Quote:
Originally Posted by Damien
The decline seems to have been timed exactly when Chelsea came into Russian money. We seem to be a level below City and Chelsea smart buying isn't going to let us overtake them.
It's not as easy as bang for your buck. Players tend to be priced what they are worth and often a premium on top of that. There isn't a legion of great title-winning players waiting for a knock-off price. They are are rare and difficult to find. Otherwise everybody would be buying them.
People in the stadium still sing 'one Arsene Wenger'. Some are annoyed at the board and understand the limitations Wenger is working under. I do not speak for all of them. However we don't see much chanted against the man or protests against him.
What? That isn't a qualitative assessment of his strengths. It's a bunch of clichés. I don't see how those qualities can be measured or why he could give it and Wenger could not. You seem to be placing a lot of faith in him to 'find a way' without a clear idea of what that isn't given he would operate under the same contrants as Wenger does.
Fundamentally the problem is thus, the squad isn't good enough, the club can't pay for the premium level players that City and Chelsea can.
All the more reason to take it with a pinch of salt. People state the wages without ever given a source, seems dubious at best.
---------- Post added at 23:48 ---------- Previous post was at 23:41 ----------
What annoys me is the narrative that there is a legion of excellent players if only they would be brought. It isn't the case. Even Newcastle's impressive transfer dealings don't seem to be enough to let them break into the top four. At a certain level the scouting is too good and too competitive for a team to really be able to purchase established, quality players cheaply. It happens quite rarely. Normally to get a player cheap you need to take a risk. A sure thing will incur a premium. Occasionally you can buy a already known player and Wenger did this with Arteta, Mertesacker and Cazorla. However there isn't many of those purchases available.
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that's just it though according to Rogers they didn't have any scouts and good scouting for me is minimising the risks, doing you're home work and putting the miles in to identify unknown players. I'm not knocking Newcastle it just doesn't strike me as impressive that they managed to sign some of the top players from neighbouring leagues, that's the minimum they and everyone else for that matter should be trying to do imo.