Why did the Emirates move cause us to buy kids

[supergeorgegraham]

Last night they mentioned Griesman may cost over 100 Million. Emirates cost 350 Million to build and Emirates paid us 100 Million for naming rights.
We also owned Highbury and redeveloped it into flats. Just what was the financial restrictions all about. Did we not make money on the flats, we sold players at this time and used cheap kids.
Maybe it was Wengers choice to pay off the dept asap but Kroenke took full control in 2011 when the Stadium was much closer to being paid off.
Just read an article on him from 2016 in which he states he didn't buy Arsenal to win trophies. I think the Kroenke debate is over now due to the enormity of that quote.

[NickF]

Simply put, it didn't cause us to buy kids, that was Wenger choice.

In a few articles I've seen it was estimated that there was at least 30m available each season for transfers which isn't a lot nowadays but back then wasn't too bad. The clubs choice was to buy lots of unproven talent, when a better option would have been proven talent. If we had bought a couple of 20m players in that time maybe our better players wouldn't have left and we wouldn't have been back to square one every year.

[Belfast Boy]

IIRC Wenger sez that he purposely broke up the Invincibles on the belief that the youth coming thru would adjust to the new stadium more readily!

[Clash]

The developing kids thing was almost certainly just a personal, ego driven ambition of Wenger's and he used OUR club to try it. It was his second attempt having failed to succeed with it at Monaco (who sensibly sacked him).

The financial restrictions thing is a myth / blatant lie.

Danny Fiszman, when asked about stadium debt, dismissed it very simply by explaining there was none. He said that the Emirates generated revenue that was £50m a season more than Highbury and that the annual loan repayment was £20m. That's probably where the £30m figure came from that NickF mentions in his post.

Wenger of course, being the deceitful fraud once tried to make it look like he needed to raise £20m a season from transfer deals when speaking to the press

Even as recently as a few weeks ago he repeated the lie that he was, until recently, in a position where he had to sell his best players (players that coincidentally were askin to go).

Another thing is that even though I hate the Emirates and think the whole moving from Highbury thing was driven by greed and selfishness ... the club actually did well to complete the whole thing on time and on budget. Compare it to the shambles the FA made of Wembley.

Wenger's mis-management of the team and his severe errors of judgement have made the move look less successful than it actually was.

The irony is that Wenger is the one held up by many as the hero who steered us through a difficult period when it was actually him that made it into a difficult period

[Gunnersaurus]

The move didn't force him to buy kids, it's was a pure vanity project with future sales a big motive.

We don't buy stars, we make them, remember that? I guess he thought buying them young and selling them big a few years later would help keep the income strong while the ground was getting paid off.

[StuartL]

The move didn't force him to buy kids, it's was a pure vanity project with future sales a big motive.

We don't buy stars, we make them, remember that? I guess he thought buying them young and selling them big a few years later would help keep the income strong while the ground was getting paid off.

I still maintain that the buying and selling of Anelka for £500,000 and £23m meant that he thought he was gifted at spotting talent and the board knowing no better just let him do as he pleased with getting rid of champions with real fight in them for mainly a bunch of kids - who ultimately failure to.make the grade / unproven nomarks, who remained just that.

[Sean]

As I have heard and have repeated on here, the austerity was a LIE. We had about £30M a season ring-fenced from the Cashburton payments, plus transfer profits, which were pretty healthy when we sold Adebayor and Toure for over £40M in 2009, let alone profits from further deals, like Van Persie, etc. Not to mention the tens of millions per year we have made in sponsorship, in admittedly second rate deals and that's not even touching the ever mushrooming PL TV rights of recent years.

We have a 20 year mortgage on Cashburton, which we have easily covered, if not for the early repayment penalties - stupid as they are. There were also cashflow problems, due to the global recession, that were hindering the sale of the new Highbury Square apartments and the building of more yuppie flats on Drayton Park. There was pretty likely some juggling of funds there, which was conveniently offset by the continual qualification for the Be All and End All, which at that time, was nowhere near the struggle it has been in recent seasons.

Several months after Dein was sacked in 2007, The Old Fraud signed a new contract and from then on he had absolute power at the club. His statement said he had complete freedom to run the club as he saw fit. HE and he alone decided to embark on the failed Project Youth. At that time, not many supporters were sure about who was in control of the purse-strings at the club. Was it the board, was it Wenger? It is pretty clear now that it was TOF all along, who was deliberately refusing to sign better players who would 'kill' his fledgeling failures. All the while overpaying shite and bang average players, which he still does today. It really has been ten years of waste and wilful negligence from TOF.

This decade of failure really has been his fault all along, as well as our passive, useless board for letting him do it.

[Allgunsblazin]

As I have heard and have repeated on here, the austerity was a LIE. We had about £30M a season ring-fenced from the Cashburton payments, plus transfer profits, which were pretty healthy when we sold Adebayor and Toure for over £40M in 2009, let alone profits from further deals, like Van Persie, etc. Not to mention the tens of millions per year we have made in sponsorship, in admittedly second rate deals and that's not even touching the ever mushrooming PL TV rights of recent years.

We have a 20 year mortgage on Cashburton, which we have easily covered, if not for the early repayment penalties - stupid as they are. There were also cashflow problems, due to the global recession, that were hindering the sale of the new Highbury Square apartments and the building of more yuppie flats on Drayton Park. There was pretty likely some juggling of funds there, which was conveniently offset by the continual qualification for the Be All and End All, which at that time, was nowhere near the struggle it has been in recent seasons.

