Monday News Roundup

After the sale of Nasri it's time to buy Hazard and Mvila and another top european striker otherwise the season is going very difficult. Seeing ManU playing last night and the quality of their squad we can guess they are going to be league champions already

Arsenal have agreed terms with Man City for Nasri! 
Seriously,what the hell is going on at Arsenal! Bye bye to Fab and now Nasri with no replacements?
hmm relegation? Anyone up for some Championship football?

You're an idiot.

Nasri has been sold. The relegation and Championship football comments is sarcasm. You do understand sarcasm right?

Your sarcasm sounds like the typical defeatist crap that Homey spouts out around here.

Please accept my apologies.

I think I have the right be slightly defeatist and very sarcastic due to the fact we have had the worst of luck, lost our best players who were also our play makers, no replacement (that us, the fans, know of), Wenger been banned from our next CL league for doing what every other manager gets away with, lost a serious amount of players through injury, we are still stuck with the players that we want to get rid of and some players not pulling weight e.g. Chamakh, Arshavin. 
However, your apology is accepted. I was only trying to add a humorous twist onto more bad news. 

the only time in recent memory where arsenal have dominated united was the 1-0 win where they were missing fab 
the midfield was ramsey wilshire song and they had the midfield advantage over united-the return of jack is a big encouragement for arsenal fans everywhere 

though the other news where wenger said arsenal dont need a defender!!!!(only thing that comes to my mind is WTF) is really a bad news-gary cahill+y.m'vila and arsenal will have quality in the squad and bench

spurs look like shit yesterday and friedel saved them from a further embarrassment-bale was solidly kept out by phil jones,and van der vaart and kranjcar couldnt break through either-the whole squad was incohesive-the same cant be said of the city and liverpool squad though its too early to say-still beware of losing the 4th spot wenger

espn lat am had a program where they said kaka was wanted by us Inter and Milan...schade.
i venever wanted to be wrong as i want it now, hoping for a signing, at least one.
in any case, even though inside the walls i might be calling for Wengy s head, outside, totally behind our team, always.

Quite sick of Wenger taking the stick from everyone, media, UEFA even other managers.

At least, we as Arsenal supporters, should stand with him in trying times like these.

Yeah, and the additional ban is complete rubbish.  In the technological age tha we live in there is no way to keep the manager completely separate from the team.  Shit, he didn't even need technology, he just told the guy next to him to take a walk down there and relay a mesage :)

Yeah, constant negativity on the blog is really starting to get to me.  We get it, you don't like Wenger and you want him to be fired and replaced by someone with less talent and experience.  The thing is Homey, not matter how much you say it, or how you say it, or how much evidence you use to support it.....it's not gonna happen anytime soon.  So.....move on.
The young players that everyone has been complaining about played remarkebly well against Pool.  While Frimpong was a bit hot headed (what 19 yr old isn't?) he played a solid, strong role against some serious opposition.  I have more confidence in him now than I did before, he is a solid backup for Song for the time being (something the team "has desperately needed").  Miguel didn't make any glaring errors and Wilkinson played a heck of a game (Homey, were you surprised that he didn't start crying and asking for Mommy when he cramped up?). 
We pretty much played Liverpool with half of our Reserve team and still gave a decent performance.  If anything, the performances by the youngsters has swayed me back into AW's corner.  The players that disappointed were the "big signings" like Arshavin and Nasri, who did very little to create any kind of decent chances. 
AW is a smarter man than you and I when it comes to the beautiful game, the guy knows what he is doing.  Lets support our team knowing that better times are ahead.  Does it really do anything for our squad when good young players put in a gutsy performance against better opposition and get booed off the pitch?  I think not.  I have enough doom in gloom in my life, I don't need to go searching for it on Arsenal blogs. 

