So many teams are facing financial crisis. I just read that Leeds lost £64m in the year when they gained promotion to the Prem which is meant to be the absolute guaranteed money bonanza.
Covid has effected everyone but those with the most stable playing squad and managed have been effected the least

Yep, it depends when you take the date from for setting expectations. From the point we were sold the new stadium we should expect a lot more than we’ve been given. From the point we moved wenger on we should expect much more than we’ve been given. From the point Arteta took over I expected a bit more in the league but not as much in trophies. From the point right now what do we all expect for the next 1-3 years?

I think the problem we have is that fans look at the summer and say well if we move 10 players out that would raise £150m+ and we can then buy 3 or 4 top players with that money.

The trouble is that football just doesn't work like that or every one would be offloading their deadwood at the start of each transfer window for big money and then re-investing the proceeds in better players.

Let's take Lacazette as an example, fans might think we can offload him quickly for £30m but factor in his wages, say £25m over 3 seasons, and few clubs can afford him, especially in the post-Covid envronment. Those that can have probably already got better players than him anyway. So, you are left with two options, drop the asking price dramatically so that the balance of transfer fee and wages becomes more enticing or keep him and give him a shiny new contract. Neither option is especially attractive.

The same can be said of almost every player we have, bar some of the kids who are on lower wages.

Either we take a financial hit in order to sell players quickly or we drag things out hoping to create a bidding war but run the risk of missing out on our top targets, if they would even want to come to a club with no european football at all.

That's the scale of the problem we have going forwards.

If Edu manages to raise £150m+ in the summer and reinvests that in 3 or 4 top players he deserves a statue

I's love to see him use his brazilian and south american connections to bring in some high potential kids like Martinelli.

You’re

Agree entirely Darren. The questions I posed here a few weeks back

1) do you believe Josh Kroenke has the necessary qualifications and experience to appoint a manager and technical director of a major European football club?

2) do you believe you will see Arsenal return to a position where we are competing for major trophies whilst Stanley Kroenke is owner ?

3) do you believe if Wenger was allowed to continue after 2018 we would have improved or got worse than our 6th place ?

4) considering your answers to points 1+2+3 do you believe the timing and content of Michael Artetas substitutions are having a major impact to our direction as a club?

I hope to see us competing for top 4 next season. Qualification not essential but I want us to have a proper stab at it. Top 6 in the league would be progress

Whilst Stanley Kroenke continues to be our owner I doubt we will see a day where we compete for a league title again.

My sons side got beat 6-2. naturally the manager screamed and berated his best player and laid into his keeper who is nearly always reliable because they lost. Completely understandable right

Well, the bad news. We have 8 games left, 4 points behind Everton and they have 2 games in hand. We are 6 points behind sperz, they have a game in hand. We aren't likely to catch either given our form.

If anything we need to wonder if Leeds or Villa don't finish ahead of us. This is the worse league run I've ever seen us as a fan. Many of you, especially those of you who have been around for decades have seen some dire seasons, worse than this.

We will turn it around. At some point. How long remains to be seen. This season may force us to do a revisionist account of Wenger's final years. I still think he needed to go. We'll wander in the proverbial wilderness for a few years and come out at some point back to a top club that is reflected in the table and in silverware.

If you feel a revisionist account of the Wenger period is needed go back in time on the forum to April 20th 2018 when Wenger resigned and see the jubilation in the posts here.

If people need a reminder why we are where we are and how bad it got review those posts

We finished 6th in the table in 2018 when Wenger left. Of last night's starting 11 only 4 played under Wenger. Since he left we have a net spend of £220m and now sit in 9th and likely to have our worst league campaign in over two decades. This isn't on Wenger.

Wrong, the hangover from that period still exists

In January we had to give away or loan out 4 players from the Wenger era on huge money not involved in the squad at all just to get their wages off the books. If you think this doesn’t affect the building of the squad your kidding yourself and if you think this doesn’t affect Arteta your in denial. We have had an albatross round our neck for some time.

Also Arteta hasn’t spent 200 million, he’s spent around 70 odd in Partey and Gabriel and chunks of that had been funded from players sales.

It’s working with an arm tied behind your back

I think to review how much wenger effects where we are now you could look at all the wenger signings who are now no longer with us and see how much money they were sold for and whether they have gone on to do well since they left.

There is a separate discussion on all the decisions on contracts and signings that have been made post wenger. But for me the last few years of the wenger era were going to cause us problems for 5-8 years because of the money lost, wasted and the huge contracts given. We’ve not necessarily learnt all the lessons from then.

