28 Aug 2015 15:06:17
As a club do Arsenal football club have the reasorces and infrastructure to seriously compete with other top clubs for the premier league title?
If yes why don't we?

If no what is a reasonable expectation of the team considering competing with the big boys is beyond us?

1.) 28 Aug 2015
28 Aug 2015 15:33:05
Here's the thing.

We DO now have money to spend.
We've paid off the Emirates and we can now afford to spend a bit of cash.

However we aren't anywhere near City, Chelsea or even Utd when it comes to cash flow.

We CAN go and spend £50m on a player, but that player has to be an undisputed starting 11 every time he's fit.
We can't be like Chelsea and spend £25m on a player and bench him like Cuadrado.

We can't offer a player £200k a week in wages unless that player is really worth it.

That all said, I can't for the life of me figure out why we've only signed Cech, because some of the options out there, certainly are an improvement on Giroud/Arteta/Flamini.

To be honest, we don't even need THAT much!
Say we start AoC on the right and a new striker up top, tell me that a bench of Ospina, Gabriel, Debuchy, Wilshere, Ramsey, Walcott, Giroud, isn't a fantastic bench!?

But hey, maybe that's why I'm not arsenal manager

2.) 28 Aug 2015
28 Aug 2015 16:32:44
Actually I don't think the stadium debt is paid off entirely...

3.) 28 Aug 2015
28 Aug 2015 16:39:52
D if let's say Guadiola or Klopp took over last May and were given £100 million would you expect them to
A spend it
B make a title challenge.
I think the real question is could anyone find thr playrrs to make us real title contenders with our huumble resources.

4.) 28 Aug 2015
28 Aug 2015 17:00:02
Wouldn't we get close to City & the others if we spent well and then won the Premiership & the Champions League. Then we would attract the best stadium, shirt advertising revenue.

5.) 28 Aug 2015
28 Aug 2015 18:09:26
Or we could blow the wage structure, have a bunch of mercenaries come in for a couple of years, mess up the chemistry, neglect the balance of youth versus stars and have it all come crashing down causing us to miss the CL and into a financially unstable position for several years to come…and even worse maybe finish below spurs in the table - that's a picture I don't want to see.

6.) 28 Aug 2015
28 Aug 2015 18:14:33
Gooner,

Success over the short-term will not greatly increase our revenue (as we have long-term deals with the majority of our sponsors and any new deal would probably be minor - so we are talking about only increases to prize money), BUT over the long-term success would increase the popularity of Arsenal worldwide, with the knock-on of making Arsenal more valuable to sponsors, advertisers, and for live tv matches. That would then translate into greater revenues, which could translate into greater squad investment.

I do have trouble with the use of Chelsea and City as examples of who we cannot compete with financially. They are not really in a different category revenue-wise to Arsenal. We could compete with Chelsea / City if it were about spending what you earn, what we cannot compete with is their benevolent ownership.

What Arsenal want is to be successful, and long-term become more like like Madrid, Barca, Bayern, or Utd. who have huge revenue streams based on past success and the marketability of the brand based on past glories.

That said, at this point, we should be able to compete with the best in terms of players, as there are only, a handful of clubs that have the ability to spend what we do. (We may not be able to spend the most, but with what we spend, we should still be able to be competitive and win competitions we enter).

{Ed025's Note - good post that james..

7.) 28 Aug 2015
28 Aug 2015 19:08:18
When you buy players you get them on either a 3 or 5 year contract and that's the time line that I am thinking about and any deals that we have will be running out by the time we get near a Champions League final. We have waited a long while rightly so while we pay off the stadium to get into a financial position of strength and to go to the next level we need player investment. If we strengthen the team then I'm sure we won't mind waiting another few years for success.