You make a lot of points here, so let me try to answer them all:
1) Part of the point of writing a fan blog is to write about things that we wish would happen.  Or things that we'd do if we had the power to do them.  Fans like to second-guess.  It's part of being a fan.  So yes, it's not going to happen, at least not soon.  But a lot of fans are feeling just as frustrated as I am.
2) Nearly all of my complaints revolve around our transfer dealings, or lack thereof.  Since we're still in the window, and have been all summer, that's a big thing to write about.  After the window closes, I'll have a lot less to say on that issue, and will focus more on just how the season is going.
3) I have enough doom and gloom in my life too, so I'm not trying to make this blog a downer.  I've said repeatedly that people get too down when their soccer team loses, and we should just enjoy it for entertainment.  After writing my match recap on Saturday, I moved on and enjoyed my day.  But while I write about Arsenal, I'm not sure how to spin it in a positive light without lying.  The plain truth was that we were quite poor in our last two matches.  If I said otherwise, or ignored our faults, I don't think I'd be doing my job as a writer.
4) You keep pointing to how well our young guys have looked.  Fine.  But my point is that we shouldn't even have to rely on them in crucial games.  Who's fault is it that we have to use a bunch of 18 and 19-year-olds with no Premier League experience?
5) Related to the last point, but we're always "building for the future."  It's always sell Eboue, bring in a guy with only 8 starts for Charlton to his credit.  Sell Fabregas, promote Ramsey.  Sell Clichy, promote Gibbs and Traore.  Etc etc.  And so yes, maybe the likes of AOC, Frimpong, Ramsey, Gibbs, and so forth will turn out great.  But while they're getting there, we won't win anything.
6) If you've read my blogs carefully, I've given credit where credit is due.  I said Jenkinson played pretty well, and looks promising.  I don't try to go out of my way to bash Wenger or the young players at every chance. 
7) In my opinion, the booing is not directed at the players.  It's at Wenger and the board for not getting better players.  Fans want ownership/management to know that what we're seeing isn't good enough. 
8) Finally, the thing that really just shoves it all in our face is hearing over and over that we have a huge pot of money to spend, but we just can't find the right players.  And we mess around until the end of the window, dropping points along the way, still trying to pinch pennies.  If Wenger came out and said we had no money, or that he wouldn't be willing to spend it because of FFP or whatever, then I could live with that a little more.  But to always say he's not afraid to spend money, and then act like he's afraid to spend money, I think insults the intelligence of the fans.  The ones paying higher prices and so forth.  How can we keep trusting him after we see this time and again?

Fair enough.  I just feel that the horse has now been beaten so badly to death that it looks like a pile of mush.  I agree with a lot of what you say Homey (as I have stated in previous comments) I just think it is getting to be a bit repetitive. 
As far as our lack of spending goes, its really frustrating to me as well.  To see Mata go to Chelsea is incredibly disheartening seeing as how he would fill a massive hole in our side potentially.  But is he really worth 30MM!!??  One of the talking heads made a great point the other day in saying that you can get away with signing a few guys for 8-10MM that turn out to be busts but sign a guy for 30MM and have him bust is a fireable offense.  Meanwhile if that 8MM signing turns into Thierry Henry you are hailed as a genius. Risk v. Reward. 
I also feel that what often gets overlooked is the wage demands of some of these players.  Its easy to say "buy this guy for 18MM" and forget that you have to pay said guy 250K a week!!  Do the math, over the course of the season that guy is quite expensive. 

I'm planning a blog next week on wages, but my early research has revealed that it's not as big of a problem for us as some would think.
And I appreciate what you're saying about my anti-Wenger stuff.  I'll definitely try to back way off that after the window closes.  Also, there are four of us who blog (although Darren is out for 2+ weeks at the moment), and I'm the only one of four who's really front and center on the anti-Wenger crusade.  So at least you have others to read. 
And finally, if you read some of the absolutely vile things I was called over and over, I can't help but to come out and point to additional evidence in order to support my side.  So when I see a bunch of 19-year-olds thrust into action and soundly beaten by Liverpool, I can't resist asking the people who hate my blogs so much if they're watching the same thing I'm watching.  If everyone would have answered my pleasantly when I wrote about Wenger, even if they all disagreed, then I wouldn't be so wound up to come out firing again and again.  You know?  Just sort of human nature.

