The Arsenal Thread

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Meh the goal was very scrappy, but if it wasn't for Cesar I think Arsenal would have been 3-0 up at least.
 
Le Tiss saying the goal may have been offside because of where Arteta was when the shot was made. I can't say though as I haven't seen the match due to slow death caused by copious amounts of alcohol
 
I can't remember at all when I suggested that a single player can win trophies on his own, but Man United were a quality team before his arrival and still are following the arrival. But if the signing of Van Persie doesn't push the team onto a new level (In this case, winning something as they failed to do last year) then I still don't think he's worth £20m, Because in that case the goals, however impressive the numbers, still haven't led to success. Man United bought RVP to improve the team, so if the team doesn't improve their competition standings, then the signing wasn't a success, no matter what numbers he puts up. That's what I feel anyway, feel free to argue.

And in the case of your final point, it seems you're just hearing it wrong then. Don't worry, it happens.

He can improve the team and we could still go without a trophy, y'know? Hypothetical scenario, we sign RVP, he scores a ton of goals, we finish with even more points and a higher GD than last year, quantifiable improvement. Now, if City go out and sign a Best of the world XI with Messi, Ronaldo et al, despite our own improvement it's still unlikely that we'll be able to out perform that squad. RVP cannot help that, he has done everything he can and has more than delivered on his price tag. Yet by your logic, he has failed.

You never said explicitly a single player can win a trophy, but by stating that RVP has been a failed investment if we win nothing, it can only imply that he can win a trophy by himself, otherwise it'd be unfair to judge a team's success on him alone. Although I suppose I can go along with your argument, if we make it to a cup final, Ferdinand plays a sloppy back pass and we concede in the final kick of the game, I'll just scream ****** murder at RVP for not being on the line to clear it.

I hear your argument fine. It's stupid.
 
I can't remember at all when I suggested that a single player can win trophies on his own, but Man United were a quality team before his arrival and still are following the arrival. But if the signing of Van Persie doesn't push the team onto a new level (In this case, winning something as they failed to do last year) then I still don't think he's worth £20m, Because in that case the goals, however impressive the numbers, still haven't led to success. Man United bought RVP to improve the team, so if the team doesn't improve their competition standings, then the signing wasn't a success, no matter what numbers he puts up. That's what I feel anyway, feel free to argue.

And in the case of your final point, it seems you're just hearing it wrong then. Don't worry, it happens.

But when you reach the top - or in United's case very near the top - it gets harder and harder to go 'up a level'. Stick Van Persie at Plymouth and they'll become the best team in the league almost instantaneously. Put him at United, and they'll get better, but because he's surrounded by players of roughly equal level, he won't necessarily improve the team to the extent that they automatically win everything they can. If your theory was true, then every signing made by a top team who didn't go on to do better than they did last season is a failure.

Actually, we can extend the Van Persie to Plymouth analogy. What if they signed him for a tenner and paid him a fiver a week. He destroyed the league, scoring 40 goals, but Plymouth didn't do better than they did the previous season because they played Warren Feeney in goal. By your standards, he's still a bad signing. It wasn't his fault, but because in this alternate universe they finished a position lower than they did last season, he's automatically not worth his negligible transfer fee.

You cannot just measure the success of a player based on one statistic, and one statistic only. If City went out and bought Messi, Ronaldo and Falcao and went and destroyed the league, with Van Persie scoring 25 as United came second, that would mean he's not worth the money? Crazy talk.

EDIT: Joel pretty much just said exactly the same thing in more detail.
 
How did Jack and Beast do? Saw from stats Gervinho was withdrawn quite soon after coming on as a sub... injury?
 
How did Jack and Beast do? Saw from stats Gervinho was withdrawn quite soon after coming on as a sub... injury?

Stretchered off. Looked relatively nasty, actually. Wilshere ran the show.
 
For those of you who didnt see the game. Game was positive for Arsenal with lots of tempo, Jack looked good but was taken off due to being tired I think. We should have been up even 2-0 or 3-0 but their goalkeeper was on fire today.
 
If you work as a car salesman, you sell a lot of cars and more than justify their investment in you. If the rest of the people at your dealership are bad at their job and sell nothing, are you happy to be sacked and adjudged a failure despite your impressive individual performance?

