rather take a risk on a young player who he can claim is 'still growing' than to admit he's wasted money on a player.

Either because of expensive flops he's bought in the past, or because he's stubbornly trying to 'grow' something he can't grow. No GK has been 'developed' or markedly improved in Wenger's entire reign. He is hopeless at doing so, which makes the lack of movement in the market more frustrating.

Like I mentioned earlier, Schwarzer is not the subject of discourse - it is identifying the crucial needs of the club and filling those gaps - in this case a GK. Schwarzer is NOT the only GK in the world that could be bought.

If we can buy Arshavin, get Chamakh, get Vermaelen among others recently, it is an abysmal failure that we have not been able to get a GK worthy of this club.

PS - the problem is NOT that we've not won anything in 5 years, it is that, year after year, glaring gaps in the side REMAIN UNFILLED. If we enter a season feeling we've strengthened sufficiently to go for it, then you will see a marked change in the attitude of Arsenal fans.

We can see the impacts of the new additions to the side, so when there is a glaring gap that is not filled - it doesn't take a genius to figure out that such a gap will ultimately be our downfall.

pls how do i buy fanshares

Yet again debo, what glaring gaps?! It is this exageration of our problems I beg to differ with. What glaring gaps? The fans wanted a solid keeper, they gotten a solid keeper or at the least they are getting solid returns from Almunia. It says a whole lot about our fans attitude that almunia came out of Anfield looking worse than Reina.

@ slimshay

I hear you and humbly defer sir.

The taste of the pudding is in the eating. . . .we'll see in the 33 games to come.

Debosky kosoro. We shall be here fourgether!!!

In other news, where is Dudu. Is he counting his dividends already?!

Debo dont mind these people who live in denial.

Wenger obviously does all these as a back up excuse.

If he wins with youths without spending he would claim he has done the unthinkable, If he loses, He has a ready made excuse, We were being financially prudent- Our rivals spent more than us.


Just like a student who doesnt read If he pass the exam he can gloat that I led the class without reading therefore I am smarter than you all, If he doesnt He would be like "If I had read half of what you guys do, I would be leading the class.

WHat a hopeless manager. close to 30yrs coaching and No European trophy to show for it

In another other news, it have tey we see doctor here. This is sure to see him surface. From that absolute nutter tony atwood of untold arsernal.

'According to the Guardian “Emmanuel Adebayor should be fit enough to make the bench”, and it is good to know that after his failure as a footballer he has turned to carpentry as a second career.  I am sure we all wish him well.'

Lmao!!

^^

If that fails, he can be a good parrot impersonator 'yesofcourse, yesofcourse, yesofcourse'.

In the absence of Duduspace, let me even chip in sef

We want to improve the team, but balancing the 'budget' is more important, (even though we were talking about less than 2m extra, while spending 3m on building fancier restaurants at the Emirates).

1. Of course, balancing the finances IS more important, in fact it is more important than anything else.

2. You are drawing unreasonable conclusions from speculation. There is no guarantee Fulham would've accepted 4m for Schwarzer.

3. How much better than Almunia is Schwarzer? You could make someone who just woke up from a 6 year coma think Buffon has had his name changed to Schwarzer.

4. Didn't the same Almunia displace Lehmann, who according to you was our last quality goalie?

5. Was it Wenger's decision to spend 3m on restaurants?

6. For all you know, the 3m invested in the restaurants could rake in massive profit. Are you saying the club shouldnt invest it's money? Maybe we should shut down The Armoury(the club store), stop paying our electric bill, etc and put all the money into the transfer market!

We are content to play patently MEDIOCRE players all in the name of running a 'harmonious' board-manager relationship which is 'delivering financial benefits'. Glaring deficiencies in the side are not worthy of an occasional departure from this 'golden frugality' even if this is clearly going to cause an incremental improvement in the squad.

For every one "mediocre" player you can name at Arsenal, i'd also name 1 at United & Chelsea, 2 at Liverpool, and 11 at Tottenham.
Start naming, i dare ya!

The immense financial benefits to be obtained by signing quality when it is urgently required is not paramount, what is most important is keeping up the 'low expenditure - remaining near the top' mantra.

This is wide off the mark. Infact, saying Arsenal "dont sign quality" is an insult to the likes of Arshavin, Nasri, Vermaelen, Rosicky etc

While we will make noises like 'we want to win'

Of course WE WANT TO WIN! Dont get it twisted

in reality we won't act to plug the obvious gaps,

We can only plug the gaps we can afford to plug, all other gaps are unpluggable
I'm sure even Blackpool would like to plug the gaps in their side preventing them from winning the league.

because, God forbid we plug the gap and don't win immediately, we lose the excuse of blaming it on lack of expenditure. This is the strait-jacket we have locked ourselves in - the possibility of failure is elevated far above the promise of success - this is what a 'conservative' club like Arsenal is all about.