City should fire Mancini and hire Wenger. At Christmas, when city leads the league by 15 points, all you Wenger haters will have the frenchman on top of your Christmas lists.

"darren is out for 2+ weeks"
are even arsenal bloggers plagued by injuries?

I hear ya man, you can't take the shit people talk to heart though.  My brother makes his living writing (mostly online) and I keep telling him that if he is getting a ton of comments on his articles, even if the majority of them are just finding interesting ways to say how dumb he is, than he is doing something right.  If everyone just agreed, nobody would read. 

I'm just happy to still have the platform to talk some Arsenal, was a little worried after Martin and Sairax so quickly abandoned us.  Sometimes I feel that I am a lone Gunner here in NE Ohio....so thanks for the platform and if you ever meet AW in person I hope he punches you in the stomach and curses you out in French :)

Haha.  That made me laugh.  I think I could take the old man though, even though I'm "Five foot nuthin, a hundred and nuthin."

Think you meant Jenkinson, but the point was made nonetheless.

So young and fresh I can't remember his name ;)

For all you Wenger baggers, have a read at this and then just take a moment to think that there is a very good chance this could be true, and that you've been bashing on a full-blooded Arsenal man for months now.

http: // football-talk dot co dot uk / 35560 / revealed-the-reason-arsenal-arent-making-any-new-signings%e2%80%a6/

That's a very insightful, and worrying article if true. If it was just Wenger, a new manager could potentially solve all our problems. Seeing instead as it's likely the board are interfering like that, then I actually have to applaud Wenger for the job he's done with limited wage money.

The club came out and officially said that that report was rubbish.  So believe whoever you want on that.  I'm not really sure what the truth is, but I've heard both Wenger AND the board say that we have substantial money to spend.  So I'm still waiting to hear that we've spent some of it.  Oh, and they told us that before Cesc was sold too. 
world wide web dot thefootballnetwork dot net /main/s378/ st170588.htm (Just eliminate the spaces and insert dots.)

Homey. What would you expect the club to do. Both the "club" and Wenger are in the total control of the board. Wengers decision is simple really. He can quit and tell us all the truth, that the board screwed him and had his hands tied. Or he can stay, have his hands tied and take everyone's shit about the buying players. But, if he stays, his only choice is to shut up and say exactly what he has been saying. He's the manager. Not the owner. If he wants to keep his job, as we all do, he has to just look like a MORON and shutup.

I've been trying to tell you guys this for weeks. The board and Kroenke have my fucking hands tied. There is no more full blooded Arsenal fan than me. And I have to stand in front of those scumbag journalists and take all the shit. Like I'm a fucking MORON! Have I looked like a moron for the last 12 years?? Why now. Maybe because the fucking ownership has changed. Dumbasses!

To quote one of my favourite posters (who also coincidentally posts at football talk), GunnerPete:

"As a true Gunner of 62 years I can varify that throughout my time ,The
Arsenal boards have always been negative and anti spend. When David Dein left
& Fizman died all our modern and successful negotiators went with them. I
can remember fantastic teams built by great managers only to be destroyed by the
Arsenal board cashing in on the success of the manager. Just look at what the
board did after Billy Wright built the team from our kids that Bertie mee cashed
in on to win the UEFa Cup and the double in two years..’got rid of Charlie
George, Ray Kennedy and McLintock our greatest players of that era. The same
board did the same to George Graham after he built the great championship
winners & cup winners in the late 80′s..Sold Rocky, Thomas, etc. Now we have
our greatest manager who has been lied to, and left out to dry whilst they hide
from the press. If Arsene was given the same clear field he had when dein was
there we would now have some fantastic team..and our greatest players would not
have been sold by this board of lowlifes…Arsene please stay for this season and
walk out with dignity after that."

