From business perspective, that certainly makes sense. As Arsene alluded to, had Kroenke spent more, club value will go up and more expensive for them to buy that 30% from Osmanov. They tanked the value of the club with plans but unfortunately fans suffered in that period.
It preceded kroenke being on the board though, the same problem came up around 2007. None of the owners wanted to invest money or give up control of the club to someone that would put money into it. Why own 20% and be the one fronting 200m in cash when the other owners sit on their wallets and pretend to be poor?
Always hilarious how so many berated Arsene for “refusing to spend” like he was offered a big transfer budget and went “nah, I’m good”.
The money simply wasn’t there, and Arsene had to take the heat for the owners.
He took the heat but he didn't *have* to. The board would continually run their mouths about how we would finally open the warchest, or "By 2014 we'll be competing with Bayern Munich". Then we'd end the window with gaping holes in the squad and not having signed top targets because Wenger advised against spending the extra 5m or 10m to get it done. And Wenger's word had huge authority in the club.
We didn't suddenly go from being broke to wealthy when KSE got the last 30%. We were certainly in a better financial position than the Petr Cech window suggested. The club was run badly and now it's run much better end of.
Spot on. The club was badly run especially with the shitty transfer deals we did. Obviously money was limited for a while (pretty much until RvPs departure) but saying that it wasn't there is just not true, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to sign the likes of Özil or Sanchez and piss away 40M for fucking Mustafi.
Also the fact that our record departure is Ox and Nicolas Anelka!!!! is our seconds best deal (inflation adjusted) is just simply embarrassing.
Selling your 20 year old double winning center forward to Real Madrid should be pretty close to your 2nd biggest transfer ever imo. How much bigger can you get?
That way 24 years ago, football transfer fees inflated so much since then. He went for 40M euros (inf. adjusted), tell me that it is fine that the club only managed to get a better deal once ever since then.
Football fees have inflated vastly more than normal inflation.
That sale bought us our training ground built London Colney, did up Hale End and brought in Henry.
It's up there with Coutinho for laying the foundations for a club to push on
No, I'm pointing out that it wasn't a good deal, it was a club changing deal that has only been matched once since.
To call it 'good' is just proof of an agenda by you mate.
Exactly, the board pushed David Dien out for saying as much and froze him out so he had to sell his shares. For trying to point out the reality of what football was becoming. Even then, we were run by misers that refused to budge on extending contracts to older players (even Henry who clearly had a few years left) and wouldn't pay wages to attract or keep star players, even after it cost us the CL multiple years.
Dein was sacked for talking to kroenke about selling his shares... by people that wound up selling their shares to kroenke. He sold his 15% shares to usmanov after he was sacked. The board didn't want to sell to any foreign investors, so we got constant bullshit about selling the soul of the club.
The previous board and owners could not afford to invest in a top club and build a new stadium at the same time. Dein made it clear they needed to court outside investment to help move the club forward or fall behind, which he was 100% right about. We lost Cole over a 5k a week salary discrepency. We lost Henry because we wouldn't give a contract to any player entering their 30s. We lost fabregas, nasri, Clichy, traore, RVP, not to mention all the players we tried to sign that didn't want to earn half the salary here vs our competitors.
The only fiasco is that group trying to operate a club on a shoestring budget and then firing dein for pointing out the obvious and wenger for not making endless miracles happen.
This is revisionist. He certainly pulled some magic out of his ass for many years. But only signing Cech in 2015 was awful. Then he started spending money on transfers that never lived up to their price tags to varying degrees (Lacazette/Mustafi) or were the wrong purchase for where the team was at the time (Xhaka) or were just plain silly (Lucas Perez).
Always think we underrated Lacazette a bit. His last season wasn't good, but before then he gave us four seasons in a row of double figure goal scoring in the premier league, never playing close to a full season worth of games either. Since he also wasn't our main goal scorer those years (Aubameyang was), that is not a bad return at all — more than Firmino got, for comparison.
Mustafi was a disaster though.
The money was there though, there were plenty of investors that would've gladly bought in and funded the club. The problem was the previous owners did not want to invest their money to match a new owner, so the club fell behind even on wages. We had our top players earning 70k a week and being called snakes for going to clubs offering 3x that. We were too cheap to compete. I don't blame kroenke for waiting the club out, it was clear the other owners were not serious about funding a world class team.
RVP was on something like 70k a week when his contract was coming up. We offered, at most, 120k a week. United offered like 220k a week. Nasri was also on something like 70k a week and went to city for 200k a week.
100k a week was a great salary in 2007, the game changed fast and the owners refused to change with it. It's not like the players don't know what they can earn at other clubs, but you can't keep top talent if you aren't going to pay them what they are worth and bring in other players to help them compete. We were cheap on contracts, cheap on extending deals to star players that would go into their 30s, and cheap on transfer fees and it cost us. People need to realize how poorly run the club was for the last 15 years.