Several months after Dein was sacked in 2007, The Old Fraud signed a new contract and from then on he had absolute power at the club. His statement said he had complete freedom to run the club as he saw fit. HE and he alone decided to embark on the failed Project Youth. At that time, not many supporters were sure about who was in control of the purse-strings at the club. Was it the board, was it Wenger? It is pretty clear now that it was TOF all along, who was deliberately refusing to sign better players who would 'kill' his fledgeling failures. All the while overpaying shite and bang average players, which he still does today. It really has been ten years of waste and wilful negligence from TOF.

This decade of failure really has been his fault all along, as well as our passive, useless board for letting him do it.

Yes that is Verbatim!...
My argument to the old forum was that he had far too much power and he could do as he liked...
Project Youth, then became Project sign any old fucker, Gallas, Silvestre, then he went on to sign second rate *word censored* who all got millionaires contracts, oh yes, even if you are shit I will make you a better player a la Henry!
When things went pear shaped around the usual time of late January February, resign Henry for a couple of games so he avoided the shops in New York, deflection of the century!...
This old *word censored* deserves to be hung drawn and fucking quartered for his 10 years + off utter incompetence and for hoodwinking supporters that kept him in a club...
But unfortunately supporters at this club are mesmerised by Wenger, at the mere mention of his name they drop their pants to be shafted by him for the umpteenth time...
That is why I ignore the club, and actually could not even give a fuck about the cup final....

[Sean]

Yep. I'd say the 'earned the right to decide when he leaves' period was 2008-11; after that title collapse, the Birmingham bottling and the 8-2, it was clear the bloke is a fraud. Hardly any of us knew that it was him all along at that time. Only in retrospect can we now see that The Old Fraud took our club down this road in 2007 and the rot set in right there, whilst TOF doubled his wage packet in that time.

TOF played the hell out of the 'stadium card', giving rise to the austerity lie that some Gooners still believe today. We should have hounded him out in 2011 on results alone and yet still there are Gooners who think we should give him respect and will refuse to protest on that basis alone, never mind that it's now been a decade of underachieving shite and he wants to stay here forever. Worst of all, the underachievement was totally deliberate!

With TOF's insane self-imposed 'rules' - his refusal to upgrade first team players, refusal to prepare for the opposition and to prepare the team accordingly, the infamous Socialist Wage Structure and awful sideways football with exposed centre-backs and no attackers driving into the box - we never had a chance of real PL/CL success in that time, nor ever in the future if this fraudulent bastard keeps drawing up his own new contracts and blank cheques.

He has brainwashed the media and AKBs. The truth is that he should have been hounded out a long time ago, the scumbag cúnt

[DB10GOONER]

The move didn't force him to buy kids, it's was a pure vanity project with future sales a big motive.

We don't buy stars, we make them, remember that? I guess he thought buying them young and selling them big a few years later would help keep the income strong while the ground was getting paid off.

I still maintain that the buying and selling of Anelka for £500,000 and £23m meant that he thought he was gifted at spotting talent and the board knowing no better just let him do as he pleased with getting rid of champions with real fight in them for mainly a bunch of kids - who ultimately failure to.make the grade / unproven nomarks, who remained just that.

Agreed 100%. Also the 04 Invincibles season was a mixed blessing. Yeah great to be the only team (fuck OldChums City AFC and their shit 10 team league back in 1878 or fucking whenever) to ever do it, but ultimately that success convinced his already dangerous ego that he was indeed Christ Incarnate come down to Earth to rule the Football World and lo and behold he cannoteth maketh mistaketh. Cúnteth.

[Brightonnxtround]

Wow this is a truly great tread

[supergeorgegraham]

Wow this is a truly great tread

Lol I think the word you are looking for is thread. I think it's a decent subject as the fans had to wait years for a big money signing after the stadium. Basicly it's a why

[GoonerMuzz]

I've always wondered where we'd be financially if he had invested more and in better players?

If you look at the size of RM and Barca worldwide much of it comes from winning successive CLs and La Liga over the years, Bayern too, if we'd managed even a couple more PLs and a CL in that time how much greater would our revenue have been internationally, how much better would our sponsorship deals and financial deals have been?

I know buying quality is no guarantee of outright success but i do wonder if he hadn't gone down the project youth route and actually been successful in other competitions exactly how 'big' a club we could have become especially as when we were at the top of our game it was also the time of global expanding of the TV deals for the PL and CL, some people will deride our international fans but the potential massive increase in revenue from shirt sales and merchandise would have more than paid for the increase in squad quality.

I know there are a lot of ifs and buts there, but our potential after the Invincibles in terms of becoming a global brand was huge but project youth probably stymied that.

[StuartL]

I've always wondered where we'd be financially if he had invested more and in better players?

If you look at the size of RM and Barca worldwide much of it comes from winning successive CLs and La Liga over the years, Bayern too, if we'd managed even a couple more PLs and a CL in that time how much greater would our revenue have been internationally, how much better would our sponsorship deals and financial deals have been?

I know buying quality is no guarantee of outright success but i do wonder if he hadn't gone down the project youth route and actually been successful in other competitions exactly how 'big' a club we could have become especially as when we were at the top of our game it was also the time of global expanding of the TV deals for the PL and CL, some people will deride our international fans but the potential massive increase in revenue from shirt sales and merchandise would have more than paid for the increase in squad quality.

I know there are a lot of ifs and buts there, but our potential after the Invincibles in terms of becoming a global brand was huge but project youth probably stymied that.

I agree with Souness' comments today that previously we have been one or two quality players away from seriously competing at the top level, yet now we are further away than we have been for years.
He chose not to buy and we failed due to misplaced faith In Diaby, Denilson, Senderos, Djourou, Clichy, Traore, Aliadiare, etc etc

[Rugby Gooner]

Because the whole premise of the move from Highbury to the Bowl was,in my opinion,sold to the supporters on a fucking lie.