And play Nasri on Wednesday. $25 million and our club reputation are on the line. Screw Mancini. Keep Samir in the team, and get him to commit to a new contract, now. We will not find better quality and Mancini is screwing us with the price. Mancini screws all his players within 18 months. Open you god damn eyes, Samir!!!!

How do you get Nasri to commit to a new contract?  Surely we've already made our best offer, whatever that may be.  And he's refused to sign.  So for me, it's clear we should go ahead and sell now, rather than lose him for nothing next year.  I wrote over two months ago that I'd love for him to stay.  But if he's set on leaving, we should get what we can and invest in Hazard or wheover else.

You are doom and gloom mate and you call an arsenal supporter. You should support your team in good times and bad times. Shame on you all that get on the media's traps

I love Wenger. He turned us from a good club to a great club that oozes class and plays the most attractive football in Great Britain. He made Arsenal the third most valuable club. That alone would already be impressive on anyone's resume. He pushed up our standards a lot and whenever we don't meet the standards we have come to see as reasonable, its always his fault. A lot of people give Wenger stick, and rightly so. The man himself said "You can question my decisions, but you cannot question my loyalty to Arsenal Football Club". Some people have been saying that he should leave for the club to progress; I don't agree. In my opinion, he's still the best man for the job. A lot of outside consequences such as Man City becoming frikkin' rich, freak incidents that led to us losing the chance to win a trophy in recent years (such as the Eduardo incident), transfers breaking down in the last minute, etc coupled with some of Wenger's stubbornness has led to us winning 2 games in our last 16 Premier League games.

I do agree that we should support the team in good and bad. And, as you can see, we do. But Wenger is not Arsenal, contrary to (apparently) popular belief. Ergo, although he gave us the best 10-or-so years in the club's 125-year-history, Team ArseneKnowsBest must wake up to the fact that he, Wenger, too must accept criticism and listen to it in order for the club to become the great club that Wenger has turned us into, not too long ago.

Did you read my last blog?  I tried to address this same point.  Orion, Gigi, and all the rest of us "plankton" support Arsenal as much as anyone else does.  Even in bad times, we're still here discussing the team.  And watching all the matches.  I'm not sure what else you want.  But if we say the manager isn't getting it done right now, what's so wrong with that?  And why is it so different from saying Almunia or Denilson weren't getting it done?

If Arsenal are going to make anything out of this season, then Arsene Wenger needs to pull his head out of the sand and start dealing with reality. There can be no doubt that the Frenchman is a superb coach. One of the best. But his apparent desire to live his life in total denial of what is actually happening around him is making him and his club look rather daft.

Up until a few hours before Cesc Fabregas was unveiled as the new Barcelona bench-warmer, Wenger was still saying nobody was leaving the club. The fact that Fabregas was already on his second glass of Sangria at his Camp Nou welcome party seemed to escape him.It seems everybody with even a slight interest in the world of football – and possibly a few of those who don’t even like the game – knew Cesc was leaving.

Everyone, that is, apart from the man who should have been planning for that very moment. It’s not like this is an unexpected and sudden development either. It’s been coming all summer. For several summers, in actual fact. Pretty much since the Spanish midfielder first pulled on an Arsenal shirt.And that is the bit that annoys me the most about Wenger’s approach. He has had plenty of time to plan for this departure but instead of bringing in a suitable replacement nice and early, the season has started and the club now have a large Fabregas-sized hole in midfield.

I very much doubt it is a case of Arsenal needing to sell before they can buy, so why was something not put in place before this deal went through?To be honest I can’t really understand what is going on in general at Arsenal. If Fabregas was the only departure then maybe, just maybe, you could understand Wenger feeling he didn’t need to bring in a replacement.But we have has also lost Clichy, Eboue and Denilson, while Nasri and St. Nick are ready to hand back the keys to their company cars.

