Ok, ok… so is it time to start getting angry on Twitter?
Should I be at the Kroenke out protest?
Should I strap a camera to my face and VENT for the good people of Youtube?
I think it’s nearly that time.
We are a week away from preseason, we haven’t sold a notable flop, we haven’t purchased the 8 players I was SURE we’d bring in. I don’t even have a slick new haircut from Theo Walcott to excite me.
We’re basically rolling into preseason like this was peak-Wenger 2012.
I’m half expecting Emery to roll in with a French accent and say something like, ‘we look for maybe one special talent, but we will not pay over the odds.’
I still remember 2008 when Wenger told us he’d surprise us with a signing, then dropped Silvestre! Good times.
There’s certainly a disorder with Arsenal fans that we picked up from the halcyon days of ‘WENGER KNOWS’ and I call it retroactive intellectualism. It’s where you find sense in chaos. It’s a comfort blanket to project a plan where there is none.
I’m rolling with that today…
Raul must know that what he’s being served up under Emery is flatulent and unlikely to move us to where we need to be. I know from speaking to people in and around the club that things aren’t going well. I think our exec leadership will know this as well unless they aren’t talking to people. Which come to think of it isn’t beyond the pale… surely if someone walked down to the training ground and saw the bus driver giving the team speech, they’d say something?
I digress…
So, is it possible that we’re writing off this season as an inexpensive transition moment? We blood the kids, keep our powder dry and wait for the arrival of Edu to whom all responsibility for success will lie?
That could be the plan.
Alternatively, we could just be witnessing a botched attempt at a summer because we have zero leverage in the market. We have a severe cashflow issue, a bloated wage bill, expensive players no one wants, and too little money to bring in the players we do want.
As Arsenal fans nervously await the outcome of this summer’s transfer window, I thought it might be interesting to look at why the club is facing more financial challenges these days. Some thoughts in the following thread #afcb
— Swiss Ramble (@SwissRamble) July 1, 2019
The money side of things is utterly staggering. But it all comes down to so many people at the club being ok with coasting back in the day. We didn’t make hay when the Champions League was giving us a monster advantage. We let great managers pass us by. We were dominated by the presence of yesteryear. Now we are paying the price because we are starting from scratch.
That said, as I’m writing this, I feel very depressed. Arsenal has spent the last 15 years bemoaning what they DON’T have instead of working out how to make the most of what they DO have.
You work with the tools you are handed. You find an edge. You hire people that are cunning. You find market disruptors who find value under the rocks that no one is looking under. In my job, can I pay the best wages? No. Can I hire the greatest creative talent on earth? No. Do I moan? Yes. But I find a way because if I don’t, there’s no job for me. That’s the same in EVERY industry. Just fucking get on with it and find a way. There are enough talented players to go around. Technology is BOOMING. Incredible people are there for the taking. We need a driving force at the club that cares about one thing, and one thing only… making Arsenal the best they can be.
Who do we have doing that at the moment?
We’re competing in the second tier of experienced players by the looks of things. Carrasco, Zaha… instead of hunting out elite young players with a couple of seasons under their belts like BVB. To be fair, Tierney would fit that mould, but we should be bringing in 5 like that.
I felt like Sven Mislintat was our explorer. Someone that’d do things differently. Something that’d attempt to restructure the way we find advantages with talent. We’ve lost that hustle, and the worrying thing is it’s because Raul doesn’t believe in that approach.
We’re hunting for rebirths in a network of dodgy agents. I hate that. We’re trying to make a marquee signing of Wilfried Zaha. Good player, but really?
The industry of football is moving towards intelligence and we’re anchoring ourselves in the cigar smoke-filled world of the contacts game.
It. Is. Sad.
But hey, maybe we’ll sign Pepe today and I will come CRAWLING back on my hands and knees begging for your future clicks.
We’ll see. Hope is all we have. And each other. I love you guys.
xx
When you put on the shirt, you never hide!