No player can single handedly win a trophy, so why on Earth would you judge investment on them based on if they do? Everyone can see Cazorla has been fantastic for Arsenal, if the players around him play poorly, and you finish 5th, he hasn't done poorly, the team has. If City won nothing to date after all their investment, then you could judge that wasteful, but if Aguero within that collective investment scores 25+ goals a game then he was a worthwhile investment, others let him down.

You just sound like you're searching for a desperate argument to justify selling RVP.

:O
 
There is also a case for saying that United needed to spend on RVP just to stay with their competitor's spending, just to maintain our position in the league. We needed investment just to keep up with the likes of City and Chelsea, so without winning any silverware he may still be reguarded as a good buy.
 
He can improve the team and we could still go without a trophy, y'know? Hypothetical scenario, we sign RVP, he scores a ton of goals, we finish with even more points and a higher GD than last year, quantifiable improvement. Now, if City go out and sign a Best of the world XI with Messi, Ronaldo et al, despite our own improvement it's still unlikely that we'll be able to out perform that squad. RVP cannot help that, he has done everything he can and has more than delivered on his price tag. Yet by your logic, he has failed.

You never said explicitly a single player can win a trophy, but by stating that RVP has been a failed investment if we win nothing, it can only imply that he can win a trophy by himself, otherwise it'd be unfair to judge a team's success on him alone. Although I suppose I can go along with your argument, if we make it to a cup final, Ferdinand plays a sloppy back pass and we concede in the final kick of the game, I'll just scream ****** murder at RVP for not being on the line to clear it.

I hear your argument fine. It's stupid.

We simply have a different view on what makes players worth a certain value. Only difference is, you get hostile when someone doesn't kneel to your opinion. As a result, I'm not going to bother continuing the discussion regarding the Van Persie transfer, because nothing worthwhile is going to come of it.

Regarding the result today: A win is a win, but going by what I have heard it was a flat performance yet again, we won't get many more points playing with the lack of urgency we showed vs Norwich and Schalke recently, that's for sure. Need to up our game.
 
We simply have a different view on what makes players worth a certain value. Only difference is, you get hostile when someone doesn't kneel to your opinion. As a result, I'm not going to bother continuing the discussion regarding the Van Persie transfer, because nothing worthwhile is going to come of it.

Regarding the result today: A win is a win, but going by what I have heard it was a flat performance yet again, we won't get many more points playing with the lack of urgency we showed vs Norwich and Schalke recently, that's for sure. Need to up our game.

And in the case of your final point, it seems you're just hearing it wrong then. Don't worry, it happens.

Just as hostile as me calling your argument stupid. If calling your argument stupid qualifies as 'insulting another member' and infraction worthy, I think that statement is equally insulting; and provoked it in the first place.
 
The Swiss Ramble

Gazidis and his self sustaining business model made almost 20m loss last season. Only player sales made it positive for us. Also our wages to revenue rate has increased now to over 60% which is quite poor compared to United's.

Also according to their calculations we could easily spend 50-60m from our cash reserves. Which would mean at least one player for 25m on 100k salary.

This is why, even I though I am a huge Wenger fan, I am quick to blast the the "Arsenal way". they are not a pauper club, yes they cant match City (neither can we) but they have enough to bring in one major player each year, without jepoardising what they do as a business. For whatever reason they choose not to. This isnt City ruining football or whatever excuse, this is a failing of the board as a whole. **** its not even that self sustaining.
 
This is why, even I though I am a huge Wenger fan, I am quick to blast the the "Arsenal way". they are not a pauper club, yes they cant match City (neither can we) but they have enough to bring in one major player each year, without jepoardising what they do as a business. For whatever reason they choose not to. This isnt City ruining football or whatever excuse, this is a failing of the board as a whole. **** its not even that self sustaining.

Board have failed as we need to sell players in order to stay on green as they have failed to get good enough commercial deals which would cover us so we don't need to sell players. Also overpaying for **** and underpaying for actual talent is their fault.

Still part of Arsenal's current problems lies with Wenger. He has been far too happy to just sit quiet while board sell our best players each year without really replacing them with equal or greater quality. He also doesn't reward good performances, but chooses rather to play players out of position. Although there aren't many managers who could have done what Wenger has I still think is he the right man anymore for us. We don't really need manager who can find the hidden gems on the cheap. We need one who can make us a winning team once more.
 
