From Ken : I don’t understand some of the criticism
I just read a reader’s email, which talked about insults, mediocrity and “below par” and another which talked about “stupid” and “lazy” players.
Wake up and smell the coffee.
– Arsenal are competing in the hardest league in the World.
– Arsenal are competing in the highest spending league in the World, with combined debts more than 50% of the total football debts in the WHOLE WORLD! We might want Arsenal to spend money, but everybody knows you can’t spend more than you earn in the long-term. If you try, the bailiffs will knock on your door (and they might knock on Cardiff’s door tomorrow morning)
– German clubs last year made a combined PROFIT of £138m. English Premier league clubs have combined DEBTS of £3.4bn. Why would they sell to English clubs when they have more money than the English clubs?
– the recession has killed the transfer market. Clubs will not sell because there is nobody for sale to replace anyone they sell. Wenger talked about this only last week when he said “for years, I have had no money to spend. Now I have money, there is nobody for sale”
– the new squad rules mean that, in most clubs, even if you can manage to bring a player in, you have to sell one. But nobody wants to buy.
– Arsenal are competing against the finest club manager who has ever lived (Sir Alex). During the last 5 years, Arsenal have competed against 2 of the top 5 or so club managers who have ever lived (Sir Alex and Jose Mourinho). On top of an astonishing record of achievement, both of those managers have had relatively large amounts of money to invest in their squads.
Wenger does say “this year will be our year” every summer, but so what? He has delivered top 4 finishes every year for a dozen years. That’s quite an achievement.
Arsenal is not perfect. Wenger is not perfect. But he works incredibly hard in a very organised, focussed way and his objective is always to win.
We will miss his “insults”, “mediocre”, “below par”, “stupid”, “lazy” players after he has gone and we return to our natural place alongside Aston Villa in the upper mid-table. I fully expect us all to look back and say “things were good under Wenger, even if we didn’t realise it at the time”.
From Ahappyman : Why so negative?
Are there any positive Gooners!
Why is everyone so negative on these blogs today?
Let’s judge Wenger after the 1st September when the window closes and see how the team does..
Myles, you sound like one of the guys at the Emirates that constantly boos the team and only creates a negative vibe at the ground..
To say you are not going to follow Arsenal this year is a disgrace!!
I used to watch Arsenal in the 80’s under Don Howe and we were a mediocre team them. I presume you wasn’t a Arsenal fan then and you were probably a Liverpool glory hunter fan.
Let’s see how we get on. I for one am fairly positive and I’m sure we will bring a goalie and new centre back in before the window shuts. It’s just that Wenger and Gazidis wont pay over-inflated prices..
We are currently the 3rd most profitable club in the world and that is down to sound financial management..
Our future is bright not depressing other debt-ridden clubs!!
Myles replies :
I put some readers’ emails up because they have intelligence and merit.
Don’t assume anything. Don’t assume I was a glory-hunter.
Don’t assume I was a Liverpool fan.
That’s the most careless, ignorant, thoughtless comment I’ve had since I started doing ANR 12 years ago.
How many times do I have to tell you : I was the London reporter for The Scotsman, a broadsheet paper in Edinburgh. I covered Spurs, Arsenal, West Ham, QPR and England. I saw John Barnes play for England before I saw him play for Watford.
I first met Alex Ferguson after Jock Stein died and Alex came to Wembley as Scotland manager. He was well-groomed, cheery, friendly, had time for everybody. Seemed a really, really nice guy.
I don’t know when that was but it was before 1986. I met Alex many times after that, as I met scores of managers. I did my share of football journalism, as much as I wanted to do.
BTW, I love Don Howe. A great guy whose contribution to Arsenal and England is mega-massive.
I was in the room at Highbury when Don told reporters he has resigned.We were gobsmacked .
Later on at QPR I was in the room when Coventry boss Bobby Gould told us he had quit.
I met Gould later when he was doing radio at Highbury, speaking at half-tme. I said, “D’you think Marco Gabbiadini will improve and develop into a good player?” Gould said, “I think he is a good player.”
In the game, Gabbiadini had a good chance but hit the ball low and hard across David Seaman, just wide. Yorkshireman Seaman said, “As soon as he hit it, I knew it weren’t in.”
BTW, I’ve never booed at a gig or a match.
The last time a boo passed my lips was at a cinema in Stevenage when I was a schoolboy.
We had two cinemas. One was respectable, the Astonia, the other was fleapit at the other end of the town, where they showed X-certificate movies.To save my life, I cannot remember the name of that little cinema. The projection at the fleapit broke down quite often, and when it did the audience always booed. So I booed with them.
I had never been at the Astonia when the film broke. But one night at the Astonia (you know what’s coming) the film broke and the screen went black and 16-year old Myles immediately booed. Mine was the only boo, so my boo seemed very loud in the big dark silence. Everyone looked round to see who had been so rude.
Come to think of it, I might have booed Roxy Music when they supported Alice Cooper at Wembley Arena.
I can’t remember. But I saw beer cans bouncing on the stage. Roxy were crap. Absolutely awful. Pathetic.