Take Kane out of spurs and they’re worse than us for sure. Can’t see how he stays there if he has ambition to win the biggest trophies. But then who buys him for what spurs want? Not when players like Haaland are available for a similar price. Kane may be forced to stay

100 percent correct. Take a look at the posts on here the day Wenger resigned. We were under no illusions.

An entire new defence was required I mean 4 new players! a replacement for Ramsey who was running down his contract a Sanchez replacement not to mention the mesut Özil dilemma.

We are still trying to work through these issues now and it’s affected us this season.

Spurs 4 shots 2 goals, Newcastle 17 shots 1 goal. One thing we haven’t done all season is find a way to win games when we either don’t play well or don’t dominate the game.

We pretty much only win when we play well.

The other thing I’ll say about arsenal is as fans we are probably the most reactionary to results. I don’t think that’s entirely our fault, part of that is a result of what we’ve been fed for years and years. But at the moment every defeat brings howls of derision for lack of progress and each victory is praised for the progress we’re making.

Wouldn't be a surprise actually Bernard. We're more of a selling club, rarely buy star studded players who are functional along with their notoriety. Covid isn't helping either for many clubs. No bums on seats as it were. TV and betting revenue aside. Now the revision of CL in the mix. Fans will return gradually as hoped for FAC final as a start. Big summer signings, we can only wish.

...I also think Son's one of the most underrated players. He's been almost as a clutch, get out of jail card, player for them as Kane has.

Joe Willock earns a late point for Newcastle against Spurs. 2-2 final score. Big blow for spurs top 4 hopes. Looking at the run ins I think Liverpool get 4th

He's been really good for Newcastle the couple of times I've seen him, it's noticeable how much more confident he is in his abilities after starting regularly for a while. Not sure Arteta is done with him. Ideally he stays on loan at Newcastle next season and continues his development, because box-to-box midfielders who can score are always an asset.

I agree with this with regards to how fans tend to speculate, we are not going to bring in 4-5 new players, let alone the 7-8 some are talking about.

Looking at it a little more realistically though, there are definitely sellable assets in the squad; Maitland-Niles is doing well at West Brom, and I think many teams from the bottom half will be following him closely. With him being young and English, I don't think 15-20m is unrealistic. Likewise with Nketiah, Bellerin and possibly Chambers. So while we won't be raising close to 150m, I don't think 40-50m from three sales is that unlikely, and there should be some funds available to start with. Just two good signings in the right areas could do a lot to push us forward. There are ways to play smart in the transfer market, without doing a Pépé type signing.

Majority of players were more concerned what Easter Sunday roast they were going to have. Some had interlull hangover.

[quote="Bernard"][quote="Rich"]
Still major surgery required on this squad, been saying all season and the season before.[/quote]
Don’t Arsenal have to pay the Bank of England £150m in eight weeks?

(1) If by major surgery you mean players out, I expect you to get your wish.
(2) If by major surgery you mean players out being replaced by players in equating to a net zero spend, then I imagine that’s the best we can hope for.
(3) If by major surgery you expect expenditure on new arrivals to exceed the amount received from selling players, I am not so confident especially as I thought Zed indicated reports that Stan Kroenke is being sued over the LA Rams move. If I’m wrong about that, then apologies to Zed.

Worryingly there are suggestions there’s another possible angle to this, related to the repayment of the Bank of England loan and presumably now Kroenke’s court case. Namely, funds received from players sold will not be put towards new recruits, but towards paying off actual or possible debts. Hopefully that won’t be the case. But I don’t think it’s impossible either. We’re a Stan Kroenke club.[/quote]
Report was from me Bernard. A billion in fines for damages will be nothing to Stan, but takes away monies for Arsenal.
Oh and here's a lawsuit Stan just won recently over a ranch he owns in Canada. Took a decade apparently.

https://www.celebritynetworth.com/artic ... nch/?amp=1

Le grove on Twitter ....

It is amusing to read the ghouls come out of the basement after a bad result.

'NO IMPROVEMENT'

Nothing red flags that you struggle with watching football quite like stating you haven't seen an improvement.

And this ‘improvement’ that I for one am struggling to see, how is it measurable/tangible?

As for struggling to watch football, well I certainly struggle to watch the turgid rubbish that was served up yesterday.

Againest spurs when we won and looked the better team ? When we beat Leicester away comfortably ? When we scored 3 againest chelsea

The structure of the team and improved defence, our performances againest the bigger sides. The fact our recent form puts us close to the top 4 in the form league

Rich is right, our fans are the most reactionary.

Not really a measure of improvement though is it, to simply list the good performances? For each good performance there has been an equivalent poor. That’s why we are absolutely mid table.