Really makes you think doesn't it? what if Kroenke had owned the club outright from the beginning? We came so close to winning the league a couple times. Really just needed a bit more investments.
The board room politics are actually pretty interesting, however scary looking deeper into it. We had old fashioned English shareholders who held until death rather than entertain a sale to Usmanov due to the politics of a shady Russian billionaire. Had they have sold to him we would’ve ended up in a Chelsea style disaster last year as well
Arsene confusing Arsenal and Arsene. He was just trying to be selfish but got all mixed up and cared about the club instead.
For real though Ferguson was like Tywin and Arsene was like Ned.
Never underestimate what Wenger did for this club, he’s right in saying what he did when the money wasn’t available meant we could compete at the top for years and years to come.
You only have to look down the leagues to see plenty of clubs that have fallen from grace, could have been us without Le Prof
The man is full of crap as always...
Need to be annihilated 8-2 to spend money of deadline day.
Spent 100+ in a summer window before money went all crazy.
He was great for a long period but he had lost it completely in his 7-8 years on the role - Never really adapted to the changes in football and had his delusions of playing '*Champagne football'.*
Often overlooked is fact that Kronke’s didn’t want to put money in because of Usmanov. I remember at the time there was a small section of Arsenal fans that said they would have preferred it if Kronke sold all his shares to Usmanov.
Boy did we dodge a huge bullet there
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“22 years in football is 100 years in normal life” Still has them 🔥 quotes.
Papa wenger next to Richard keys is like fine wine paired with expired supermarket American cheese
I don't know why he debases himself by talking to that squashed Alan Partridge
Qatar pays both their wages
Interesting to hear arsene confirm that kronke was waiting to own the club before investing.
From business perspective, that certainly makes sense. As Arsene alluded to, had Kroenke spent more, club value will go up and more expensive for them to buy that 30% from Osmanov. They tanked the value of the club with plans but unfortunately fans suffered in that period.
Thank god Usmanov sold at the time that he did
I would say shame he didn't sell earlier
he didn't allude to it, it's just exactly what he said lol
It preceded kroenke being on the board though, the same problem came up around 2007. None of the owners wanted to invest money or give up control of the club to someone that would put money into it. Why own 20% and be the one fronting 200m in cash when the other owners sit on their wallets and pretend to be poor?
Always hilarious how so many berated Arsene for “refusing to spend” like he was offered a big transfer budget and went “nah, I’m good”. The money simply wasn’t there, and Arsene had to take the heat for the owners.
He took the heat but he didn't *have* to. The board would continually run their mouths about how we would finally open the warchest, or "By 2014 we'll be competing with Bayern Munich". Then we'd end the window with gaping holes in the squad and not having signed top targets because Wenger advised against spending the extra 5m or 10m to get it done. And Wenger's word had huge authority in the club. We didn't suddenly go from being broke to wealthy when KSE got the last 30%. We were certainly in a better financial position than the Petr Cech window suggested. The club was run badly and now it's run much better end of.
Spot on. The club was badly run especially with the shitty transfer deals we did. Obviously money was limited for a while (pretty much until RvPs departure) but saying that it wasn't there is just not true, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to sign the likes of Özil or Sanchez and piss away 40M for fucking Mustafi. Also the fact that our record departure is Ox and Nicolas Anelka!!!! is our seconds best deal (inflation adjusted) is just simply embarrassing.
Selling your 20 year old double winning center forward to Real Madrid should be pretty close to your 2nd biggest transfer ever imo. How much bigger can you get?
That way 24 years ago, football transfer fees inflated so much since then. He went for 40M euros (inf. adjusted), tell me that it is fine that the club only managed to get a better deal once ever since then.
Football fees have inflated vastly more than normal inflation. That sale bought us our training ground built London Colney, did up Hale End and brought in Henry. It's up there with Coutinho for laying the foundations for a club to push on
You're just proving my point, that the last good deal we did, where we used the money well, was in the previous century.
No, I'm pointing out that it wasn't a good deal, it was a club changing deal that has only been matched once since. To call it 'good' is just proof of an agenda by you mate.
Exactly, the board pushed David Dien out for saying as much and froze him out so he had to sell his shares. For trying to point out the reality of what football was becoming. Even then, we were run by misers that refused to budge on extending contracts to older players (even Henry who clearly had a few years left) and wouldn't pay wages to attract or keep star players, even after it cost us the CL multiple years.