This is the height of folly. Of what benefit is having an "excuse" for not winning? Wenger has won the league thrice and i'm pretty darn sure he loved the way he felt each time he did it. To think he wont do everything he can to achieve it again just so he can have an "excuse" if he fails is preposterous.

Hear our great manager himself :
To me, the main reason why we have not won anything in five years is the fact we play in the best league in the world against clubs that have unlimited funds."

FACT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

History tells us of the GK problems Utd had before getting VDS, and the titles they've won since then are clear to see ( I hear the accusation of being simplistic coming). Ditto with Chelski.

That's because this logic is simpler than A, B, C

Note the additional spend in this case of maximum 2m wouldn't have prevented balancing of the books and is less than 10% of our post tax profits.

Just like Roman/Chelsea could have spent an extra 6m for a CB(which many folks reckon they could do with), United could have got someone like Ozil or a right back, Liverpool could have got a striker etc.


All this small talk don tire me abeg, make i go shyte

^^ Nice one hellboy.

ritchboy:


We can only plug the gaps we can afford to plug, all other gaps are unpluggable
I'm sure even Blackpool would like to plug the gaps in their side preventing them from winning the league.

If finding a better GK to replace Almunia and Flapianski at a reasonable price is an 'unpluggable' gap then God help us all.

This is the height of folly. Of what benefit is having an "excuse" for not winning? Wenger has won the league thrice and i'm pretty darn sure he loved the way he felt each time he did it. To think he wont do everything he can to achieve it again just so he can have an "excuse" if he fails is preposterous.

Unfortunately actions speak louder than words at times, and his moves don't always indicate a strong enough desire to win. . . .I wonder how much of his title-winning mojo is left and how much is just a persistent stubbornness to bring his vision to pass, to the detriment of the club (till if and when it works).

How so wrong you are debo, shuffle your words around a bit and you will get the truer picture. Wenger is not stubborn with his vision of doing it his way to the detriment of the club. He is stubborn with his vision of seeing the club in a far better stead to the detriment of himself.

Again, I defer to a higher authority. . . like a loyal soldier tenhutt!!!

Debo no dey hug me jare. I know say you no agree. But its all good. We don suffer, personally I feel we are closer if not already at enjoyment point.
If not for those damned chavs. Gotta get those forkas outta the way.

If finding a better GK to replace Almunia and Flapianski at a reasonable price is an 'unpluggable' gap then God help us all.

He will!

Unfortunately actions speak louder than words at times, and his moves don't always indicate a strong enough desire to win. . . .I wonder how much of his title-winning mojo is left and  how much is just a persistent stubbornness to bring his vision to pass, to the detriment of the club (till if and when it works).

slimshay:

How so wrong you are debo, shuffle your words around a bit and you will get the truer picture. Wenger is not stubborn with his vision of doing it his way to the detriment of the club. He is stubborn with his vision of seeing the club in a far better stead to the detriment of himself.

THIS!!!!!!!!!!

People make fun of Wenger for not winning anything in 5 years, but the truth is the man has won a million trophies for Arsenal with the work he's put in during that period. He's made the job of future managers so much easier.

Even Fergie has conceded Wenger DESERVES MORE SUCCESS for his effort.

It would be a real shame if he doesnt win the Champions League before he retires. . .

wow. I just had enuff tym to look in the thread before I succumb to the slp in my eyes and I must say this debate is worth reading.

if i may, pls allow me say I also dont agree with debosky.

AW was NEVER desperate to sign schwarzer. Duduspace has given adequate reason to back that up. And in fact,i think the only reason wenger was still thinkin schwarzer as at transfer deadline day was just to prevent the fans thinkin he was utterly irresponsive. Not that we dont need a good goalie,but I think whateva we can win with schwarzer,we can win with Al. Al is a good goalie whose confidence has left.

We must admit that the EPL is extremely tough and referee favouritism (manure in perspective) has handed some team unfair advantage.

AW does his job the way he thinks is best and if there isnt at least one thing we love about his style,we wouldnt say we are fans. When you take into account the monies spent by l'pool,man city,tottenham without any of these teams comin close to arsenal you would appreciate what wenger does. He does WHAT HE THINKS will win trophys,he doesnt start out to finish behind manure or chelski.

slimshay:

Debo no dey hug me jare. I know say you no agree. But its all good. We don suffer,

See this blatant display of GAYYness and if i talk nhow dem go begin pursue me about. Adofuro FC

ritchboy:
It would be a real shame if he doesnt win the Champions League before he retires. . .

