Last year turned into a Arsenal vs Spurs vs Leicester fight.... the difference in the spending between them is night and day. We spend probably 3-4 times what Leicester do on wages, almost twice what Spurs do... yet we lost out in that fight? Why?
The issue ISN'T money, because last year when all the big spenders took themselves out of the fight leaving us with a FAR bigger gap to the other teams going for the title than the gap is between Arsenal and Utd/City or Chelsea(who we have a higher revenue than btw).... we still lost? How, mentality, despite bigger squads, more players, higher paid players, seen to be better players like Ozil and Sanchez, our tactics, our inability to see games out, the same defensive mistakes from corners, the same **** players and Wenger's inability to see where the gaps are in the squad cost us. Not lack of money, but Wenger. Wenger himself alone cost us the title last year, not lack of money.
We were only 10-15m behind in wages, in a ~200mil wage bill, to Utd/Chelsea/City, while those behind us, well Liverpool were around 140mil and Spurs and below are really below the 100mil mark. When Utd/Chelsea/City have a bad year, Liverpool also, we have twice the financial power (of Spurs, it's way more for smaller clubs) yet we still didn't win?
Every team has a swing in performances, 2 great years, one okay year, one dire year, then another great year... etc. No team has 50 great years over and over. One year you get no injuries, another you get half the squad due to bad luck, the following year you're awesome again. So in any given 10 year long period, Utd, Chelsea, City, Spurs, Liverpool and Everton WILL have bad years, this is football, so will Arsenal. So one year it's harder for City to win the league because Utd/Chelsea have bad years, another year it's easier for City as everyone else has a crap year......
Arsenal, every year is a 'bad' year. We have league winning spending, people just chose to ignore it. It costs less to put a squad together when you don't change the manager every three years, stop overlooking this. Manager A joins, spends 300mil, leaves, manager B comes in, dislikes half those players, over 3 years he spends 300mil... the squad doesn't have twice as many players, he replaced half of them.
Wenger is manager during Manager A's era, he buys the team he wants, when manager B comes in, Wenger is still manager, and he already has the team he wants, he doesn't need nor want to replace half of it for a massive cost.
Wenger stands alone in the entire european footballing region(and probably the world) as the manager with the ability to plan long term, to buy the kids he thinks will be starts 5 years from now, to buy a cheap 18 year old rather than the same player at 23 and 70million more. Wenger has a monumental advantage in picking and choosing every last player, youth and senior, for the past couple of decades.
We have a similar wage bill to the other top clubs, the problem is Wenger chooses to spend a lot of that money on bad defenders, Walcott, and until recently, Diaby, Arteta(who was both poor and never fit in the past few years) the desperate move for Flamini, Welbeck, and again we pay youth players more than most other clubs and also chose never to use them.
Liverpool have significantly more chance of winning the league because they have a manager who can actually win, a mentality that means they can win from a tough position, they are learning and improving and I doubt they'll come particularly close this year, but in the next few years I see them mounting a more serious challenge than we have, ie being within 5 points at the end of a season, not fluffing up every single time we get a chance to secure a lead in the league.
Arsenal have mentality issues, when we screw up and end up 10 points behind we go on an amazing run, get back to the top, then throw it away with a dismal performance against a West Brom or Sunderland. When we find ourselves on top, we crack and drop a bunch of points then pick up form again when the pressure of being on top goes away, every year like clockwork.
Arsenal have significant financial muscle, we just chose to pretend we don't because Wenger spends his money on a huge wage bill, lots of youth players we don't see and doesn't make lots of headlines in the transfer market.
Saving money, if we can't win the league either way... means not much of anything, firstly it's the fans who put the money into the club, the only reason for Wenger to save money if he genuinely doesn't believe we can compete, is if he gets a percentage of profits we make in the year. On top of that, sponsorship is a huge source of income, the better you do the more money you make, saving 5mil on a defender can have the knock on effect, if it delays the deal by months, of costing you multiple places in the league and costing you money elsewhere. Also again, if Wenger cared so much about pinching pennies, why did he repeatedly give Diaby and Rosicky new deals, Walcott wages far beyond what he's worth when absolutely no other club is interested in him at the wages he wants. He pinches pennies in one players but throws money down a drain somewhere else, that is what frustrates fans.
He'll ignore lack of depth in defence and he'll ignore lack of quality in defence, but he'll buy 15 more central midfielders, attacking or defensive, when the club is over loaded with central midfielders who can't get a game.
Wenger has no long term plan, his youth system isn't working, it's bringing through almost no one and considering our youth system is one of the most expensive in the league seeing what say Southampton are doing in comparison makes it a joke. He doesn't seem lack of depth in a position and it costs us every single year, he puts his faith in players who clearly aren't close to good enough and that costs us every single year. He stated we absolutely didn't need a striker as we had top players who would be almost impossible to better, named Welbeck, Walcott, Giroud and Sanchez... then after we threw away the lead and ended up 10 points behind he bemoaned not having a world class striker... when many many better out and out strikers have moved for fees we can certainly afford in the past 2 years.
