Is it ffp or that we aren’t savvy enough ? We have 215 million in the bank yet can’t sign new players ? It reeks of bollocks and I’m not sure if I believe it. Actually I don’t

You can visibly see there is no plan. Most of our recent major signings have come from moments of desperation even Mertesacker. I can only really recall Xhaka and Sanchez coming in pre meditated type transfers where we we working them for a while and was thought out.

We might have been able to compete if Wenger hadn’t been allowed to *%^@ up so much over the last 3 years but now it just feels dead and the people who will envitably criticise Emery will be missing the point.

As Darren implies, FFP is affecting Arsenal more than 'financially doped' clubs. But the question needs to be asked, how the hell can that be? Look at City's expenditure against ours. If FFP has more effect on us than them, why is that? I don't believe City employ the best accountants in the world while we use a back street odd job man who failed his Maths GCSE.

I'm thus not convinced it's Arsenal not being savvy enough, Top Gun. As I said recently, I recall Gazidis saying words to the effect that there are far too many loopholes in FFP for it to work effectively. If Arsenal actually wanted to get round it like everyone else does, they could do with one hand tied behind their back. I honestly believe that.

I see our problem more like this. FFP and the self-sustaining strategy are being deliberately used by Kroenke to provide ready made legal (FFP) and moral (self-sustaining strategy) excuses for him not to stick his hands in his own pockets.

I reckon FFP is a God-send to Kroenke. All he has to say is look, Arsenal are in real danger of falling foul of FFP. So even if I wanted to spend money on my soccer team somewhere in London town, I couldn't. It would also be cheating on our noble holier than thou self-sustaining strategy, so we can use that alongside FFP to con those of our fan base pre-occupied by that sort of stuff.

One of the last times I can remember is strengthening from a position of strength. Have us a good push to the unbeaten season.

If Koscielny has a broken jaw there are people saying that is usually a 2 month injury.
Makes me laugh that the media push the notion of an injury crisis at spurs. They’ve lost Kane for 2 months and alli for 3 weeks. That’s it. They knew son would be away and Sissoko missed 1 game.
Arsenal have 3 season ending injuries. I bet mkhitaryan misses more games in his current lay off than Kane does. Spurs have been one of the most fortunate clubs for injuries over the last few years, as have Liverpool.

I think your right. I mean one of the last excuses was that Arsenal needed a certain amount of banked cash as part of the mortgage agreement for the Emirates so we couldn’t spend the 100 million. Well now the 100 million is 200 and we still have an average team. Now the excuse is the 7% premier league wage rule so we can’t bring people in.

I got an email from the club which looked very tabloid like advertising tickets for the next europa league game at 18 quid. I do wonder when the product really doesn’t meet the price or demand what will happen.

I think what’s happening at Arsenal could be identical to Blackpool just on a much larger scale

Envisage this in the next 5 years. There is a half a billion in the coffers, the owner decides to pay himself a dividend of 450 mil, and then sell the club at some absolutely silly price which will be paid. He sells to another American who wants to spend 15 years to double or treble his money.

The interested thing is that in the business world it is generally a well run business if it has a 20% debt ratio to value. Having money sitting idly in the bank is not good business.

The excuses from Kroenke are poor. Self sustaining would not have us banking money. What he borrowed has nothing to do with the company unless as was mentioned we have asset stripping to give him dividend money to pay his debts. This is at the clubs expense.

Time to start buoycotting games to show that the fans want money spent. Yep sounds like Blackpool doesn’t it.

Not going to happen though is it?, I just get the feeling a lot our fan base are accepting of mediocrity, I've heard people on here and many other places defending Kroenke, "we need patience.." etc., you'd think we just came off the back of Wenger's best years not a decade of austerity and being told to be patient, now we're being told to be patient AGAIN whilst the likelihood of us ever being successful gets even more remote as we decline both on and off the field and our (ex)rivals pull away from us.

I'm really not sure where we go from here, new commercial deals mean an extra £50M ish from next season but if (when) Kroenke takes money out, he probably already is taking it out to the effect of repaying the loan he used to buy Usmanov's shares, then what difference will that make?, we're just an investment vehicle so he can borrow money to build his other sports franchises or add to his portfolio.

