those managers would at least have won a trophy, some say does it matter if it had just been a league or FA cup, of course it would because success breeds success, it shows you can get over the line, creates a feel good factor etc,

I don't understand how people keep pushing that line.

What counts for the biggest clubs is how competitive they are in the Premier League and Champion's League.

We have seen Arsenal win 3 FA Cups and it brought zero improvement in the 2 competitions that really matter. Mourinho won League Cup/Europe with United but they did not challenge for the title or CL.

The last 2 Tottenham managers to actually win a trophy there were both regarded as total failures due to mid table mediocrity in the league.

Disagree with just about everything you said Darren inc Pochettino who fell out with Levy over lack of investment.

Lurka has nailed it imo. Wenger and Emery both have one thing in common. They never learned from mistakes and continued to do the same things when they clearly were not working.

As for running down contracts its not easy to resolve. Ramsey was a fair to middling player, certainly not worth paying a massive contract to keep. Gazidis and Wenger offered Ozil a ridiculous contract. You either are held to ransom or let them run down their contracts. Choose your poison.

Getting a top quality manager is very important now and the board need to get the best that will come to us. No cheap options should be considered.

i think the next manager market indicates that no one knows whats going on , and that our board had nothing planned for emerys departure and remain as clueless as ever


vieira creeping down in price, can see that one maybe., the fans would just about swallow it, and would prefer him to freddie or arteta i would think

would he be a yes man that the board would love, not sure ?

You take Torreira for example, he started him in just 29 of the 51 Prem games he was in charge of, that doesn't sound like he really signed him, of course he would say nice words about him, that's what good managers do, he wasn't going to criticse him. Then there's Ceballos, 15 million loan fee and he barely gets a kick, Emery would have known him but looks like he didn't really want him either.

Vinai and Raul both gave a joint interview pre season talking in depth about how the club is run and about transfers and left me with the impression Emery had little input into transfers, "‘And if I look back to the last transfer window, with Bernd Leno, Matteo Guendouzi, Lucas Torreira, Papa Sokratis and others, we think we bring in players that can make a really big impact. And we believe that those players, and many more, can make a bigger impact next season......He continued: ‘We need to make sure we are really disciplined. A good example of that is senior players that aren’t towards the end of their careers, we need to make sure that those players, when they’ve got two years left on their contract, we’re making the difficult decisions. ‘We’re either renewing those players’ contracts, or we’re selling those players. So we’re going to have to be brave with those decisions along the way, because we can’t be in a situation where we are allowing players to walk out the door for free unless they are coming towards the end of their career.’

If you read between those lines you can see that they are in full control of the revolving door of who comes in and out and when.

Emery could hardly start instructing his players to lump it up field old school style, professional players on big wages should be capable of playing football, you can't really legislate for some of the individual mistakes made this season, the players were not good enough. If Klopp / Simeone / Conte came in with the same group they could only make marginal improvements with the same squad - too many players not at the standard needed to compete at the very top, how is Mustafi still at the club, he's the worst Arsenal defender I can remeber since the days of Senderos and Dejourou.

Kroenke is without a doubt the biggest problem at Arsenal and has been since he took over, he takes little interest, allowed stagnation to happen for many years, gave Wenger a pay rise when we started to go backwards, refused to make decisive and quick managerial when needed, he only acted when his pocket was felt as we slipped out of the CL and empty seats started to become more and more visable.

The annual salaries of some players was/is ridiclous which resulted in us being snookered when it comes to a)moving players on when needed and b)making future signings because of FFP, which incidentally PSG, City and Madrid seem to get around! Ozil on 350k a week, Xhaka on 100k a week, Pepe from Lille for 75 million and out on 140k a week when most Arsenal fans had never heard of him, Luiz way past his best on 125k a week, Kolasinac on 100k a week - and it goes on and has done for many years, superstar wages for fairly average players, Bayern seem to do it right, they get genuine top quality on similar or lesser wages that what we pay, this all comes from the top. If it wasn't all sanctioned by Kroneke than that's an even bigger damning indictment on him, remember he also had the fans turning on each other inside the stadium when it came to protests/banners, fights broke out, because of his lack of leadership, I don't blame Wenger, if you're offered 8 million a year to do a job you love you're not going to say no.


