If you want to know why we'll be in trouble, last season, winning ratio with Cesc, 64%, wins without Cesc, 31%. Now we have no Cesc, a weaker team in other area's, and the same people who could not win without him last year.
Thats title winning form with Cesc, and relegation fighting form without........
We have been spending big, we have VERY easily and very massively spent more on wages than anyone below us.
Its always going to be hard to quantify, a 970x hex core for £300 or a 980x, 3% faster, for £1000.
Theres a point where you spend 5 times as much, to be 3% better. Up till recently basically being in the top 4 spenders should quite easily see you into the top four, what you do from there, the money is massive between very similar quality players, wheres that line though. Arsenal are now overspending on crap players while City massively overspend, on not very much better players. I mean, is Balotelli better than RVP, but he's on more money.
For 10 years we've spent well into the top four on wages, and thats ALL THAT MATTERS in football spending.
You can get Aguero for 200k as a 16 year old, or 100mill as a 25year old, its the same player, but at 25years old, it will take the same wage, give or take a bit, to keep that player at the club. Transfer money has never, ever mattered, its simply luck of the draw, did you get the right players at 16, or have to buy them at 22-28, or get lucky again and get a cheap but great player at 32-33.
Wages are what dictate the level of quality you have in the team, Spurs clearly went out with the ability to spend 30-40mil in Jan, but none of the players they wanted, were at all interested in the kind of wages, sub 80k wage structure, the club offered.
Arsenal haven't over achieved at all, they haven't massively underachieved in terms of what they spent. none of that matters, I don't care about spending, I don't care about buying expensive players, or experience. I care that Theo is inept, yet starts, that Sagna is awful, yet starts, that RVP can't play as a lone striker, yet does, that Song can't play football AT ALL, yet starts. The club, ignoring fee's, and who they could buy, is being mismanaged at every level. We've been weak on set pieces for 10 years, and Wenger still won't focus on set piece training or a new defensive setup or training, he ignores problems we have, and has been creating new ones.
The squad WE HAD, could have done a LOT better. I'll say it again, no other top manager in their right mind would have played Cesc, against a physical Stoke team, with a recurring injury, at the end of a long line of games where he is rarely substituted, RIGHT BEFORE A CUP FINAL. If he had rested him, we'd have the Carling cup, simple as that, absolutely mind bogglingly stupid thing to do.
We always spent less than Utd, but more than basically everyone else, and won titles despite spending less. The gap between Arsenal/Utd isn't much bigger than its always been in wages. The gap with Chelsea and City is massive, even between them and UTd its massive and growing. But thats just because they overspend on the SAME quality players, not because they've got people 30% better than UTD have. Likewise, both those guys have spent more than Utd, yet UTD have won more titles. This league basically works as, spend 10-30% more than the entire rest of the league, you'll be top four, once you're top four, anything can happen. We've been well up there, for a long time, the main thing keeping us from titles is not money, but manager.
