"I can't be bothered to check if you're wrong, so I'll just assume you are".
In 07/08 Milan finished 5th, we beat liverpool in the league that year also. In 08/09 Roma finished 6th, Villareal 5th, we lost to Utd who actually won the league and were good that year. In 09/10 we beat Porto, who won the league in 03, 04, 06, 07, 08, 09, 11, 12, 13...... they came third in the year they beat us.
None of them were great great teams, all of them had a small portion of the budget Arsenal had.
As for banging on about Kroenke, money and how he's not investing.... the issue is he's not taking money out of the club. The money is there, the wage bill isn't far behind the 'rich' clubs at all. We're spending a lot, our wage bill has gone up by 100mil in the past 10 years, Kroenke didn't tell the club the wages couldn't increase, he didn't take 200mil of profit out of the club, there is a huge cash reserve sitting there that Wenger refuses to use, there is a squad filled with massively overpayed players many of whom aren't remotely close to good enough.
But more importantly, Spurs are winning right now... again. They are 7 points off a phenomenally performing Chelsea side, we are 21 points behind that same Chelsea side, 14 behind Spurs. Spurs spend a LOT LESS THAN US.
You don't have to have money to be better than we are.... and we have that money anyway, there is no excuses here. It's got precisely nothing at all to do with Kroenke. He gets paid what is a very small wage for a majority owner and it's probably a wage that allows things like, residence in the UK whenever he wants, no visa issues and ability to maintain insurance. IE it's probably a legal requirement as much as anything else.
Arsenal could be doing a lot better spending exactly nothing more than we are now, we know this because Leicester and Spurs are did/are doing better with far less money. Leicester are doing better in the CL than us spending maybe 1/3rd of what we do on wages. I've also mentioned this repeatedly, but a long term manager has monumental financial advantages over a 'new' manager. A manager comes in at City and wants to change the entire style of the team, it might require replacing both CBs, both fullbacks and 2-3 central midfielders, that costs money. Every time a team changes manager there is an inherent cost, hell there is the inherent cost of effectively paying two top tier managers as they are paying redundancy and the new guys wages.
Guardiola hasn't installed the people he thinks are the best to be in charge of his youth system, he has had literally no say in who has been brought in and may be getting ready to be in the team for the next couple of years because he wasn't at City before this year. If 10 youth players come in for preseason and all suck, that is on previous managers, when 10 youth players come in for preseason and suck at Arsenal... that is 100% on Wenger.
Guardiola couldn't wait 4 years for some promising 18yr old's contract to end, having talked to his agent the whole time then bring him in to City... Wenger can. Wenger doesn't have to gut the team to change the style every few years and as such also doesn't have a team of players who are all on sub 2 year old contracts which as wages increase every year... cost more.
We show zero benefits that we should have from a long term manager, our recruitment has gotten worse, not better, the longer Wenger has been at Arsenal, our youth system has a pitifully poor output while a team like Southampton produces far more players and more profitably. We have plenty of money, we just don't use it effectively. The problem is Wenger and nothing else. His tactics are poor, his judgement of players he's buying has gone down the hill, his complete inability to train a defence to be a truly solid unit who all know what to do has been a joke for a decade. basically no players improve at Arsenal any more, in fact many seem to regress and we've had 10+ years of major injury problems which still hasn't been addressed properly. This all falls at Wenger's feet and a director of football won't help here, if Wenger is choosing the players he wants now, and will under a DoF, but the DoF might do more contract/negotiation... then nothing will change, we'll still be buying mostly the wrong players. A DoF won't change how Wenger coaches a defence, won't change who is in charge of our pathetic youth system and won't change Wenger's performance in terms of training and improving players.
such a good impression