Tober, when you say that that the biggest clubs are judged by the league and Europe, I don't how Tottenham falls into that catagory? Tottenham have not won a title in my lifetime and I'd guess yours, they're relatively new to the top tier European competition and haven't won the biggest domestic cup for 30 years, I would have thought given trophies would be welcomed, to me it seems people make way too many excuses for him basically because he's a nice guy, same way they did with Wenger, Pochettinho has never won anything yet people so readily pat him on the back, Klopp and Mourinho are managers who have out performed their resources at times in comparison to the competition at clubs like Porto in Europe, Inter Milan at home and in Europe and and Dortumund who are paupers compared to what Bayern could pay in wages. He may have made noises this season about transfers but didn't say much when going a few transfer windows without signing a single player, I just can't imagine top managers doing that, they'd move on quicker. They were heavily reliant on Kane the whole time he was there and that combined with good timing, United and Arsenal were both simultaneously in demise allowing them to enter the top 4 consistently. They've made a great move with Mourinho because he is a real winner and now I can see them challenging for trophies.

As much as we don't want Kroenke at the club, he is not to blame for all of our ills.

Kroenke is a businessman and would admit he know's feck all about football. That's why he employs the likes of Gazidis,Raul, Edu etc to make the footy decisions for him. The fact that it took too long to sack Wenger and Emery must be laid at the feet of the above mentioned.

I cannot see how Emery would have had no input on transfers. It's vital that any manager likes to choose his targets and makes no sense for Raul to tell Emery 'these are who we are buying so get on with it'.

'If you read between those lines you can see that they are in full control of the revolving door of who comes in and out and when.' You are talking nonsense here, all that says is that they are there to avoid the mistakes made under Wenger and Gazidis by not letting players run down contracts and signing younger players. There is no doubt that that places some constraints any any manager in having to sign players within that framework but there is nothing in that to indicate that the manager is not the primary driver of who is signed.

Most of the players he signed he would have known about better than anyone else at the club. You can jump to the conclusion that he had nothing to do with them but there is no basis for that and it is highly unlikely. If Kroenke was meddling like Abramovich did with Shevchenko it would be more likely but he has nothing to do with the footballing side.

You transfer list him and put him up for sale at a reduced fee if necessary and if he doesn't want to go then you let him leave. You do not sign him at the end of the contract. We are paying Ozil £18m a year and we are getting zero value for money. We will end up paying another second-rate manager a lot less than that.

'If he doesn't want to go you let him leave'

How does that work ?

A player with 2 years left can turn down any transfer request.

There is nothing the club can do other than 'sit him in the stands', in which case you have given a guy a 4 year deal, stopped using him halfway through, still have to pay his wages, and then he leaves for nothing.

At no stage did Wenger want him to leave btw, he just let that situation happen and I don't believe he didn't realise what he was doing in offering him that deal. He was always well clued in to the club's finances.

Don't even get a new manager effect out of these players. They are all idiots with zero footballing intelligence. Headless chickens who think they all have to attack when we need a goal.  I would only keep Auba, Leno, Tierney, Martinelli, Pepe (only because he deserves more time to adapt and it would be stupid to sell him now). What the hell was he doing playing Ozil and Auba out wide and Willock in the centre?

I've been saying it for years, Bellerin is an awful defender and should be nowhere near a back 4. But he seems to give a shít and speaks with a cockney accent so the fans love him. Another Wenger defender and a complete liability - get rid ASAP. Judging by his interview after the match he is completely clueless about how bad we were - another idiot with zero intelligence. The squad is packed with them.

I want them to go for a defensive manager more than ever now. And they need to move quickly because Freddie can't motivate these players and seems to rate his academy players as much better than they are. None of them are good enough. We don't have time for that sort of nonsense. Not 1 team in this league are fraid of us. They know there are goals if they have a go at us, that needs to be sorted out for once and for all.

Allegri was quoted today in Milan as saying he is learning English but won't be managing again til Summer. They could do worse than paying a manager with PL experience a few million for 6 months.

If you want to fix this now...then Rafa.

He kept Newcastle up last season.

If you want to fix this permanently then stick with Freddie.

We’ll keep losing....will be in the relegation zone by Christmas and Stan could end up selling as our value completely  crumbles

Freddie could end up being our saviour.

Freddie is playing the same way as Emery did. No respect whatsoever for the defensive side of things. Both so called DM's attacking at the same time leaving the CB's exposed.

Torreira was worse than useless last night. If your manager says play DM, you play DM. These players are all over the shop as if they have no clue of their role in the team. On form we are the worst team in the league.

