Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Mar 2005
- Posts
- 19,694
- Location
- LU7
If Schteve et Monsieur Joey are so fantastically bilingual, where on earth do us Brits get a reputation for not speaking foreign languages from? 


I've never known anyone incorrectly use a comma instead of an apostrophe...

Didn't think I could think any less of Barton until I heard his new French accent. What an idiot.

I've never known anyone incorrectly use a comma instead of an apostrophe...
All looking good for us as long as it translates to more money available (and spent) for players.
"I don't know how active we will be in January," said Wenger. "We have a good squad and these players have a fantastic attitude, they deserve success and we will have success. We will be in the market and if we can find a real top, top player, we will do it. There is no fixed number (of players to sign). We just look at quality.
"If we get that amount of money from a sponsor, it is because they feel we do things in the right way and with the right values and they reward that. After that, it is up to us to spend the money in the right way.
"There are two aspects in any transfer. One is the transfer fee, one is the wages. What has gone through the roof for these top players is the wages. That is why people plead for financial fair play and wish that the money from the new TV money is not dedicated to increasing wages, as that could give trouble to everyone."
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When will people wake up and smell the roses, you don't replace players you think are good enough to win with, that is the problem, he thinks the squad is great. He completely lost the ability to be objective, to see the problems with his players.
He STILL hasn't released Denilson, and Denilson begged to leave, not we tried to get rid of him. We got rid of Overmars because Wenger thought Pires was better, we won't get rid of Diaby as Wenger thinks he's truly world class.... even aside from the fact that he's simply not capable of playing more than 1/3 of the season.
As for the extra money, our wage bill has apparently gone up from 120mil to 143mil, on this squad, is completely and utterly mental, Everton are still spending somewhere around the 60-70mil mark, Spurs 10-20mil more than that, we're 50mil up on them and have no obvious quality difference anywhere in the squad... and laughably refuse to play probably our most talented player.
Don't get me wrong, Spurs quite rightly had clauses in their players contracts, qualify for champs league, get a pretty hefty bonus(I believe their wages went up what 15-20mil for the season, which for 30 odd players is sizeable but "fair" considering the income it brings).
5 years ago had we got rid of Wenger it would have been, reorganise the defence, train the defence properly, mostly a fantastic squad, it would have been a small job.
Today, half the squad needs gutting and replacing, and unless you want to spend 10mil a player at least and 60-80k wages, then that will take time, a few seasons of finding young players with potential with a few quality buys.
Diaby, Squillaci, Chamakh, Walcott, Ramsey, Gervinho, Santos, Gibbs, Mertesacker, Denilson, Park, Rosicky, Flapihanski, Djourou. Some would make okay squad players, but are on basically first team wages and are sucking money out of the club, most barely playing at all. That is conservatively, 30mil a year, more like 35mil and depends a bit on how much of Denilson's wage we're paying at the moment. Eight of those basically never play, 2 of the rest shouldn't ever play, Gervinho/Santos shouldn't ever play, Mert/Gibbs/Walcott shouldn't play much, I don't think a single one of them is good enough to be a squad player for a title winning side, certainly none are good enough to be starters in a title winning side.
Our youth squad is also embarrassingly large, while yielding next to nothing in terms of either footballers for the team to use, or sales, teams from lower leagues are producing prospects and some actually decent footballers every year or two, Arsenal have had 2-3 players come through in the past decade, we pay a lot, have a huge youth squad, and its money down the drain. Even worse is the few other players who really should have made it, the Larsson's, and Bentley's, we either let leave or turn into "problem" players. Larsson should be a squad player at Arsenal, but we refused to give him games, same way we refused to give Vela or Bendtner games. Wenger has no clue about rotation, when a player is fit, he puts them back in, often right after an injury, and runs them into the ground to get reinjured again rather than rotating and protecting players.
If Arsenal suddenly got 200mil for transfers and could afford another 100mil a year in wages, does anyone trust Wenger to buy the right players anymore? Santos, Mert, Gervinho, etc, etc...