This pretty much should have been the thread tbh
Arsenal the club cant/wont compete with us, Chelsea or City financially so before a ball is even kicked they're at an incredible disadvantage (you can probably even extend that to Liverpool). Arsenal's priority for probably the last 6 years has been to finish top 4 with anything else is being a bonus, as Arsenal are yet to finish below the top 4 Wenger is doing everything asked of him by his employers.
At this point the only real criticism you can lay at Wenger is his team selection in the competitions that have provided Arsenal their best chance of winning a trophy, what is it only 3 finals in the 7 years since they last won a trophy? For a club like Arsenal with the players they do have/have had at their disposal that's the only thing that's not really good enough.
EDIT: Reading through the thread a bit more it seems a lot of people are moaning at the players he has bought but looking specifically at someone like Gervinho isn't this the guy that everyone likes to say outscored and out-assisted Eden Hazard in the French League? Wenger may very well got more wrong than he has right on his limited budget over the last couple of years but again on a limited budget you're limited to how many 'certs' you can bring in, only someone like DM would bring up the old 'he could have bought Michu instead' argument. I'm sure if you asked Mancini if he knew what a success Michu would be in the PL he'd of signed him for City, likewise Di Matteo, AVB, Rodgers and any other manager who had a spare £2m
Goals and assists don't matter, looking at the player does. 12 of his 14 goals came against bottom half teams, his other 2 goals both came against Toulouse, who came 8th, 6 of his 10 assists came against bottom half teams, and again he didn't get an assist above 8th in the league. I believe 10 of those goals were against the bottom 6, so relegation fodder.
Hazard was 19 or 20 when Gervinho had that "good" season, while Gervinho was 23 I think, at 21 Hazard had a 20 goal, 16 assist in the league season, FAR better than Gervinho, and a bunch of those goals and assists were against teams in the top half of the table.
As for financially competing, you are currently 12 points clear of a team who outspent you by 40million last year, or 25% more than you, Arsenal finished 19 points behind you and we only spent 20mil less on wages than you.
We were paying RVP under 100k, you are paying him closer to 200k, thats 5mil difference in wages on one player, not because the player is better, but because you offer higher wages.
If we had an entire squad of RVP's and couldn't win one year paying them all 100k, they all sign for Utd and get 200k a week, wages double, quality of players doubled, no. If Utd can hit at City, and Barca, and Real, and ARsenal can't compete despite a MUCH smaller gap between our teams wage spending, something is wrong.
Spurs are spending 80-90mil, yet should have finished the season above an Arsenal who were spending 50million more than them, and only didn't because Redknapp is a joke. This year they will do that, despite spending around 50million less.
So Utd can beat City despite spending 20% less, Spurs can compete with Arsenal despite spending around 40% less, but Arsenal can't in any way compete with Utd despite spending a whopping 10% less? BS.
Arsenal bring in less than Utd mostly in winnings, runs in cup competitions and commercial... all things that could have been addressed but haven't been. Thanks to the stadium we now bring in basically the equal of your match day income which is precisely what puts us on a financial footing with Utd that no other team in the league can match because of stadium income. Spurs/Chelsea are around the 40-50 mil stadium income mark.
AS for Michu, again, firstly looking up a list of La Liga top scorers and assisters should have shown up Michu pretty easily, if Wenger didn't spot him, he doesn't have the right scouts, scouts HE employs, thus his responsibility.
It took 45 minutes to see how good Gervinho was, I highlighted every single reason he was rubbish in the first 45mins, and thats how he played every game this season, and thats how he always plays, yet Wenger/his scounts couldn't see it.
Michu represents the type of player we should buy, I've not and never said I blame Wenger for not signing him. Michu is someone who has had a couple great seasons, looks very good when you watch him, was LOW RISK being 2mil and lower wage, and therefore a good investment. Gervinho from any video of him looks horrendous, cost a load, wanted a decent wage and if he turns out great, or awful was a massively bigger risk, if Gervinho cost 2mil and he rotted in the reserves till his contract was up, and was on half the wage, Arsenal would have "lost" something in the region of 15-20mil less over the course of his contract.
It's not Wenger.
Recently David Dean was ask this question and he said something along the lines of:
Dein used an example Juan Mata. Mata thought he was all but an Arsenal player, but then Abramovitch stepped in at the 11th honour and blew Arsenal out the water.
That’s it really. In light of this, Wenger has done a stellar job of keeping the club in the Champions league for what 15 successive seasons?
It may just be that things are just starting to slip a bit now. However, the stadium debts are at a manageable level, Financial fair play rules are going to start biting Man C, Chelsea and Man U in the arse, we have a new sponsor ship deal done so things will start evening out in the coming years.
Firstly Dein is whats known as a Wenger excuse maker, in terms of "blowing" Arsenal out of the water, Mata is on 100-120k at Chelsea, we wanted to offer him 60-80k, we are now paying Walcott.... roughly what it would have taken to get Mata. The ONLY reason we wouldn't pay Mata 120k, is because Wenger has this "squad gets roughly the same" philosophy. IE can't give RVP/Cesc 150k, and Diaby/Gibbs 20k, give them all 70k a week. This is a limit imposed not by the board, not by clubs we buy from, but by Wenger alone. Do we have better team spirit because of this "everyone is equal" feel to the wage structure... no we have players who think barely bothering to play is fine because they get rewarded the same as the guys who try their hardest every single game. Not least when Wenger hands out wage increases and new contracts to players perenially injured and who vastly underperform.
We didn't get Mata because Wenger insists on giving Djourou a new and bigger contract, because he won't get shot of Rosicky or Diaby and because he gets bluffed into giving the pile of turd that is Walcott 100k a week. We could have sold Walcott for 10mil, given Mata a 100k a week offer paying 20mil for him, had a better team, been more likely to compete, more likely to keep RVP, and today, spending almost no more in wages than we are now anyway.... but we didn't, because Diaby deserves a new higher wage contract every couple years.
Wenger is the reason we didn't get Mata, no one else, certainly not the board.
Our wage bill went up something around 20mil the season we DIDN'T buy Mata, while Mata's wage is 5mil a year.............
I want him to stay, we still have great young players and there are lots more great young players coming through, Wenger is doing a great job at building a club that will last and stay as one of the top UK clubs for a long time, I'd take that over short term success and throwing money away!!!
We don't have great young players, we have Wilshire........ thats it, and we have almost no one coming through who looks even slightly good enough for the premier league, the only one is the kid we just stole from Dortmund.... and we're all but refusing to play him.
In the same way Miyachi hasn't gotten any time, and Vela got nothing (currently 22 goals 12 assists since he started playing for Sociedad last season, top goal scorer, top assister at a team everyone is hailing is having a fantastic year, in 6th, having beaten Malaga, Valencia, and Barcelona, Vela assisting, scoring, or both in each of those key wins). Wenger buys quality players and doesn't even use them, while keeping and playing utter crap. They guys he's let go, to let crap players keep their spot in the team, is mind blowing, we lost Reyes and Pires because Wenger screwed both in favour of Hleb.... Hleb soooo good Birmingham told him to **** off and stop being so crap.