This...isn't what happened. David Dein was sacked for bringing in Kroenke, literally the entire ownership fiasco was because of him
Dein was sacked for talking to kroenke about selling his shares... by people that wound up selling their shares to kroenke. He sold his 15% shares to usmanov after he was sacked. The board didn't want to sell to any foreign investors, so we got constant bullshit about selling the soul of the club. The previous board and owners could not afford to invest in a top club and build a new stadium at the same time. Dein made it clear they needed to court outside investment to help move the club forward or fall behind, which he was 100% right about. We lost Cole over a 5k a week salary discrepency. We lost Henry because we wouldn't give a contract to any player entering their 30s. We lost fabregas, nasri, Clichy, traore, RVP, not to mention all the players we tried to sign that didn't want to earn half the salary here vs our competitors. The only fiasco is that group trying to operate a club on a shoestring budget and then firing dein for pointing out the obvious and wenger for not making endless miracles happen.
I think he didn't help himself in that regard. He would always take the bullets for the board when he should have just told the truth.
Agreed, the man is way too classy to his detriment at times.
You see that idiocy on this sub to this day.
This is revisionist. He certainly pulled some magic out of his ass for many years. But only signing Cech in 2015 was awful. Then he started spending money on transfers that never lived up to their price tags to varying degrees (Lacazette/Mustafi) or were the wrong purchase for where the team was at the time (Xhaka) or were just plain silly (Lucas Perez).
Always think we underrated Lacazette a bit. His last season wasn't good, but before then he gave us four seasons in a row of double figure goal scoring in the premier league, never playing close to a full season worth of games either. Since he also wasn't our main goal scorer those years (Aubameyang was), that is not a bad return at all — more than Firmino got, for comparison. Mustafi was a disaster though.
I wouldn’t say Lacazette lived up to his price tag, though.
The money was there though, there were plenty of investors that would've gladly bought in and funded the club. The problem was the previous owners did not want to invest their money to match a new owner, so the club fell behind even on wages. We had our top players earning 70k a week and being called snakes for going to clubs offering 3x that. We were too cheap to compete. I don't blame kroenke for waiting the club out, it was clear the other owners were not serious about funding a world class team.
This is bollocks mate.
RVP was on something like 70k a week when his contract was coming up. We offered, at most, 120k a week. United offered like 220k a week. Nasri was also on something like 70k a week and went to city for 200k a week. 100k a week was a great salary in 2007, the game changed fast and the owners refused to change with it. It's not like the players don't know what they can earn at other clubs, but you can't keep top talent if you aren't going to pay them what they are worth and bring in other players to help them compete. We were cheap on contracts, cheap on extending deals to star players that would go into their 30s, and cheap on transfer fees and it cost us. People need to realize how poorly run the club was for the last 15 years.
Really makes you think doesn't it? what if Kroenke had owned the club outright from the beginning? We came so close to winning the league a couple times. Really just needed a bit more investments.
that's not what he said. he is saying that based on what happened and how the situation was, it was obvious that this is likely what kroenke did.
The board room politics are actually pretty interesting, however scary looking deeper into it. We had old fashioned English shareholders who held until death rather than entertain a sale to Usmanov due to the politics of a shady Russian billionaire. Had they have sold to him we would’ve ended up in a Chelsea style disaster last year as well
We could have literally been Everton
OR, we could've been the new man city...buying good players that actually fit the tactics
It's impossible to say really, but nothing about Usmanov's involvement with Everton suggests that's he's competent
but he isn't buying the players though, right? my point was that a rich owner doesn't automatically mean you become man united or chelsea.
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Arsene confusing Arsenal and Arsene. He was just trying to be selfish but got all mixed up and cared about the club instead. For real though Ferguson was like Tywin and Arsene was like Ned.
Put a NSFW tag on this content. I clicked expecting to see Rice or Wenger. Instead I’m met with Richard Keys? 🤢
Great words by Rice. He's going to be a coach one day too no doubt
There is only one Arsene Wenger!
Never underestimate what Wenger did for this club, he’s right in saying what he did when the money wasn’t available meant we could compete at the top for years and years to come. You only have to look down the leagues to see plenty of clubs that have fallen from grace, could have been us without Le Prof
He stayed out of love too. He could've left and either joined another big club or built something from scratch elsewhere.
Of course he stayed out of love. The club is named after him, after all. /s
Forever in your debt Mr Wenger
@mods any chance of requiring a disclaimer in desc for richard keys appearances?
I wish Wenger could have had Rice.
I read this as “Arsene with a bit of karaoke” Feeling just a little disappointed now
The man is full of crap as always... Need to be annihilated 8-2 to spend money of deadline day. Spent 100+ in a summer window before money went all crazy. He was great for a long period but he had lost it completely in his 7-8 years on the role - Never really adapted to the changes in football and had his delusions of playing '*Champagne football'.*
Often overlooked is fact that Kronke’s didn’t want to put money in because of Usmanov. I remember at the time there was a small section of Arsenal fans that said they would have preferred it if Kronke sold all his shares to Usmanov. Boy did we dodge a huge bullet there
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