Paying more and more for top players lifts the price of the less good players. And vice versa. It’s just like the housing market.

back to money matter. i feel hopelessly powerless to discuss Arsenal’s or any other team’s money matter. i’m just longing for the season to start. besides having good faith that the board know what they’re doing and that they’re giving Arsene the independence he deserves (both from ownership politics and from fans, particularly from fans), i really don’t know what else to hope for.

independence of the technical staff from money and politics problems is vital. let me not repeat money issue again because Tony already said it. but independence from fans-vs.-owners politics are equally important. just look where new castle zebras ended up: the manager is right in the middle of the storm between fans and an unwanted owners. the sad part of that story is that many fans, by good intention, recruited themselves for a battle that eventually spelled their own team’s downfall. Arsene and SAF live longest in the league because their employers consented not only to leave them completely accountable for technical matters but also because they are immune from fans’ (and media’s) shenanigans.

in this perspective i consider the masons more corrupted than spurs fans. the latter try to beat us on the pitch (really, without Arsenal they wouldn’t know who to hate); the former, due to sheer myopia, try to destroy us from the root.

buying the flats at highbury would at least give the board a bit of cofidence in him as a long term player.

On top of that why does everyone assume that Man City would take our CL spot? If Man do not strengthen further as they have claimed I can see us out scoring ManU comfortably – Rooney 15 league goals, Berbatov 10 – 15 league goals, Owen 10 – 15 league goals (I’m being really generous there, Valencia will not score anywhere near the number of goals that Ronaldo got, Scholes not the player he was, ditto for Giggs. They have a couple of young players who look decent but so do we and do we not have the strike force, even without replacing Adebayor match their strike tally? Our midfield goal potential now supersedes ManU’s by some distance.

There is no reason to panic yet.

Back to the point, ManIOU have at least in a way admited that they can no longer maintain their spending spree. LiverInsolvent are battling with a “to-admit or not-to-admit” syndrome. They have at least slowed to crawling pace. The KGB-Fuls have adopted a walking pace, albeit they are being treated with quite a dose of their own medicine a-la-JT.

Economics is quite interesting. It has in the past proved the most intellectual brains wrong and the hitherto thought-to-be-minnows right. We all shall see quite soon.

What baffles me is why Usmanov is so hell bent on Arsenal. If it has been made clear that we value majority ownership, as we do, and you really want to own a new toy (club), Why not go buy Newcastle? Simples, Uh!

Im probably gonna get slaughted by you lot for this. But hay ho.

08/09 72 points 4th
07/08 83 points 3rd
06/07 68 points 4th (Liverpool third place through goal difference)
05/06 67 points 4th
04/05 83 points 2nd

I don’t see much pattern there to suggest we are getting further away each year, though I would concede that the arrival of Moneybags Chelsea caused waves at the top of the Prem.

It still seems obvious to me that Arsenal should have won in 07/08 and would have but for a wave of freak injuries in the run-in. Fergie said as much at the time.

Arsenal doesnt need any more money. We have a good squad right now even without Ade & I’m confident that we’ll be Champions this season for the simple fact that We’ve kept the team together unlike the last 4 seasons after the Unbeaten season.. Moreover, our main rivals have weakened compared to last season. So lets get behind Wenger and the boys for the season ahead.

Excellent comment from TBB. It really does seems the Banks have finally woken up.. And the recent comments from SAF proves that. His comment that the transfer market is inflated right now is because He doesnt have funds to buy a player. Wasnt it just last year that ManU bought Berbatov for 30m pounds and also Rooney & Ferdinand for the same price few years back.. If the market wasnt inflated then, why is it inflated now?? The actual inflation of the market started back then when Arsene said Players were bought for a lot more than the actual. And it is proved right again. And I wonder why the unbeaten run was chosen as the GGM01 instead of Wenger joining Arsenal. if it wasnt for the GGM04, we wouldnt have had the GGM01 and a secure future and the beautiful football we have seen over the last decade..

In Arsene We Trust.

“Question is, of course; Do the fans have the same patience as the board”

Yes indeed that is the question. Goods points, on topic, at last from a different neck of the woods.

Hope you drop in again, Battered B.

Nice site. Thoughtful. Saw your post earlier on CQN and thought I’d lob one back your way.

It is not at all surprising that the report commissioned by Usmanov supports his proposals, while the one commissioned by the board backs the club’s current strategy. Both use largely the same set of data, and use them to create a different set of arguements. Nothing new or even mildly controversial there. Likelihood is that both reports are equally valid and equally weak.

What surpised me was the suggestion made that Arsenal, over an undefined period mind, operates a break even policy on player trading. Up here Celtic’s historic (last 9 years) net spend is a touch under £5M per year, good enough to win most SPL titles and generate respectability on Europe, but unable to break through into the QFs and better in the Champions League, as Wenger does consistently.

While we must recognise that the Arsenal players are paid considerably better than those at Celtic, and are doubtless better on average, it is clear that Wenger is the European master of player management. I imagine this is little consolation for the fans as Arsenal creep ever further away from the top spot each year, but adopting a longer term view, as Arsenal have done very well, can only place you in a strong position when the madness of Manchester and Liverpool is finally exposed.

Question is, of course; Do the fans have the same patience as the board, as we await the (we trust) inevitable re-ordering of business models.

While Arsenal’s debt is largely tied in to the capital project that is the Stadium development, the debts at Man U and Liverpool, and other clubs, are of an entirely different nature.

Arsenal’s debt will be diminished as the project nears completion (fingers crossed). Debt at the other clubs is increasing as their operations fail to deliver the cash to service the interest charges.

Witness Ronaldo’s transfer. The largest single piece of business in the history of the game results in the club’s debt – also the largest in the history of the game – being serviced for all of 12 months.

Further, where in previous times such a fee would grease the football merry-go-round, the money from Real for Ronaldo goes straight OUT of the game. There is no net benefit to football in allowing Man Utd and others like them to trade so far beyond their means.

At least at Chelsea and Man City it’s new money being brought into football, allbeit that these clubs will inevitably revert to their historic mediocrity once the sugar daddy sours.

What hope a commitment any time soon from the EPL to a sustainable business model?

Ramble. Ramble. Sorry, bit longer than I expected, and no doubt old hat on this board, but there you have it.

Best,

TBB

Your Grace, I suggest we allow Mason to carry on with his stream of lunacy – it amuses me greatly watching him trying to talk through his arse and fit both feet into his mouth simultaneously.

it appears that mason grasps neither.

unfortunately with dark matter, in order to measure it, you have to destroy it, so harnessing it could make us all go bust.