£40m, with United taking 25%, leaves Palace with £30m for their best player and icon of their club. If you were a Palace fan, how much would you want as a very minimum, even if the player wanted out (4 years left on contract; United to take 25% up to £15m)? In a worst case scenario where the player was disrupting pre-season, I would accept £70m and not a penny less, meaning £55m to re-invest after paying United their £15m. Arsenal are not going to pay £70m, so I can’t see it happening unless some big departures are lined up… Read more »
Oh, and for the poster (Marc?) who pointed out The Sun going heavy on ‘Skint Arsenal’ this summer, here’s how they approach the Zaha story:
“PENNY-PINCHING Arsenal have made a derisory £40million bid for Wilfried Zaha — with Argos-style payments over FIVE YEARS.
Incredibly, cheeky Arsenal also demanded a hefty DISCOUNT if they managed to cobble together the cash to pay off bits of Zaha’s transfer fee early.”
Lol!
Let Ozil go with Chambers to CP
For them, we can offer 30M plus these 2….
great deal.
In light of Swiss Ramble’s revelations I have lost all hope that change will happen under Raul, Vinai and Kronke. Remember when Raul and Vinai did those interviews for Arsenal.com? Remember how they said all those grand sounding words and mouthed pretensions of ambition? How could they say all those things with a straight face when they knew how bad our finances were? Forget a statue for Wenger… we should erect a statue for Swiss Ramble. He has done the fans of Arsenal everywhere a tremendous service by giving us the truth… the unbelievable truth. The powers that be at… Read more »
Let’s just throw in all the dross haha
Ozil mikki xhaka el neny chambers mustafi and kos
That should add up to a combined value of 15m ha!
Apparently Zaha is now the second coming of pele based on some of the comments on here. Hope it happens but anything above 50 million is silly.
Arsenal FC : the Kronke Years…
Face it people, our beloved club has become a mockumentary right before our eyes.
*facepalm*
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/crystal-palace-identify-arsenal-star-17327013
Here’s something to bring a smile to our otherwise depressing world…
Daily Mirror confidently stating Crystal Palace has identified Wan Bissaka’s successor…
Ahem, drum roll please… One CARL JENKINSON!!! Their evidence? Roy Hodgson likes him and gave him his sole England debut.
Yeah right… imagine that. Perhaps we can ask Palace to do a straight swap for Zaha.
For the benefit of those who think I’m serious… I’m being sarcastic…
Just read through again Swiss Ramble’s thread. Shocking incompetence, it is really is. No, it’s not a nightmare it’s reality. The question is what is Kronke going to do about this? No wonder Kronke took the club private… can you imagine anyone at the club wanting to give us an explanation and to be held accountable for this utter omnishambles? To think Gazidas and Wenger unashamedly soaked up all the plaudits last year. Merci Arsene? For what exactly?!? The only silver lining I can see from this mess is that Gazidas has left our club before he could do even… Read more »
*Again
I called it months ago that Fekir wouldn’t be more than 30-35m, looks like I was right. Would take him any day over Zaha at the same price and doubly so for half of Zahas fee whether we play him CAM or on the wing, far superior player. For the 60-70m it would take to get Zaha (incl. players or not it’s still the same) we could completely fix our midfield and give us options on both wings. Fekir, Sangare/ Pulgar, Brahimi/ Bowen 45-65m depending on which we go with. Since Brahimi is free and would only be 4-5m in… Read more »
Good morning from The Emirates, Mr Zaha! Hope you slept well.
‘He’s scored 22 goals and has 4 assists in the Championship this season. Pretty impressive at 22.’
Jarrod Bowen is 22, English, Hull top’s scorer last season.
How much would Hall want for their 22 goals banger 22 years old?
£50m?
Unless we wanna sell Laca for £100m, it makes no sense.
And I still maintain those guys in the commercial are here for next season, no way Adidas allows it different.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/arsenal-rival-tottenham-12m-bid-17326950
More like 12-15m for Bowen, not everyone is as deluded as Crystal Palace.
Can play on the wings as well, not a bad option if we choose to focus more on midfield and defence, which we should imo.
‘Fekir, Sangare/ Pulgar, Brahimi/ Bowen’
And you would be here moaning again when City, Pool, United, Spuds begin to shit all over our team with sheer quality.
Sangare, Brahimi…… aren’t you tired of bang average players?