Fair enough, the departure of Bendtner would actually be like signing a new player, but it doesn’t change the fact that there have been far more goings than comings at the Emirates this close season. When, if they are serious about challenging at the top, it very much needed to be the other way round.Wenger himself said recently: “Imagine the worst situation – we lose Fabregas and Nasri. You cannot convince people you are ambitious after that. You cannot pretend you are a big club.” So he knew the problem he was facing.However, I don’t actually agree with those sentiments. To be a big club you don’t have to hold on to all your stars, especially if, in the case of Fabregas, they have their heart set on playing somewhere else, and in Nasri’s case, they can’t see further than the end of their wallet.But what you do need to do is be ready, willing and able to replace them. Preferably before they have gone.

And that is where Wenger has let us down this summer. Not in failing to keep his existing squad together, but in failing to strengthen it to cope with the inevitable departures.The Arsenal team of last season was not good enough to challenge for the title. The one that is starting this season is barely good enough to challenge for a top four place.

For a man who probably knows he is drinking in the managerial last chance saloon, his approach to rebuilding his squad has been nothing short of bizarre.In the past I have always thought that Wenger knows something we don’t. Right now, however, I am increasingly of the belief that we know something he doesn’t.With 10 days of transfer window activity still to go, there is always the chance Wenger does have something spectacular waiting to be pulled out of the bag. A signing so impressive it will make the football world take Arsenal seriously again. But even in the unlikely event of that happening, there is no escaping from the reality that it should have happened before and not after.

Exactly.  So with all of that said by you and many others, why is it so shocking that I would make the next logical step, and say he should be fired?  Are we so in love with what happened in 2004 or whenever, that we'll sit and cheer while the same man runs this club into the ground?  I just don't get it.  As I said before, just as we wouldn't want Adams and Bergkamp taking the field for us today, neither should we want a manager whose glory days are behind him as well.

Ease up on the melodrama. "runs this club into the ground"? 

Dude, have you seen us lately? Have you taken a good look at the club and realised how pathetic we're starting to look? Key players are leaving, or have left. They have been replaced by unproven youngsters. The fan base is descending into factions. Reinforcements are nowhere to be seen. We may be very close to missing out on Champions League football. Other teams in the league are leaps and bounds ahead of us in terms of squad quality, depth, winning mentality, and consistency - recipes for success. 

Yep, but last time I checked, the ground was very far below us. Ask Leeds, etc, how far down the ground is. So, yah, it's melodramatic. 

Ok, maybe a bit melodramatic, as you say.  At the same time, I don't think it makes sense to take a sense of satisfaction from the fact that we're not Leeds, or we're not Bolton, or whoever.  As I mentioned once before, Forbes has called us the 3rd most valuable club in the world for the last 5 years in a row.  So to flounder around and possibly end up 5-6th in the table this year, through a complete refusal to address needs in a timely fashion, can be called "running a team into the ground," in my humble opinion.  Especially when the same team had such promise just a couple of years ago.

We are the 3rd most valuable club because of what Wenger has been doing - shoring up on assets, decreasing liabilities, increasing value of club assets (i.e. players worth) as well as building brand equity with astute marketing.

"A couple of years ago"? 6 months ago, we were talking up the chances of winning the quadruple.

Err... well, I wasn't.  Six months ago, I would have gladly taken a Carling Cup trophy and nothing else, to be honest.  We already knew that we couldn't finish off our CL group, which meant that we had to face Barca.  And we were in the league race largely because United was floundering around.  But we hardly seemed like world beaters even then, as I saw it. 

Oh my God, not that kind of ground. We're talking about Juventus/Liverpool pre-Dalglish kind-of-ground.

I just think if he were to be fired, he should have been fired in June and let a new manager give life to a dying team with a healthy transfer kitty. A week and a half before the transfer window is over is too late for a new manager, way too late for him to analyze a team and be expected to bring in recruits that would help achieve Arsenal's (high standard, to Wenger's credit) goals.

Ok, well it's all a hypothetical thing anyway, since he's not going to be fired.  But if we see a need to do it, then why wait?  I was calling for his head on Aug. 9.  If it were done on that date, we'd have a few weeks left in the window. 
Even if he were canned now, we'd at least have January to make a few things happen.  As it stands now, do you trust Wenger to move in January if and when there are still obvious needs?

