The Banter Thread
- Thread starter CliffyBiro
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He was playing for Spurs in pre-season until he suffered a career ending injury from a Charlie Adam tackle that kept him out for 3 days.
Caporegime
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Considering the amount of injuries he's had perhaps it's time to stop walking to work?
That'll never get old
Wasn't that the one where he played for another 30 minutes before coming off at half time??
That was always the thing with Bale - Ronaldo was (arguably) worth the £80m as he's an absolute physical freak, who never seems to get inured. Bale's had something of a history of injuries, and it was always a possibility that he'd play a few matches, get injured, and be out for 3 months.
Wenger admits that he wanted to sign Ozil for a very long time, in fact tried to sign him before he went to Real. Kinda glad we got him when we did ie this year rather than getting him before he went to Real as no doubt he would have left us within a few yrs as we didnt have a squad to challenge for the PL title or trophies.
Soldato
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haha...superb.
That's the one.
The main take away from those quotes for me is this part:
So essentially an admittance that Arsenal were hampered in the transfer market (more than that in fact - hampered even in terms of retaining existing players) right at the point at which they had the opportunity to create a dynasty in footballing terms, i.e. when they had realistic chances of competing at the very top level but instead broke up the invincibles at a rate I have literally never seen anywhere in the world from any title-winning side.
Most of us probably suspected this was the case but that admission flies in the face of the party line previously rolled out year-on-year about how Arsenal had money to spend. Spending money now is too late because firstly, the horse has already bolted due to the rot since the mid-00s; secondly, because there is now an extra rival horse in the paddock in the form of Manchester City.
So essentially an admittance that Arsenal were hampered in the transfer market (more than that in fact - hampered even in terms of retaining existing players) right at the point at which they had the opportunity to create a dynasty in footballing terms, i.e. when they had realistic chances of competing at the very top level but instead broke up the invincibles at a rate I have literally never seen anywhere in the world from any title-winning side.
Most of us probably suspected this was the case but that admission flies in the face of the party line previously rolled out year-on-year about how Arsenal had money to spend. Spending money now is too late because firstly, the horse has already bolted due to the rot since the mid-00s; secondly, because there is now an extra rival horse in the paddock in the form of Manchester City.
Caporegime
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No, that is simply an easy excuse people would happily believe because they are gullible.
Wenger gets it wrong for 8 years, then gets it right and makes up a reason why it's not his fault.
Did I forget where he was forced to spend 14mil on Gervinho, 6mil Santos, 6mil Squillaci, 18mil on Arshavin and refuse to use him, to pay Diaby 3mil a year over most of that time frame to NOT play.
Sorry but complete and utter BS and you frankly have to be ignorant to believe it.
Can you really not add up 50mil of crap buys and worthless wages from the last 2-3 seasons ALONE.
We spent, before Ozil 110million on new players in the 2 summers before...... so there was no money and we couldn't buy an Ozil, but we could spend 110mil in two(of around 16) transfer windows? Can you see where that doesn't just fly in the face of logic, you are literally being bare faced lied to with physical numbers that proves the utter ridiculousness of the statement........... and then you bought it and forgave Wenger for being a moron. It's embarrassing.
"we couldn't spend 42mil on a single player previously because we didn't have the money".... we spent more than that in last summer'stransfer window alone.
Wenger and Dein were also involved in the 100mil sponsorship deal that clubs like LIverpool, Utd were making 3-4 times as much over the same time frame.....
Again, at not a single stage at ANY time at being at Emirates has our profit AFTER payments not brought in a hell of a lot more money than we were before moving.
Lets say we made 10mil profit at Highbury, and we made 50mil profit a year at Emirates, but 20mil a year of that went on interest...... and thus had 20mil less than if we didn't have stadium repayments.... but we're talking about 20 or 40mil MORE profit than we would have had at Highbury.
We were spending 65mil a year or so in wages at Highbury, our single biggest increase in yearly income is from the stadium since the move, our income went from 40-50mil to around 100mil a year from match day, and our wages have gone from 65 to 150mil a year. You have to be flat out blind to believe there was less money around. Try the maths on that, our 10-15mil a year interest payments, but we are currently spending 85mil a year more in wages..... the new stadium is hampering us.