If you want a good team in 2019 you don’t begin to look for how you solve your midfield and your wings combined with £60m, especially when your neighbour who were behind you for decades just dropped £65m on ONE PLAYER.
Now you would need a lot to convince me that Ndobele would be a better buy than Zaha.
Sangare average? Sure. Brahimi maybe, but he’s still better than anything we have on the wings now, and he would cost around 3.5m in sign on fee. a Torreira – Sangare – Fekir midfield would be miles better than the crap we have now. Sure we need genuine quality on the wings, but not everything in the squad can be fixed in one window with top players and a modest budget, I would prefer real quality in midfield and defence and some cheaper players on the wings just so we have someone out there other than Iwobi. The wings can… Read more »
It would be churlish to seek any comfort from the Swiss Rambler summary but it was pretty obvious for some time that things both on and off the field were slipping. Easily identifiable but far from easy to reverse. The truth is that unless Arsenal get back in the CL or indeed start to really challenge then this decline isn’t going to be reversed without a huge injection of cash and as we all know that’s unlikely. Some point to the youth coming through but does anyone really believe that there is enough top talent in the academy to anything… Read more »
Arsenal don’t want to be a football club anymore. Once you come to terms with that, you can move on and start living again. Arsenal don’t want zaha. This is another classic piece of Arsenal propaganda to deflect from the real story…we will probably be giving one of, if not all…Laca, Auba, Xhaka and Bellerin new improved deals. Because after all “these guys are world class”. Arsenal are irrelevant now to everyone outside of the real die hards whose great grandad laid bricks at Woolwich Arsenal in 1886 or whatever. No one cares. Arsenal don’t. The sane fans don’t. Critics… Read more »
‘More like 12-15m for Bowen, not everyone is as deluded as Crystal Palace.’
Yeah, when a Scottish league Celtics are demanding £25m bottom for a left back Tierney. Scottish league equals league one in my opinion.
Hull are not stupid, you don’t come across young guys who bang it in often. If you think they should take £15m for Bowen, how much do we take for Iwobi who put 3 inside from the wing?
£5m?
Zaha…….
He will turn and face!
Gentlebris
Did you even read the article I linked? I didn’t just pull that number out of my ass you know.
Tierney may play in a crap league but at least he has CL and national team experience and has played against top level opposition. Bowen even at 15m would be a gamble because he hasn’t as far as I know had any regular experience of top level football so we don’t know if his talents are going to translate into the PL.
You seem to have a very strange view of the transfer market and what our needs are.
July 1st 2019
Bids in for Zaha, Bowen and a Bald Algerian) who looked 39 not 29- I hope we have checked his passport DoB.
July 2nd 2019
What has Raul got up his sleeve today.?
(More Tierney shenanigans?
Revert back to Saliba?)
There will be bids going in somewhere- that is for sure.
Scattergun Yes
Strategic No
Making it up as You Go Go- Wham style!
Pre season starts in a few days time.
And Has Edu packed yet?
Tick Tock.
Breaking news,
Arsenal are going to zone in on star players in the, Ladies world Cup, with a view to maybe signing qualiteeeeee players on a loan basis
GoH
“” Edu isn’t coming in for any other reason but to tow the line and pick up a pay check””””
Ain’t just that the Truth!
Jarrod Bowen is exactly the type of signing i thought we’d be making. That young player, between 18 & 24 who has had few seasons at a decent level and looks like they can make the step up. And if it doesn’t work out, their value remains stable, with maybe a little profit.
FL
“Fekir, Sangare/ Pulgar, Brahimi/ Bowen”
I want to give Willock and Nelson a chance. I agree to replace Ozil with Fekir.
I dont know if you guys on Le-grove watch AFCON but your god Zaha has been sub-par the whole tournament. Especially against Namibia.
The irony is that spurs didn’t catch and overtake us with 60m players
Whilst we were buying expensive dross, they were buying cheap gems.
It’s now how much you spend but how smart you spend it
If adidas do have any sway in our transfer matters (I’m doubtful tbh), they would want ozil to stay
He’s a hugely marketable asset despite being such a tosser
He’s also German, same as Adidas which could be a marketing consideration in their sizable home market