I sincerely hope so. I do believe him and Gazidis when they say that they're "working round the clock" to bring in "top quality" players, although I think part of that is wishful thinking. Mata was a classic example of a top quality player that slipped through our hands. If it is true that they're haggling on a couple of hundreds of thousands then the club should be ashamed. Remember, to us its a lot of money, but to a financially strong business like Arsenal Football Club, that is a relatively miserable sum of money, to put it in perspective.

Again, its likely not the transfer price, but rather the wage demands. Lets see what Chelsea is offering in wages to Mata.

It's hard to know what was going on behind the scenes, but when I was reading Mata was so close to signing with us a while back, Chelsea wasn't even on the radar screen.  So I have to wonder.  Also curious is the reported release clause in his contract, which Chelsea failed to meet either, and then they ended up paying more for Mata than they supposedly could have.

You can go wonder all you like. At the end of the day, you have no idea what is going on.

One has to admire Wenger. Any other person would just chuck it all in and take his severence pay and enjoy the sunshine. But Arsene is not like that and look who got Arsenal into the turmoil
that seems to be there now. Look up the results from their Carling Cup
defeat to Birmingham on the 28th February and there were 11 games to
the end of the season and in a strong position to win title. What happens
they only got 12 pts from 33 it is clearly the players fault.

And yet we have fans like you, posting crap like that. Disgusting.

Why is it crap? Guys these are opinions and all have one thing in common: love for the Arsenal.
I myself say Wenger screwed up this time, he knew what was going to happen and simply crossed his fingers, this, eventually, was going to happen, and they didnt prepare it well.
On the other hand no one denies what he has done, but one cant live on the past, and I urge him (or them or whoever) to take actions now, for January, because if they start in December, its all déjà vu again...

I am actually not defending Homey because we think alike, but because he is one of the guys that keep us informed, kudos on his work, whatever his opinion may be.

Its not crap, its an opinion. I don't know what your problem is, but if you don't like the material posted on this site, I think it would be best if you leave. If on the other hand, you merely disagree, then voice your opinion - respectfully.

oh QQ

I am not going to leave. What are you going to do about it? Post more crap?

Give me a break.

You must be so proud of yourself.

He should be!!! Who died and made you king of the site. Maybe you should join the Arsenal board. You, obviously have the qualifications.

I don't understand. Me or the delightful Bertrand?

There it is. It's settled. You're now on the board. You're doubletalk is exquisite!

I do excel at speaking nonsense, I must agree.

We'll you certainly have the three most important personal traits requisite for board membership. Speaking nonsense, doubletalk and shiteing on Frenchmen. Well done,son!!

So, you too, are talking bad of the board? So in what it differs from what you are being critic of?
Man, we love the club, if Wneger do fine, I love him, when he does bad I dont. Cesc was captain I loved him, he s gone, I dont anymore. Nasri played well, I loved him, he goes to City I dont anymore.
Its simple, like Lee Dixon said: no one is above that cannon on the shirt.

Criticsm is fine. And I did see you said Wenger should stay. He's not a moron. But, he's just the manager. Quality will happen. 3 D days coming - 1 day, 5 days, 8 days.

Get yer boots ready.

There's this incredibly fat ninja sitting to the left that's taking up all the space in the white section of the page, and is pressing my comment very hard against the red section to the right. Sometimes life just ain't fair.

He's French.

How does Man U always have so many players in the box?  When they cross it, you actually feel like there's a chance a goal may result.

And I hate when these two teams play - I really don't like having to root for United.

I just hope the highest number of players possible are injured.

And a draw.

Nevermind now.

I wholeheartedly agree. Anyone know the prognosis for Ferdinand and Vidic?

Couple weeks for Ferdinand, six for Vidic. Smalling and Jones did fine today, unfortunately. 

Yea. It doesn't really matter. Their backups are better than they are!!!

True. They played so well, and in the position we are....scary.

It's always nice to have really strong replacements when players get injured. 