It would be a shame if King Fahd doesnt become the Pope before he dies.

Champions league for WenGAY? He wan tiff am?

i didnt even see this earlier:

'According to the Guardian “Emmanuel Adebayor should be fit enough to make the bench”, and it is good to know that after his failure as a footballer he has turned to carpentry as a second career. I am sure we all wish him well.'

Una wey dey yab Flappyanski you better stop it and se ope ti e!!

[flash=400,300]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R--6xhAMWXQ[/flash]

Anyways whats the lineup looking like for tomorrow??

Desperate to sign Schwarzer? It depends on what you term as "desperation" BUT like i posted sometimes ago,we NEVER up our bid for the Aussie.We made a bid that was rejected earlier in the summer because they did not have a coach and went back when Hughes came on board.Kapish. . .

Abeg make we dey savour the solid performances so far till the expected wheel comes off(God forbid!)

PS - This isn't about Schwarzer as such. . . .is that the best AW could find? Seriously? And even if that was what he wanted, why keep playing the ridiculous 'blink first' game? How many transfers have we lost out on because of this attitude? Wenger is punishing himself by not asking for extra 2m to buy Schwarzer abi?

@ Dipo

If he thought the team we had last season would win a trophy (i.e league or CL) then Wenger is truly going senile. . . .the flaws were massively evident even before injuries finally made them chasms. We're marginally better this year, but still lacking in the crucial GK area, but then again. . . I have been castigated.

I stand corrected oh. . . .y'all are all right.

As a humble soldier. . , tenhutt!!

Hmmmnn !

reading through all the posts here i realised that many of us already condemned Almunia but i would advice that we shouldnt because the keeper wenger would have used to replace him(aussie) was voted the worst goalie in the group stage of the worldcup. Moreover, almunia hasnt done badly this season and we should make do with wat we have since no transfer till JAN.I would rate him 6.5/10 this season so far.If we also have good cover in our defence, we wouldnt even remember the goalie(an example is Barcelona using Valdez).
If you ask me who our best goalie is? i would pick VITO MANONE cos he dint make much blunder last season wen he deputised for the Almunia but wenger replaced him cos of experience. Many of you would say he is stil young just as wenger told our young polish keeper but we forgot that Iker casillas started ad Madrid No 1 at age 18.

slimshay:

Debosky kosoro. We shall be here fourgether!!!

In other news, where is Dudu. Is he counting his dividends already?!

@Slim

No o, I dey sleep becos I dey do overtime at work to buy more fanshares.   actually I was knackered and fell asleep on my sofa while watching Portsmouth's revenge on the championship yesterday.

Respect to you and Ritchboy, maybe Debo will listen to y'all, I know I come across as being too pro-Arsene, its because I try to put myself in his shoes and consider the sacrifices he makes to keep the club in good stead.

Sacrifices indeed - y'all have had your eyes glazed with too much of Arsene's propaganda to see the reality.

People like Dudu keep talking about EXTREMES - Portsmouth's demise, Liverpool's shambles etc, to justify Wenger's actions. Wenger also does the same, claiming that the only reason we don't succeed is because we are competing against people with 'unlimited resources'.

This is a weak attempt to make the discussion into a simple binary choice - spend and become bankrupt or don't spend and survive.

The reality is, there is a huge spectrum in between those extremes, and it takes people with the ability to look beyond the hype and rationally analyse things to discern this.

I repeat, no one is asking for over the top, casino gambler spending. There is too much narcissistic joy from Wenger/the board in their financial results so my stand remains.

My call is for a slight modification to this approach and incorporate spending when needed (and no one here can say we don't NEED a quality GK) instead of making do with the mediocre in the hope that it'll get better at an undefined point 'tomorrow'.

While we appreciate the financial discipline, we are clearly losing focus on the playing side of things - the club is content to spend millions on making expensive restaurants even more expensive, instead of buying a player who will inspire fans, generate trophies and spark of massive merchandise sales - even if it doesn't bring trophies, fans are inspired and encouraged to keep renewing tickets and attending games.

I maintain my stance that we have gotten the balance wrong - I don't claim to know better than the board or Arsene, but again, it doesn't take a genius to realise that there is undue stubbornness and rigidity in our strategy. All we need to do is break away from that occasionally to get what we need and we'll be fine. This one size fits all approach is not going to work for a very long time, if it ever works.

Who the eff does this Carling Cup draws anyway?Our next trip is to tyneside to face Newcastle