If Wenger hadn't pushed wages up to 250% of the amount we were paying at Highbury, we would have had literally 150-200mil more to spend on transfers.
Wenger gets it wrong for 8 years, then gets it right and makes up a reason why it's not his fault.
Did I forget where he was forced to spend 14mil on Gervinho, 6mil Santos, 6mil Squillaci, 18mil on Arshavin and refuse to use him, to pay Diaby 3mil a year over most of that time frame to NOT play.
Sorry but complete and utter BS and you frankly have to be ignorant to believe it.
Can you really not add up 50mil of crap buys and worthless wages from the last 2-3 seasons ALONE.
We spent, before Ozil 110million on new players in the 2 summers before...... so there was no money and we couldn't buy an Ozil, but we could spend 110mil in two(of around 16) transfer windows? Can you see where that doesn't just fly in the face of logic, you are literally being bare faced lied to with physical numbers that proves the utter ridiculousness of the statement........... and then you bought it and forgave Wenger for being a moron. It's embarrassing.
"we couldn't spend 42mil on a single player previously because we didn't have the money".... we spent more than that in last summer'stransfer window alone.
Wenger and Dein were also involved in the 100mil sponsorship deal that clubs like LIverpool, Utd were making 3-4 times as much over the same time frame.....
Again, at not a single stage at ANY time at being at Emirates has our profit AFTER payments not brought in a hell of a lot more money than we were before moving.
Lets say we made 10mil profit at Highbury, and we made 50mil profit a year at Emirates, but 20mil a year of that went on interest...... and thus had 20mil less than if we didn't have stadium repayments.... but we're talking about 20 or 40mil MORE profit than we would have had at Highbury.
We were spending 65mil a year or so in wages at Highbury, our single biggest increase in yearly income is from the stadium since the move, our income went from 40-50mil to around 100mil a year from match day, and our wages have gone from 65 to 150mil a year. You have to be flat out blind to believe there was less money around. Try the maths on that, our 10-15mil a year interest payments, but we are currently spending 85mil a year more in wages..... the new stadium is hampering us.
If Wenger hadn't pushed wages up to 250% of the amount we were paying at Highbury, we would have had literally 150-200mil more to spend on transfers.
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Not quite sure how pointing out inconsistencies in what Wenger has been saying makes me gullible - the point I am making is that Wenger is now saying we didn't have money in previous seasons, which contradicts what the club (and him, on occasion) had previously stated. He can't be right (or wrong) both times because the two things "we've got money for transfers" "we didn't have money for transfers at that time" are mutually exclusive.
In terms of adding up the 'crap buys' that is meaningless without also considering sales - it doesn't matter how much we spent if it was balanced by money coming in. The fact is Arsenal's net spend this summer was the highest it has even been in recent years. You talk about £110 over 2 windows, yet the same two windows saw player sales of MORE than that.
If you buy something for £42m, and sell something for £10m, that means your total spend is higher than buying something for £106m, and selling something for £114m. (the figures will vary depending where you read, wages will change, maybe some other fees, payments spread over time bla bla - but the fact is the net transfer spend is massively higher than usual this summer and YES some of that will be because we have cut masses off the wage bill but then I'm not trying to say that one single thing limits spending - it isn't a case of stadium debt, OR wages, OR paying for a flight to newcastle - it is EVERYTHING that matters).
In other words, Arsenal have spent more this summer in terms of net transfer fees. The reason for that could be because we have probably cut £20m+/year(??? should be loads anyway) off the wage bill, it could be because of new sponsorship deals (don't forget a couple of years ago when you said Arsenal were in serious danger of not being profitable I pointed these type of things out!), it could be because of interest payments not being such a big deal now, but it doesn't change the fact that it has happened. Again, I'm not saying "Arsenal didn't have money for transfers, now they do", I'm saying "Arsenal are spending more money on [net] transfers than they did previously". Total spending (including wages etc) might be more, it might be the same, it might be less - but the amount going on transfers is definitely higher.
In terms of adding up the 'crap buys' that is meaningless without also considering sales - it doesn't matter how much we spent if it was balanced by money coming in. The fact is Arsenal's net spend this summer was the highest it has even been in recent years. You talk about £110 over 2 windows, yet the same two windows saw player sales of MORE than that.