Board have failed as we need to sell players in order to stay on green as they have failed to get good enough commercial deals which would cover us so we don't need to sell players. Also overpaying for **** and underpaying for actual talent is their fault.

Still part of Arsenal's current problems lies with Wenger. He has been far too happy to just sit quiet while board sell our best players each year without really replacing them with equal or greater quality. He also doesn't reward good performances, but chooses rather to play players out of position. Although there aren't many managers who could have done what Wenger has I still think is he the right man anymore for us. We don't really need manager who can find the hidden gems on the cheap. We need one who can make us a winning team once more.

Within reason, I certainly wouldn't want, for example, a manager like Jose Mourinho to take over as he would require massive funds to build his type of squad. Adding a couple of quality players would be nice, but I fear that when Wenger finally does leave, the replacement will start spending like a moron. I certainly don't welcome the thought of Wenger not being with us anymore.
 
Board have failed as we need to sell players in order to stay on green as they have failed to get good enough commercial deals which would cover us so we don't need to sell players. Also overpaying for **** and underpaying for actual talent is their fault.

Still part of Arsenal's current problems lies with Wenger. He has been far too happy to just sit quiet while board sell our best players each year without really replacing them with equal or greater quality. He also doesn't reward good performances, but chooses rather to play players out of position. Although there aren't many managers who could have done what Wenger has I still think is he the right man anymore for us. We don't really need manager who can find the hidden gems on the cheap. We need one who can make us a winning team once more.

Indeed, the defence of "we can't keep up with City or Chelsea" is a false one. Wenger is too comfortable, or at least unwilling to challenge, its like his hard nosed edge has faded.
 
Within reason, I certainly wouldn't want, for example, a manager like Jose Mourinho to take over as he would require massive funds to build his type of squad. Adding a couple of quality players would be nice, but I fear that when Wenger finally does leave, the replacement will start spending like a moron. I certainly don't welcome the thought of Wenger not being with us anymore.

Thing is about Jose, give him funds and he'll win you trophies. Simple as that. Besides, that's being harsh on Mourinho: he didn't spend much at Porto, and at Inter he came up with some great signings for relatively little money. Take his treble winning season, for example, in which he actually made a 31 million euro profit.

That aside though, the point Quasit was trying to make is that Arsenal don't need MASSIVE investment to challenge regularly. A couple of top players and a slightly deeper quality squad, and they're on par with anyone in the Prem. At very least, Wenger could just replace the top players he lost with other ones. Cazorla is a rare example of Wenger doing just that, and it has worked out spectacularly.
 
Within reason, I certainly wouldn't want, for example, a manager like Jose Mourinho to take over as he would require massive funds to build his type of squad. Adding a couple of quality players would be nice, but I fear that when Wenger finally does leave, the replacement will start spending like a moron. I certainly don't welcome the thought of Wenger not being with us anymore.

Certainly no for Mourinho. Wouldn't want him anywhere near Arsenal.

Edit: But that's just because of my personal opinion of him. He is a winner and would probably make Arsenal winners.
 
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Thing is about Jose, give him funds and he'll win you trophies. Simple as that. Besides, that's being harsh on Mourinho: he didn't spend much at Porto, and at Inter he came up with some great signings for relatively little money. Take his treble winning season, for example, in which he actually made a 31 million euro profit.

That aside though, the point Quasit was trying to make is that Arsenal don't need MASSIVE investment to challenge regularly. A couple of top players and a slightly deeper quality squad, and they're on par with anyone in the Prem. At very least, Wenger could just replace the top players he lost with other ones. Cazorla is a rare example of Wenger doing just that, and it has worked out spectacularly.

You are correct regarding his little spending with Porto, but I feel that the current Arsenal squad is one he would struggle to work with without massive investment, hence my worries.

And I certainly agree with the second point, a little more quality depth and the squad would be capable of anything.
 
And I certainly agree with the second point, a little more quality depth and the squad would be capable of anything.

I'd say with 4 new players we would be really capable of title push.
1. New GK to provide competition for Szczesny, 2. LB who can defend unlike Santos. 3. Song replacement 4. Jovetic.
 
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