Looking over the past twenty years I can’t call that an improvement. Rather the opposite. This season has not demonstrably built on last season. And I feel dispirited about our immediate future in a way that takes me back to the early seventies.

And it’s not reactionary to express displeasure at watching dross.

We didn’t play any dross in the last 5 years of Wenger did we? Or Emery?

It went to pot at the start of the season. Starting the season with our midfield options was ridiculous

Arteta picking up from two failed managers And a crisis in the boardroom .. during the most consequential mitigating circumstance to hit elite sport since WW2. No proper preseason, no fans, and a limited budget

If you can’t see this I don’t know what to say

This is nonsense. We did play dross under Wenger and under Emery. And our club situation stinks. All for the reasons that you have given.

The non sequitur is that you seem to be defending Arteta. Where have I mentioned Arteta? What I have said is that I can see no improvement in the club’s situation. Rather the opposite.

Exactly. It’s going to happen every once in a while. Not referring to Arteta specifically but we have employed a manager to oversee a rebuilding process and are now seeing calls to sack the same manager who is in charge of rebuilding a team is short sighted. That’s a multi year process. The people calling for this don’t seem to understand that means tearing up a plan and starting from scratch thus adding 1-2 years to the rebuild.

How much of this do you think we can do before it seriously damages the club.

Dunno. It’s not me calling for Arteta’s head. The problems are way deeper than that.

I think so

Watched most of the game, again last night. I just don't understand our impotence. In the first half the left side of the field had most of the future of the club (next 3 years) present on the field. Gabriel, Tierney, Partey and Aubameyang. These are players that almost everyone believes are quality players and should not be sold. We consistently were unable to play the ball upfield.

Even if the right side looked sparse, this is where our quality existed yesterday and nothing at all. If we had S-R and Saka they would have made a difference to the RHS. I don't know why we persist with 3 up front it is not and has never worked this season.

I want us to succeed. I want to see us challenge for the title and CL. More importantly I want to be convinced we are improving. Our home record in the EPL has absolutely crashed this season. I make it 7 home games where we have failed to score. We need to win the Europa just for the money, this season. We have the best draw but we need to see the players put in the effort.

Before I retired I noticed a whole new generation of workers who were not interested in putting in the hard yards, who lacked resilience when things, often minor in the scheme of life, happened and were simply not the hard workers who had always made Australia a good place to live. This is the generation playing for Arsenal as well. Perhaps that is where the problem lies. They get a contract at Arsenal and are overpaid compared to other clubs and just think they have arrived and don't have to do anything because the monies in the bank every payday.

I can't put my finger on it at the club but the players lack motivation and it is not good enough. There are players in the Liverpool team that really are not great players but they are motivated - same with Leeds and a few other teams. Perry Groves, Ray Parlor and numerous others weren't brilliant players but they tried.

Maguire looked like he clipped welbeck who was ready to tap in and give Brighton a 2-1 lead over Man U. Would have been a penalty and red card and none too dissimilar to the Luiz v Wolves incident. Welbeck is ready to tap it in so why does he go down?
This season Man U have had so many of these and I do believe we haven’t had anywhere near the same decisions go our way.
Var has ironed out the atrocious errors in the game but that’s all it has done because it’s still littered with mistakes that var seems unwilling to correct

Pardon Daka, hat trick for Salzburg tonight and 23 goals in 19 games this season. Exactly the sort of striker we should be going for in the summer

But...that’s the amount of players we have regularly been signing each season for at least 4-5 seasons now.
If we’re not in europe at all then we have to trim down the squad massively we just wouldn’t need 28-30 players.
I do expect at least 5 new faces this summer, whether they are the quality we need or can obtain is a separate debate but purely on numbers I think we will see those sorts of numbers come in.

Nobody’s expecting a ton of players to arrive anyway certainly nobody said that here, Many have observed that we need to acquire in several areas that’s all.

I agree with the comments Socrates made about the difficultly in signing players but that doesn’t mean it’s not what’s needed it just means we are screwed for some time if we can’t do it all at once.

Not sure how these two sentences go together? If we need to trim the squad down surely that makes signing five new players more unlikely.

We have 25 players in the first team squad not counting the ones who are out on loan. Of those 25 I would say Ceballos is very unlikely to return next season, and Ødegaard is a possibility if we can make it work financially. Two new players and one or two of the loanees returning to the squad is what I'd expect, maybe a third signing if we can find a Willian type deal. Those huge overhauls rarely happen, and the financial situation in football has made them even more unlikely in my opinion.

But in prior years Rich we didn’t have a £150m Bank of England loan to pay back at the end of May.