If you buy something for £42m, and sell something for £10m, that means your total spend is higher than buying something for £106m, and selling something for £114m. (the figures will vary depending where you read, wages will change, maybe some other fees, payments spread over time bla bla - but the fact is the net transfer spend is massively higher than usual this summer and YES some of that will be because we have cut masses off the wage bill but then I'm not trying to say that one single thing limits spending - it isn't a case of stadium debt, OR wages, OR paying for a flight to newcastle - it is EVERYTHING that matters).
In other words, Arsenal have spent more this summer in terms of net transfer fees. The reason for that could be because we have probably cut £20m+/year(??? should be loads anyway) off the wage bill, it could be because of new sponsorship deals (don't forget a couple of years ago when you said Arsenal were in serious danger of not being profitable I pointed these type of things out!), it could be because of interest payments not being such a big deal now, but it doesn't change the fact that it has happened. Again, I'm not saying "Arsenal didn't have money for transfers, now they do", I'm saying "Arsenal are spending more money on [net] transfers than they did previously". Total spending (including wages etc) might be more, it might be the same, it might be less - but the amount going on transfers is definitely higher.
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Caporegime
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Net spend is entirely irrelevant, we spent 110mil, if we spend 50mil on tat we could have instead spent 50mil on a great player. Wenger saying we "didn't have the money" is rubbish. Where the 110mil came from is entirely irrelevant, it's that we spent it, spent it poorly. To say we didn't have the money to buy someone like Ozil when we spent almost three times as much in the previous two seasons is laughable.
In what way were we hampered in the transfer market by having more funds available than ever at every stage since the move? You posted in a sense that "see that was the truth all along and now they are admitting it", but it's BS. How can you be hampered when having more, it's illogical.
We could have bought three players at 40mil in the past few years, instead Wenger used the same money to buy meh players. He has hampered himself, nothing more or less. We're talking about peeing away like 20mil on Diaby to be pretty poor when he plays and to almost never actually play.
Read the post you made that I quoted, there is no mention of net spend, there is mention of being hampered(and implied this is due to the stadium as Arsenal fans have regurgitated that ad nauseam for years and years). You also suggested this lack of money is why we couldn't retain players, which also makes no sense. We spend 65mil on wages a year, a couple of our best players leave because we can't afford them...... but our wage spending went up very quickly on other players instead. If we were on 65mil wage spend, players asked for more, we said no and then left and we stayed at the same or a reduced wage bill that would make sense, it would be an indication we couldn't afford to spend more than 65mil. But if the wages leap 15-20mil on other players.. then in what world could we not have increased wages and retained the likes of Henry, Vieira, the rest of them? We couldn't bump Henry up 20-50k to stay, but we could spend 12mil or so and 50-60k a week on Hleb to be utterly useless?
Vieira left because he wanted to win things, Henry left because he wanted to win things.... Denilson left because he wanted to win things
Gilberto got kicked out because Wenger thought Denilson and Song were better, he let Flamini go because he thought Song/Denilson/Diaby were better in those roles. THese weren't financial issues because we bought alternative players and gave those supposedly better replacements like the terrible trio improved deals.
Our spending very quickly spiralled up in wages after the move. We were making almost 50mil more INSTANTLY upon moving, our wages moved up very very quickly in the first 3-4 years, we had no financial trouble in keeping any players who left... they simply all wanted to leave.
There is a buttload more money coming into the club, the biggest increase will be from sponsorship... again because of a truly embarrassing deal Wenger/Dein settled in with Emirates, and TV money. But this will increase average wages as has happened at Arsenal and every premiership club with every large tv deal increase.
The incoming money will level off and our outgoings will increase, that's normal, the improvement in a team comes from stopping wasting that money on the worse players and replacing them with better players.
If we were paying 3mil a year to a competent rotation/back up player like Flamini, instead of Diaby, there is no extra money going in or coming out but the team is better.
