Thar she blows! Blah blah blah wages ignore transfer spending blah blah wages
we've spent £230million in the last 4 seasons on transfers, people like to pretend that isn't true, and talk about net spend like Wenger is running the club on a shoe string... lol.
I haven't ignored transfer spending, transfer spending is situational, the longer a manager is in a job the less his transfer spending becomes.
If you take over a job and have four years, you can't buy Ronaldo for £15mil, you have to buy that player for £80mil, Wenger has had, lets be honest, incredibly little success in buying youngsters on the cheap and selling them on for huge amounts of cash. RVP, Fabregas. Nasri went for a lot but cost a fair whack. The longer you are in a job the easier it is to be picking up youngsters and having them come through after 2-5 years, Wenger is the ONLY manager in Europe to have that type of situation currently. Fergie was one of the few to have that previously.
This effects transfer spending. We've also gotten extremely lucky in terms of net spend thanks to City in their heavy spending phase overpaying for everyone they bought from us.
Our transfer spending isn't tiny regardless of what people think and we have frequently offered higher wages to younger players(Nasri, Fabregas, RVP) than other clubs were willing to offer to such players. So we got Fabregas but gave him higher wages than anyone else offered, total spend is all that is relevant, wages alone mean nothing and transfer spend alone means nothing.
Arsenal have spent more than everyone but Utd, City and Chelsea, and for half of our unsuccessful period City had no money.
It's you that is ignoring wage spending(and most people) in an attempt to suggest Wenger is doing things on a shoe string. No, longer term managers have every advantage than new managers don't have, and Wenger hasn't done a massive amount with it. We've had the CL draw and money to attract players and offer higher wages for like 74 years.... yet have no absolute top quality players in the entire team. Utd have 3-4, Chelsea have loads, City have loads. Despite the spending we have done, we have not a single top notch player, though we've paid top notch prices for two players who were flattered by the players around them.
Again, we've spent £230million in the last 4 seasons on transfers, another almost £600million in wages... and come up with two players in Sanchez and Ozil who simply aren't as good as Wenger thought they were. We've got a squad of not quite top players, and infact I would say not a single truly top notch player. Some good ones no doubt, and I'm not talking Ronaldo/messi level. I'm talking we missed out on that next level down entirely, the Fabregas, Di Maria, Falcao, RVP level. We've got no one of that level despite spending £230mil in the last 4 years alone.
Net spend is irrelevant in reality, regardless of net spend being £0mil or £230, we still actually spent £230mil, on too many of the wrong players, we've wasted money on the wrong guys for a decade. Every £15mil we spent on a Hleb,or £6mil on a Santos, or £10mil on a Gervinho or £12mil on a Giroud, is the money we could have spent on someone actually quality.
Wenger has no excuses, there isn't a manager in Europe you can look at and say "well you were in charge 3 years ago, let alone 8 years ago, why didn't you buy ANY of the current top players when they were youngsters". No other manager was in their current job when Ronaldo, Falcao, Di Maria, Ozil, Kompany, Aguero, Jovetic, Costa, Matic... etc, was cheap.
Wenger WAS in charge and didn't manage to find any of these top players. He was spending similar amounts on Hleb instead of Ronaldo.
Stop making excuses for him and ignoring the plan facts, the longer you're in the job the more chance you have to actually buy a team on the cheap, bring youth through, offset costs. Except, Wenger has been paying out massive wages, buying poorly, spending big, finding few up and coming players, finding no starts in the past 7-8 years.