Man City are the only PL team bypassing FFP. Chelsea obviously did for several years but have been adhering to it for some time. Arsenal are not some special case here choosing to follow a path of righteousness. The rest of the clubs are doing the same, except for City. We have the third highest net transfer spend in the PL in the last 5 years. Granted, Man City and Man Utd dwarf us in comparison but all of this talk about us not spending money is simply not accurate. Whether we spend it wisely or not is an entirely different matter.

I am starting to think that is what is happening

Just watching the game. Defending first half appalling but pretty well just as per normal. But Čech’s mistake took any chance of redemption away from us.

The bottom line is that both their keepers are miles ahead of ours.

I can’t imagine how Emery feels at this stage of the season. He has given most players opportunities to change and be an integral part of the future. The result - In reality a whole new defence required in the next 1.5 years plus a proper keeper & some quality in the midfield and don’t spend more than 40 mil.

I would have thought Only Holding ( and the jury is still out on him) and Bellerin are either of an age or quality to be in the backs. Holding may only be third or fourth choice. In defensive midfield Xhaka needs to go and there is a lack of total depth in this area.

Čech is poor and Leno does not convince me as he will make errors and is inconsistent.

So you could spend 300 mil and still be short of quality. Good luck with your 40mil. But those figures are only based on if you want to be be looking at top 4 not a challenge for the EPL

Yep finished watching the game & I think I need to take some time away from the team & the forum. Will have a look now and then but watching Man U celebrating was just too much for me.

I may have been young enough and keen when Terry Mancini was trying to save us, to keep up the enthusiasm but I have too many other interests to waste time if half our players couldn’t care less and the owner is not interested.

I keep hearing about Arsenal’s wage bill needing to comply with ffp (maybe that’s a prem league rule) it can’t increase by more than 7%? The figure doesn’t matter too much as my question is how have Everton and Fulham not absolutely blasted their total wage bill in to oblivion over the last year. That’s even before you look at the £200m spent by Everton and £100m spent by fulham

I wouldn’t be so sure. As I have said previously I think Emery is on a hiding to nothing and the fans will turn on him but Kroenke will get both barrels soon.

Dec is right to an extent, Emery hasn’t been helped by the fact the money Wenger spent recently really didn’t bring in quality. The 100 million wasted on Xhaka, Mustafi and Perez was a disaster. You could have signed almost anyone for that.

I think we need 6 players. I can understand why Allegri or Enrique might have asked for 150 million to spend in order to join.

We are being linked with a lot of loan signings..........Suarez, Perisic, Malcolm, Rodriquez, Nkunku. I wonder if we will be able to get any over the line.

Barca have signed de jong from Ajax for £60m odd, leaves them free to let Suarez go. Also there are fresh doubts over barca’s Move for Rabiot.

PSG are resigned to letting him go, if only we had some money(!) we could go in with £15-20m and tempt PSG to let him go 6 months early so they can get a fee

I think Rich has made a good point regarding dec's claim that everyone apart from City adheres to FFP. But I still remember what Gazidis, who was once a big proponent of FFP, said about it. That there are so many loopholes in it that in effect clubs will and are able to get round it. So how can we be sure only City are not keeping to it?

It just seems strange to me that Arsenal are so keen on using it to defend not spending much money. If they wanted to get round it, from what Gazidis said, I'd be surprised if they couldn't. Which is my guess what plenty of clubs other than City might be doing.

My own suspicion is that Kroenke could be using FFP to placate or appease fans who may otherwise be moaning about a lack of spending and from that, accusing him of a lack of ambition concerning Arsenal's fortunes on the pitch.

Exactly how I feel Gaz, we had 10 years of shut up and be patient and where has that got us? - lumbered with Kroenke, out of the CL on a regular basis and being told we can only loan players.

It wouldn't be so bad if we had a squad packed with youngsters who looked like they could be something special, but on top of the above we have a squad full of ageing players on too much money that nobody wants.

We have to start from scratch with no money while City, Liverpool, Chelsea and United pull away from us off the field (and on) and Spurs move to a bigger stadium, what exactly has been the benefit of moving to the Emirates?, other than a £750m asset on KSE's books of course.. worst thing that ever happened to the club.