The entire premise of your post and commenting on what Wenger said was that somehow Arsenal did worse than we should because we were hampered and trying to not go bankrupt. Well Wenger, don't increase wage spending by 85mil a year. We have been for a few seasons spending 40-50mil a year more than Spurs on wages... to get one place higher bring in 20-25mil from the champs league in a great year, 15mil in a poor year, and half a mil more from the league, that is a net loss achieving champs league vs Spurs, who also got it one year anyway.
If we were so close to the brink of bankruptcy we wouldn't have been able to spend the 100mil we brought in from player sales, but we did, if we were so close then Wenger shouldn't be wasting 20mil over 6-7 years on Diaby, or a similar amount on Rosicky, or spending 18mil on Arshavin and refusing to let him leave because the offers you get don't match up to what you think he's worth.. then just waste him on the bench.
In what way were we hampered in the transfer market by having more funds available than ever at every stage since the move? You posted in a sense that "see that was the truth all along and now they are admitting it", but it's BS. How can you be hampered when having more, it's illogical.
We could have bought three players at 40mil in the past few years, instead Wenger used the same money to buy meh players. He has hampered himself, nothing more or less. We're talking about peeing away like 20mil on Diaby to be pretty poor when he plays and to almost never actually play.
Read the post you made that I quoted, there is no mention of net spend, there is mention of being hampered(and implied this is due to the stadium as Arsenal fans have regurgitated that ad nauseam for years and years). You also suggested this lack of money is why we couldn't retain players, which also makes no sense. We spend 65mil on wages a year, a couple of our best players leave because we can't afford them...... but our wage spending went up very quickly on other players instead. If we were on 65mil wage spend, players asked for more, we said no and then left and we stayed at the same or a reduced wage bill that would make sense, it would be an indication we couldn't afford to spend more than 65mil. But if the wages leap 15-20mil on other players.. then in what world could we not have increased wages and retained the likes of Henry, Vieira, the rest of them? We couldn't bump Henry up 20-50k to stay, but we could spend 12mil or so and 50-60k a week on Hleb to be utterly useless?
Vieira left because he wanted to win things, Henry left because he wanted to win things.... Denilson left because he wanted to win things
Gilberto got kicked out because Wenger thought Denilson and Song were better, he let Flamini go because he thought Song/Denilson/Diaby were better in those roles. THese weren't financial issues because we bought alternative players and gave those supposedly better replacements like the terrible trio improved deals.
Our spending very quickly spiralled up in wages after the move. We were making almost 50mil more INSTANTLY upon moving, our wages moved up very very quickly in the first 3-4 years, we had no financial trouble in keeping any players who left... they simply all wanted to leave.
There is a buttload more money coming into the club, the biggest increase will be from sponsorship... again because of a truly embarrassing deal Wenger/Dein settled in with Emirates, and TV money. But this will increase average wages as has happened at Arsenal and every premiership club with every large tv deal increase.
The incoming money will level off and our outgoings will increase, that's normal, the improvement in a team comes from stopping wasting that money on the worse players and replacing them with better players.
If we were paying 3mil a year to a competent rotation/back up player like Flamini, instead of Diaby, there is no extra money going in or coming out but the team is better.
The entire premise of your post and commenting on what Wenger said was that somehow Arsenal did worse than we should because we were hampered and trying to not go bankrupt. Well Wenger, don't increase wage spending by 85mil a year. We have been for a few seasons spending 40-50mil a year more than Spurs on wages... to get one place higher bring in 20-25mil from the champs league in a great year, 15mil in a poor year, and half a mil more from the league, that is a net loss achieving champs league vs Spurs, who also got it one year anyway.
If we were so close to the brink of bankruptcy we wouldn't have been able to spend the 100mil we brought in from player sales, but we did, if we were so close then Wenger shouldn't be wasting 20mil over 6-7 years on Diaby, or a similar amount on Rosicky, or spending 18mil on Arshavin and refusing to let him leave because the offers you get don't match up to what you think he's worth.. then just waste him on the bench.
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I can't be bothered replying to all of that, I just want to know why DM thinks Arshavin never got used? He made 105 apps (according to Wiki). So surely that shows Wenger did use him, but then something happened to make him not want to? Maybe Arshavin's laziness? I think anyone but DM would admit he was a very lazy player if he wanted to be.
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