It's not that simple. You can't just buy a club and pump money into it any more, unless you do what City do and have related companies giving you sponsorhip deals worth 8 times their market value. Kroenke can't pay a manager more than a certain amount due to wage restrictions and wages being tied up by Wenger and Gazidis. For the same reason he can't give a manager lots to spend or sign big names unless he can convince some of the dross to leave and nobody is going to pay them as much. We have a wage bill of something like £240m+ which is about £100m higher than Leicester and Spurs. It is probably £100m a year too high for a EL club.

Kroenke is spending nearly all the resources the club has on the team. He is not the problem. I used to think he was but I don't any more, Wenger was the main problem with his refusal to spend what was available, letting top players leave for buttons, filling the squad with overpaid mugs on CL wages and signing abysmal defenders for years. You can blame Kroenke for not getting rid sooner but Wenger had earned his chance to get us back to CL and it wasn't an easy decision to get rid of him. 

I would keep Torreira. He is an important player and a good player. But his head has been turned and I doubt he cares about how he plays for us any more. Napoli and Atletico are apparently interested in him in January and I think he wants out in January. How many of our players would attract the interest of top CL clubs? They are not the ones we should be getting rid of but we probably will to free up wages and funds.

Kroneke is by far and away the biggest problem at the club, it all stems from him going back years.

He took over the club in 2008, by that time Arsenal had not won the league for four years, but I would say even at that point, as unusual as it is amongst all the other big clubs in Europe, who would have sacked their manager by then, it was for me and most fans still to early to to move him on, he had built up enough credit in the bank, but 10 year later to in 2018! it's unforgivable - and the sole reason why Kroenke never pulled the trigger is simply because of money, Wenger was delivering CL football, he was given a pay rise, Kroneke had zero interest in winning, he said so.

And now the mess you see before is all because of the remnants of the Wenger era lingers on, the players still here on wages no other club will take on and good players gone for peanuts or in some cases, nothing, like Ramsey who is better than what is here now.

Salaries are the other reason why Kroneke is the biggest problem, we have both hands tied behind our backs because he has sanctioned huge annual salaries for years for mediocre players because he knows nothing about football and neither did the people he hired like Ivan the terrible, the FFP restrictions are his fault for giving Ozil 18.2 mil a year, Luiz 6.5 mil a year who is way past his best, Mustafi, 90k a year, you couldn't give those two players away, it was/is Kroenke's responsibilty as an owner to know what is going on at his own club, what his own Chief Exectuve, Gazidis, was up to and the current replacements, and then make quick decisive decisions like any respectable owner of a big club would. You can't keep spunking huge wages on average players put you hands in the air and say look I am spending, that's not good ownership, it's poor decision making, Bayern are a great example of a club who have football people in charge making consistent and excellent recruitment decisions on wages that doesn't cripple them.

As a reminder, these are all the players we've bought since 2008, a reminder of how poor recruitment has been, there were some diamonds in the rough, like Cazorla, Ozil (quality is there but never consistently played in his right position )Auba, Sanchez on the whole, Ox I liked, but the rest would not get into any top team in Europe at any time, not the first team anyway. Very poor recruitment for years and year on the cheap.

Spoiler: Show

What I will say for Wenger is wages given to certain players were not his fault, he did not have the power to make those kind of decisions, he may have recommended it, but that was never his job. The blame goes to the money men only. When you have an owner that simply doesn't take much interest in what is really going on, you can't expect the club to be successful.

I think Simeone would be a very good appointment, he may not speak English but he can speak Spanish with 4-5 players who native tongue is Spanish/Portuguese and use a translator in the meantime. Unfortunately I don't think our board and owner will make such a bold selection.

He does know nothing about football, but he should obviously have known that the people he put in charge to run the club were making poor decisions over and over, he should have known how poor value for money many of the players were, like Arteta who was on 125k a week, not sure why this is difficult to understand, the person at the very top is responsible for what goes on his company, you don't need to be an expert in football to know that the football club you own is not progressing over many years, it was stagnant for many years, and he did nothing to improve this because he didn't care about winning, that's why he is the biggest problem.

You really think with a different owner Wenger would have stayed all them years? Gazidis would have stayed all them years? Ramsey could have run down his contract and left for nothing? Van Persie would have been sold to a title rival? Ozil would be given a crazy 350k a week contract?

Absolutely no chance, the owner could have stopped all that by either intervening and saying no or sacking the people in put in place to direct control these things but he never did, he is the biggest problem.

Yes it wasn't 08 he had that power but he has been in position long enough to have made key changes,  Hill wood once said of Kroeneke "“Call me old-fashioned but we don’t need Kroenke’s money and we don’t want his sort.”".

