critic, in this era, it is unfortunately true that the financial side of premier league football is a major part of running a club. just ask any pompey fan today. after your sentance praising arsene, you spout a load of suppositions as fact. none of us are as tuned into the goings on at the ems as arsene. to second guess his motives or reasons for his actions is peurile.

goonerman. point 1; how has arsene raised all of our expectations? he will only talk about our taem in a positive way. anything else would be ridiculous.

point 2; i dont agree that the faq cup was ‘thrown’ the match against stoke came after the two bolton matches where our players got kicked all over the park. it also came before the villa, utd and chelsea matches. it is obvious that had our top players taken another kicking at stoke it wouldnt do us any good.

point3; he didnt confuse me. he said tat he would buy if all the boxes were ticked, ie quality, availability, price etc. obviously these boxes werent ticked.

point 4; here we agree, somewhat. arsene answers most journos as honestly as possible. all of his press conferences are available online and its all too obvious that teh press pick and choose which quotes they can spin to make a headline. mostly he is taken out of context.

Good common sense argument against the short sighted doomers, who plague our club.

Unfortunately, although often otherwise intelligent people, they can only look at their football in the most simplistic terms.

Instead of congratulating AW on a quite remarkable achievment, in keeping us top 4, in the most difficult of circumstances, they think they know better. These people will always be looking for greener grass & think they will find it in a desert.

Maybe a warning for the summer : with all those youngsters out on loan they will be like new signins when they come back.

Ronaldo earns about 5 million a year, and rising.
He cost 70 million to buy.

Therefore to have him for 5 years costs around 100 million.

For other stellar players, you could halve that…….50 million.

Er, I’m not sure 34 million pays the bills.

But we sold Adebayor and Toure for £44m. £10m was spent to get Vermaelen. £34 million is left over. £34m is lot of money, and enough to buy a quality player. It would be enough to buy a genuine keeper, at any rate. And where did that money go? It went towards overpaying our existing crop of players.

I think you are far to mild in this, Critic.

I’m sure that Casillas would be better than Almunia. So Wenger should buy him. Oh and maybe Alves on right back as he is in the Spanish supermarket. And maybe SAF would like to sell Evra to us, yes I’m sure he would.
And why not buy Kaka now that we are doing business. Oh yes and let’s not forget we should buy CR as well as he is one of the best around.

And make things complete: we should buy Messi.

If Wenger don’t buy them all he is stubborn, should be sacked, get the empty, has lost it, doesn’t want to win trophy’s anymore,….

What it would cost in total all these “better” players ? Who cares. Just ask Usmanov some money ….

t’s obvious that wenger has done a marvellous job with arsenal and still doing it but as a business wise not as a football club…..he doesn’t bring in players b’coz he thinks he has equal and better players than those who are available…..but i and lots of other fail to see that….hw’s campbell is better than lucas neil, cana wud have been good cover for song…… but iam clueless…and so is wenger…..and so is this blog community…..guys arsenal is a football club first and then business…..

TODAY’S FUNNIEST QUOTE OTHER THAN MY COMMENT : RAFA BENITEZ – “LIVERPOOL NEED NEW INVESTMENTS, TO TAKE THE CLUB ONE STEP FORWARD”:P

1. he has raised fans’ and player’s expectations
2. thrown the FA Cup, which could have been won
3. he seems to confuse fans with transfer targets to address known weaknesses.
4. been too helpful to journalists who subsequently ridicule him.

Honesty is the best policy

While investment plays such a large part in a club’s on-field success, capital, and the means by which clubs acquire it should not only be heavily scrutinised, it should also be factored into any successes.

How is it that the kind of investment made by the kleptocratic scourge which is plaguing our football clubs tolerated and apologised for? It is more akin to a form of charity than investment, not to mention the fantastic whitewashing by all of its dubious source.

This silence has utterly baffled me, given that the conduct of Abramovich etc. contradict almost every economic, political and moral principal that the British establishment supposedly stands for (e.g. stable markets, sustainable capitalism, British sense of ‘fair play’ in competition). The Kleptocarts seemed to have also evaded the wrath of so-called ‘common man’s’ opinion (nowadays to be found condensed in rhetorical tabloid moralisation, and scattered around pubs): a mix of xenophobia, ‘old-school’ values and loathing of decadent elites. The irony is that it is Arsenal’s philosophy (on and off-field) that gets attacked for its bourgeois decadence in the media !

So, for me the real question still remains not ‘why has Wenger stubbornly gone down this development route,’ but ‘why haven’t more or all clubs followed this sensible long-term approach?’.

More Milton Friedman than QE1

Brian – a remarkable piece once again, thanks.