And/or suspended.  Or is that just something Arsenal players do?

That being said, I feel like a draw is a bad result - don't want Spuds picking up any points if possible.

Platini is just a fat useless old football greatest his contribution to football institution is abysmal in comparison to his talent as a football player. As long as he and his close cash-collector friend Blatter are ruling we will never see video referees.

Also, on the Mertesacker front, rumor has it that PSG has entered the bidding. As Arsenal are unwilling to pay players 300,000 a week just for signing with them, we now have little shot at landing him. He would've been such a great signing, too.

Speaking of weekly wages, I'm doing some research for a blog on that very topic, set to appear about one week from now.  Some of what I've learned is pretty interesting.

Ooh exciting, can't wait. Are we really as behind as it seems we are in wages, as compared to the likes of City?

yes we are. the board won't change the wage structure and is the main reason why wenger cant sign his so called world class signings! nasri too would stay if the board would come to accept reality of todays financial climes. also if there is no wenger the board would just sign a muppet to do the job and carry on with their stupid wage structure.

Obviously you read the same report I read, which was quickly copied by several other blogs.  The original report cited an unnamed source, who apparently said the same things you just repeated.  I'm not sure what to make of all that.  At first blush, it gives us reason to trust Wenger more and the board less.   But we've also heard reports this summer about how the board is pushing Wenger to sign more and spend more.  For me, I don't think it's ever in Wenger's makeup to sign a big name, big money player, and then to pay big wages.  So I really tend to doubt he's wanting to sign Sneijder or Kaka, but it's the board telling him he can't pay those wages.  If Wenger were really so big on wanting to spend, why has he repeatedly not shored up the central defense in recent years, when even a modest signing could have done wonders for our depth?

Just FYI, if you're talking about the Football Talk article, every credible blogger/source I have seen have says that the report is way off base, and the club has also issued a refutation of many of the article's claims.

And if you look at some of the numbers via a credible source like Swiss Ramble, I think it will show that our wages are actually very competitive with the other elite clubs, except for Manchester City, who are in a stratosphere all their own. I don't think it's the wages that are the issue, it's the unwillingness to pay elite-level transfer fees.

Yes, I tend to agree.  And I posted a link to the club's official statement on that issue, refuting the original article.  I read that statement after I posted this first comment, but I was skeptical of the original article all along.

So, the Arsenal board (the club) issued an official statement refuting an article that was critical of its decisions. Interesting. Why would they do that?

Yeah, that site looks like something someone set up just to get a bunch of hits and get some cheap ad revenue. That article was being discussed on Twitter all day, just wanted to make sure you knew it was being questioned. Look forward to the wages article -- I was on Arsenal Review USA this week (should be up tomorrow), and discussed this issue a little bit. Obviously I had no idea what I was talking about, but I do hope your research supports my uninformed opinion.

I tend to get impulsive with my blogs and post them before I plan, if I get on a roll while writing.  So I'm really trying to hold off on this one until the interlull, to at least give us something to think about while that's going on.  I hope there's enough actual action this week to keep us going. 
Be sure to comment tomorrow and tell us where we can hear your thoughts on that stuff.  Thanks.

hmmm....thats just it. we take things as it comes out. but who do you believe? you can side with 1 or the other. the whole board versus wenger. we have 2 give credit 2 arsene to get us where we are now, but even he knows and accepts today money is everything. he i believe is not asking 4 astronomical wage rises but just enough to sign as he says world class players

Its not going to look too stupid in 2 years time when FFP rules go into effect.

yes i agree,  but till then we live in todays world and can you see us doing better as things stand?  by the way spuds lost so thats something lol

Spuds got EMBARRASSED! Just like we will be next Sunday. Hope Arsene takes his medications.

It will if Arsenal have been out of the CL two years in a row and are seen as a team that struggles for a Europa league place.  Hard to recruit top players there.  And I just can't bring myself to trust UEFA to properly enforce FFP - I honestly think its going to end up being an illusory rule.