I think it's worth mentioning again that Kroeneke once admitted he did not buy Arsenal to win trophies.

You do not understand the FFP rules if you think we have the money to buy out Simeone or any decent manager's contract. You should probably familiarise yourself with them. You are not allowed to increase the wage bill by more than a certain amount a year unless the money comes from non-TV sources. Wenger tied most or all of it up for the following year a few months before he left and we didn't have any new commercial deals coming in that Summer. That ensured that we couldn't replace him with a top manager and we still can't.

He spent £100m on Xhaka, Mustafi and Lucas Perez and we haven't got top 4 since. But hold Kroenke more responsible for that if you think so.

I don't think it would have been much different under a different owner because Wenger had legendary status with fans and any owner would have been slow to fire him. A lot of fans didn't want him gone and a lot of them would even take him back today. It wouldn't be the first time a football club haven't got the right people in to do the job. The league is full of them. Levy took 15 years to get it right. The Liverpool owners took 5 years before they got it right. United are 6 years and counting and they can afford anyone they want.

I know what Hill-Wood said, you've already quoted that and I already told you that Hill-Wood sold his shares to Kroenke.

The fact is Wenger and Gazidis were the day to day managers of the club and are 95% responsible for the mess it's in today. But you can concentrate on the 5% if you want. If you don't have a clue about football you get people in who do and you go with their judgment and get rid of them if it's not working. That's what Kroenke did and still does and it's what the Liverpool owners do too. And he's got football people running the club off the pitch now like Liverpool do. I don't think he's as concerned with winning as they are but the club spends more than enough on the team for it to be competitive for the league and Chmpions League.

If he doesn't care about winning trophies then why is he paying a quarter of a billion a year in wages to finish below Leicester and Spurs who spend £100m less each every season? Surely he'd have offloaded players and got that wage bill down long ago and not spent what he could last Summer? It was Wenger who was less concerned with winning the league. He hasn't been concerned with even challenging for it since before Kroenke arrived. He had all the money he needed to strengthen the defence and by a proper DM and challenge for over a decade and he wasn't ársed. He preferred to spend it all on attacking players and play nice football instead.

Listen I am not saying Kroenke is an ideal owner, just that he's not the main cause of the mess we are in. Most avid fans don't have a clue about the FFP implications of deals so why would he? He didn't keep it as it was because of money, we have consistently been in the top 4 of wage bills for his entire tenure until this year when we are 5th. He has put up what the club can afford to spend and told the fans that there is money to spend and Wenger refused to spend it for the reasons given below, saying his squad is good enough. If he was in it for the money he would have reduced the wage bill years ago and not given Wenger money to spend or taken money out of the club like the Glazers. He kept the money Wenger wasn't spending within the club as reserves of cash. He took out about £3m at one point I think. Wenger resumed big spending after 2011 when Kroenke took control. We were a negative net spend club before that and he didn't sign many big names for big fees between the stadium move and Kroenke taking over.

Wenger had a famed wage structure for years that he refused to break and he repeatedly gave out about fees saying there was no value in the market, so to say he had no input on wages or fees is nonsense. Wenger was a lot more than a football manager at Arsenal, he was instrumental in the stadium move and was more like a director than a mere manager from that point on. Kroenke was the one who changed that structure. Wenger had too much control before that.

Arsenal have never been a club that fires managers unless it's a last resort. And Wenger was the last manager any Arsenal owner would have fired in a hurry, most of the fans didn't want him gone until he actually went. I wanted him gone years ago too but the club is different and has standards that it doesn't break and Kroenke has only adhered to them. If you think that paying £250m a year in wages isn't denting his profits then I don't know where to start and there is no point in continuing this.

The FFP implications of what Wenger left behind him could not have been known to Kroenke when the two mugs who put the whole mess in place didn't seem to know about it either.

Arsenal fans are getting like United's with the Glazers.

"All we need to do is force the owner out.....

Well it isn't happening. Rich Americans do not buy sports teams with a view to making a profit by selling up a few years later. They buy them for keeps and to pass down the generations. In 2050 Man United will be owned by The Glazer Family and Arsenal will be owned by The Kroenke Family.

Wenger and Emery and the various other people appointed to whatever roles have had as much or more money available as several other clubs that have built far better teams.

You can ultimately blame the Kroenkes for appointing or sticking with these people but all we can do is hope they make better appointments going forward, because new ownership is a pipedream.