by RoyallyFcuked »
26 Aug 2016 21:40
From Despair To Where? Hendo Royal Rother Haven't they spent £100m this window?
Nah, looking at SSN, they have only bought in Xhaka (£34m) & Rob Holding (Undisc.) so unless Holding cost £66m.....

It's about £90m if you include Mustafi and Perez who are undergoing medicals. I presume Rother quoted that figure from the BBC article that states "nearly £100m" in reference to the imminent signing of those 2.
Anyway, it's only taken a couple of hours for RoyallyFcuked to be shown up as talking bollocks again. Spending £34m on a player is a con trick to encourage people to buy season tickets? That's one expensive con trick.
I'm no fan of Arsenal or Wenger particularly and he may be long in the tooth, but under him, but they haven't finished outside the Top 4. The preceding 18 years before that their average finishing position was 5th so basically, their lowest finishing position under him is higher than their average finishing position for the 18 years before him.
I think they have shown that you can spend within your means and still compete which is surely a good thing.
Mustafi is decent enough I guess but neither he or Perez are going to have Arsenal fans drooling lets be honest, and weren't they considering Perez earlier in the summer only to look elsewhere? They now have to overspend on those two as they are desperate (and overspending is exactly what they don't want to do.) Looks like panic buying to me, I wonder what happened with their first choices? Could have had Lacazette for around £30m but Wenger was stalling on the price as usual, then he scores a hat trick and his value goes up another £10m.
Obviously they wanted Xhaka, but the timing of it meant many fans saw that and believed the club was going to do its business early, or even that it was the benchmark for things to come this summer. Thus making them buy or renew season tickets when they otherwise would have reconsidered this season. What they didn't expect was that to be the only top signing they'd have made approaching the end of the window, when they need at least 2 more.
No one is denying that Wenger has made them a higher finishing club than they were 30+ years ago, its the fall from grace over the last 10 or so years thats the problem. What your saying is exactly whats wrong at Arsenal, too many of the new generation of fans are (like the board) happy to come top 4 every season, while the real fans that lived the 90s and early 00s know the club is underachieving and a lot of them don't accept it. Arsenal should be challenging for the title, not challenging to come in the top 4.
The club spends far LESS than within its means, whether thats down to personal greed from the board and manager or something else I don't know. They can't even use the 'paying off the stadium' excuse anymore. Wenger is the league's highest paid manager.