My question isn’t geared towards your pessimism about Emery, but rather what you think is reasonable for your “replacement” manager… I think nobody with any reason thinks we SHOULD hit 4th this year based on all factors, regardless of manager. Even next year, we are up against it with this squad and situation. In general, I am asking for ANY manager in this situation what you think is reasonable measuring stick.
For example, for me, I would say ANY manager would be deemed a success in the next 5 seasons (including this) with 4 out of 5 in top 4… with one Premier League title, at least 2 cups, at least semis in Euro this year and one final appearance in CL… that to me would be clear success.
The way I look at it is objectively, we are 4th favorites every year on just financial criteria… and Spurs and Pool are NOT zero probability participants…
So if you are an optimist in that scenario, we are approaching 20- 25% chance, but realistically it is closer to 10-15% for premier league title on just reasonable odds (or even worse)… It means we should be relevant but probably not every year, and certainly one can’t expect a title in 3-4 years or else you are basically saying that teams with greater financial muscle PLUS Pool and Spurs are also consistent “failures.”
We have plenty of money to buy players, we just need to be smart about it… fact is, if you look at Chambers, Mustafi, Xhaka alone, we invested over 80 million… throw in Welbeck, Lucas, Leno, Papa… we spend a lot nowadays actually… there is a myth that teams spend massively NET… it really isn’t the case other than City in some years, Chelsea in some years, and ManU (who are an earning juggernaut)… even Pool and Spurs net spend over the years is pretty small - they have definitely hit the jackpot on big sales.
City specifically really hit a stride with their incoming transfers(going back to their Robinho’s and Yaya’s). They really are excellently run. Chelsea made some insane sales the past years too, making serious money for players they deemed surplus.
City is right now in historic position with manager and squad… I don’t think it is completely sustainable… Chelsea have been pretty good in stockpiling and selling off young prospects… but Spurs and Pool specifically have sold some massive fees for individual players (Coutinho, Suarez, Bale, etc.)… but yeah, it is one of the problems with the Wenger era - we absolutely tragically sucked at playing the market and seeing the rising tide… for all of Wenger’s economics background, he was awful in that one specific regard.
Yes i totally agree. However we have added to the squad and supposedly filled some holes. I don’t think anyone would go so far as to say with WC players but there is enough to expect we can add to last seasons finish and aim for CL???
Then we can add a few exciting transfer news headliners like the last few ones and add to the team with the aim of a EPL challenge.
I hate to agree Rio Ferdinand but he has a point when he was talking about Arsenal and Emery. He has inherited a team that can score goals and offensively is very strong. But just as Wenger inherited the defensively strong team and then added the creativity, all Emery needs to do is sort out the defensive side with some tactical and organizational changes and the mindset that is clearly been the issue…:cech:
So yeah… still winning against the smaller clubs and strong at home still (even with the serious clubs you mention…) is to me a minimum. He also can bank last seasons away form if you will points wise against his bedding in period - and the season has many games ahead to play both domestically and abroad. And hey win a few away games early and who knows eh :kos2:
But lets not bollocks about we are Arsenal and we expect CL nights against Barca and starting the season in the hunt for the title. Its in our blood and is to be expected so year 1 CL then year 2 CL plus outside chance EPL and year 3 CL and contenders and i don’t think that’s unfair or unrealistic to be frank with Emery. He’s no muppet and his CV while no Pep or SAF would suggest he could do it.
So tough year i certainly agree but were Arsenal so we do expect surely?
There’s a catch here. Arsenal during the Wenger era played it very smart if you really think about it. They always make it known by leaking stuff that we don’t have any money(which is definitely far from the truth). They, for the most part haven’t embraced the crazy market values we see now. We had 3 missteps the past 3 windows before this one. For example, spending the money we did and selling OX for 40m made teams think we have a big budget.
The leak that we had a liw budget this year certainly helped get Leno, Sokratis, Guendouzi and Torreira for reasonable prices. A team like Utd or Liverpool would have payed 60+ million for Torreira. For sure.
Thing is. This is not just the Arsenal world.
While we improve, others improve as well. Serie A and PL teams have certainly invested a lot. From top to bottom.
We played fecking City and Chelsea and I think we played pretty nicely especially against Chelsea, could have been a different outcome. In fact, I loved watching us against them, more so than any Wenger side played last few years.
Like I said before I don’t expect anything of Emery. I do think it’s not unfair for Arsenal to at least compete for top four this season because I believe last season was a bit of anamoly. What you describe in your second and fourth paragraph is what I think will not happen under Emery. Arsenal will not be relevant under his guidance.
@arsenescoatmaker because the potential of this club is bigger is that.
We don’t have the potential to compete with United or City in the transfer market. We don’t have the financial pull of Chelsea. And we haven’t had the cash windfall that Liverpool has received. And over the last 2 decades Liverpool has regularly invested far more than us in the transfer market because of our stadium move and the initial investment from their owners.
Without CL money we also have far less income so even less financial pull
So I’d disagree, we’re currently 5th in fiances and 6th in the quality of our squad.
It’s fine to disagree, obviously. I don’t think the ceiling of this club is 5th place and the Europa League. Maybe for this particular season, but not for the longer term.
We still make more money than Pool I believe, even without CL.
We are 2nd richest on revenue, 4th richest on spend, although Chelsea seems to have lost interest in spending crazy any more. Right now Pool outspends us in the last few years b/c of this last year insane spree. I suspect we will see us overtake them in the next 5 years in total net spend - we simply have more horsepower to do so now on a more reliable basis without operating at a loss… and I think we will be in CL at least as much as they in that period.
Well, you need to look around more. Chelsea activated Kepa’s release clause(the guy that Madrid decided not to sign in January) and Liverpool gave a record fee at the time for Allison who had one cery good season at a high level.
Ohh yeah, there is that lol… well maybe they are solidly in the “loss spending” category too still… to be fair, Chelsea have a net spend average in the last 3 years of about 50-55 million Euros… I guess in today’s terms, that is just under 50 million pounds. That isn’t miles away from our profit numbers not factoring in net transfers.
One other thing I was looking at that is pretty crazy is wages… basically we are now behind Pool, but only marginally (less than 20 million difference), but more surprising is that we are only behind City and Chelsea by 30-35 million… United is really the only one blowing us out of the water. For comparison, the delta between us and Spurs is about 4x the delta between us and City.
3rd highest and in front of Liverpool/Chelsea here but this is 16/17 before we dropped out of the CL and when Chelsea/Liverpool were still there. I suspect that gap has now closed.
It also doesn’t factor in Liverpool getting higher transfer fees and spending more money.
Yeah looks like City’s mega spending has finally allowed them to inflate up their revenue numbers above us… to be fair, we would probably close that gap back up if we got into CL again. Still, last I saw, we are the 6th richest club in the world and make over 100 million more than Spurs and still about 60 million more than Pool and Chelsea according to this.
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