Other than City, what clubs are out-spending Arsenal? There is only one and that is Man Utd, who have the resources to do so and are clearly adhering to FFP. Chelsea have curtailed their spending over the last few years and have specifically quoted FFP as the reason. I'm not arguing for a second that FFP is bulletproof or even close to it. However, what I am saying is that clubs are by and large spending within their own financial limits so effectively all of our rivals for top 6, except for City, are operating a self-sustaining strategy. 6 or 7 years ago there was a valid argument to say that Arsenal spent very little relative to their rivals. That is no longer the case if you exclude the two Manchester clubs who operate at a totally different level.

Until the defense is sorted out, we can't expect too much. It's as simple as that.

Dec, even Wenger says how easy it is to get around FFP. I'm not convinced it has any worth at all. Abramovich wanted to curtail his spending on Chelsea so used it as an excuse. I'm suspicious Kroenke is doing the same. If Arsenal wanted to spend more I believe they could. But I suspect Kroenke doesn't want to. Gazidis implied FFP was a joke (let me clarify he didn't actually use the word 'joke' but he made his rubbishing of it perfectly clear). That was despite formerly being so enthusiastic about it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.thegua ... rn-arsenal

Sokratis our until the end of Feb. Doesn’t look like Kos has broken his jaw though

I am minded to agree with your thoughts on this Bernard. It is the only explanation for why clubs with less money, smaller stadiums, less commercial income can still vastly outspend arsenal.

The comma in the spurs game won’t stop going on about spurs missing their front 4.
Eriksen they have chosen to rest
They knew Son would be away and he’s back for the next game so only missed 1 prem game
Alli is our for 3 weeks
Kane is our for 6-8 weeks

I’m sure there are plenty of prem clubs willing to show a much worse ‘injury crisis’.

Palace 2-0 spurs at half time. Spurs miss a late pen as well.

So this is what happens when spurs miss a couple of good players

Rich, Who are the smaller clubs vastly outspending Arsenal?

Net spend over 5 years. Same as Everton

https://www.transferleague.co.uk/premie ... ve-seasons

Tiny Totts having a bad run - 3 defeats in last four games. Like us only one cup to go for now, otherwise also rans. I exclude finishing in the top four because as everybody tells me that is not as good as winning a trophy.

Feyenoord 6 ajax 2, I thank you.

MOTM Robin van Persie, who was right to leave us.

Perisic has handed in a transfer request. Might be something in this

Need them to lose PL matches.

The Perisic interest only really makes sense if its a loan with an option to buy and not an obligation. He's 30 in Feb and he's apparently not been pulling up any trees in Italy (a slower and less physical league) and they would want a few million loan fee for just four months and then over £30m to sign him on a permanet deal. It makes little sense financially or footballing-wise really. I'd be quite surprised if he was a big success in the PL.

I do see some logic in pursuing several loan deals with an option to buy rather than an obligation. If we could bring in two or three loans it would be a throw of the dice in the hope that one might hit the ground running but it wouldn't bankrupt us if it didn't work out and if it was a spectacular success we'd have the option of a permanent deal.

I don’t think it makes much sense either. We’ve too many players close to or over 30 in the squad and are going to cause a real problem when we have to swap them out in a couple of years. 30 million for a 30 year old is way too much it really.

Suarez or Malcolm I’d understand as that’s squad building but this seems quite desperate

If we are going after attackers, the strategy must be if they sore 3, we'll score 4. And our defense will basically be posession football. If they don't have the ball, they can't score. Barcelona, glory days of Liverpool, etc.

Article on our financial situation.

http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2019 ... ns-league/

Incredible thing was Staff costs climbed from £199.4 million to just over £240 million, £16.8 million of which were exceptional costs. Staggering for a team not competing.

The only way forward is a spurs Liverpool model where we have a strong first team but our wage bill is reduced to around 150 million a season to enable greater investment in new talent, a transfer policy that says we only spend big on under 25s so we aren’t throwing money out of the club and if a high profile asset is playing hard ball over a new contract and won’t sign then place them on the transfer list and tell the public they are to invite the highest bidder.

It will happen sooner or later. In the meantime "C'mon Dortmund!"

Very very very underwhelmed by these Perisic rumours.
Really hope it doesn't happen.
Soon to be 30 and a possible 35 million outlay in the summer is just foolhardy and stupid.
Rather young Saka is given a go then bringing in another on high wages.
Really need to be aiming for the Torreira/Guendouzi type signings. Young hungry with resale value.
Malcolm I can understand and welcome but Perisic no thank you.

Been saying that for a long time too