The Emirates Move

[Arsenal Tone]

I've gone on about an article I read when abramovic bought chelsea. Was in the financial section of a newspaper. Journalist was sat at charity dinner with wenger and asked if you could make money through owning a football club. (Debate at the time was what was in it for Abramovic).

Wenger supposedly said yes, through developing youngsters, sellibg them at their peak and then bringing through the next batch of youngsters. He gave clubs in Holland as examples.

He pretty much described what we tried to do post invincibles.

[Nuggets]

The Emirates has no soul.

[Angelito]

I have not made my point clear enough

At the time the move was a sound one!
The method of selling our best players who had put us on the highest european stage was not sound.
If we had backed keeping those players and winning the CL and becoming dominant domestically becoming the club every top player wanted to play at creating revenue through being winners. Instead we competed

I'm not sure what you exactly mean?

We were still competing. If Wenger had the financial backing, we would have won the League in 07/08. We'd have reached the UCL Final again in 2009. Who knows what would have happened in 2011.

The Emirates was needed. Back then, the biggest source of revenue was the footfalls in the stadium. With the super owners, that changed. With the influx of TV money, it meant that stadium revenue wasn't going to be as important anymore.

There's a saying that a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest is no good. That was Arsenal from 06-15.

Hindsight: the stadium move actualized at the worst possible period. If we had retained our world class players and gone for the UCL instead of compromising our finances, we would have been better off. But that's hindsight. It would also have been short-sighted.

Eventually, the stadium move will help us and has been helping us. We simply haven't had ambitious owners to capitalize on the stadium, the Arsenal brand, and haven't been in tune with the way modern football has shaped up.

[theHotHead]

But Angelito Wenger still wielded the power when we moved to the Emirates. How do we even know that money was not made available to Wenger but his damn pride and stubbornness refused to spend it ?

Wenger dismantled the Invicibles prematurely. Wenger insisted on the social structure - our wage bill still grew astronomically because the likes of Bendtner and Denilson were on £50k per week, for example. Wenger decided to play Russian roulette with Almunia and Fabianski in goal when all he had to pay for a safer pair of hands was £4m for Schwarzer (he offered £2m). It was Wenger that persisted with playing sub-standard players. Wenger ALONE is responsible for the erosion of the squad's quality.

[starmandb]

The Emirates has no soul.

Rubbish
I watched many games at highbury when the atmosphere was shit.
It was fantastic when we were winning and shit when we got beat
We outgrew highbury
We needed to move
We have been let down by a set up who value a pound note over success and have gone poor way of achieving that. This f***ing nonsense crops up from time to time and it remains that
Nonsense

[VCC]

^^^^^^
Starmandb not non-sense I have not said the Emerites should not have happened, what I am saying is if you took the success of Man utd , Barcelona away would they be the football machine they are,
Arsenal at the time of the Emerites move had several of it's best players ever to have played for the club, the model was to disseminate that team selling it's best off for finance to cash in on their success.
Had the model been to actually succeed at the highest level UCL and fund through that success.
I have always felt Arsenal didnt back itself, just like the season Edwardo got injured by not replacing him the club and AW had a ready made excuse not to acheive

[starmandb]

Cant argue with that. But none of that is the fault of the Emirates. The fault lies with the club pleading the poor mouth and lacking ambition. A fault that still exists. There is no interest from on high other than what can be made from the club. Arsenal were never the little club that did and every time a fan says someone is too good for us or we should settle for this they have done there brainwashing job. It allows for the utter nonsense of a kid strutting about on saturday who has done f**k all behaving as he did. Guendouzi is just the latest in a line of watering down . I expect a hunger to win all the time. That's what serial winners do. I want that mentality back. That should exist no matter what stadium we are in.

[Salibatelli]

The Emirates move was terrible, Abhramovic was interested in buying us but the stadium debt put him off and he bought Chelsea instead, had we not had this poison chalice we might be in a much better position now.

Stadium money is small fry nowadays anyway, we've had the stadium 14 years now and it's not exactly helped us, in fact we've gone from title challengers with lots of top players, to midtable mediocrity with mostly average players.

[Marsbar100]

We simply just unlucky with the owner we got, luck of the draw really, we go the short stick, the emirates move made perfect sense at the time.

[StLGooner]

We simply just unlucky with the owner we got, luck of the draw really, we go the short stick, the emirates move made perfect sense at the time.

Yep, as said previously, it made sense at the time and not many could have foreseen how the financial part of the game was going to change so quickly. It didn't work like we wanted, but it was still needed. We'd be worse off without it.

[EliteKiller]

The Emirates move was terrible, Abhramovic was interested in buying us but the stadium debt put him off and he bought Chelsea instead, had we not had this poison chalice we might be in a much better position now.

Stadium money is small fry nowadays anyway, we've had the stadium 14 years now and it's not exactly helped us, in fact we've gone from title challengers with lots of top players, to midtable mediocrity with mostly average players.

You do realise that if we were still at Highbury we'd have had at least 100m a year LESS to spend every season for the last decade - how would that have made us better? Can't argue with the second paragraph but that's om management not bricks and mortar.

[VCC]

We simply just unlucky with the owner we got, luck of the draw really, we go the short stick, the emirates move made perfect sense at the time.

Yep, as said previously, it made sense at the time and not many could have foreseen how the financial part of the game was going to change so quickly. It didn't work like we wanted, but it was still needed. We'd be worse off without it.

Made sense to move, made no sense to disband the best players from the very thing it's all about FOOTBALL

[Ach]

We sold vieira for 13m

Henry for 16m

I mean seriously wtf

Wenger should've gone then

[theHotHead]

We simply just unlucky with the owner we got, luck of the draw really, we go the short stick, the emirates move made perfect sense at the time.

Yep, as said previously, it made sense at the time and not many could have foreseen how the financial part of the game was going to change so quickly. It didn't work like we wanted, but it was still needed. We'd be worse off without it.

Made sense to move, made no sense to disband the best players from the very thing it's all about FOOTBALL

This and this alone is the problem. The move had to happen. I get that people link Highbury to success but dont forget, at the time gate revenue was a big deal and with a capacity of 38,000 to maintain our self sufficient status we needed to improve our capacity to compete with the spending of the Liverpools and Man Uniteds who had larger capacities than us and better global presence.

Ffs, Spurs had 36,000 and we used to laugh at them!!! So the move at the time was right and anyone that argues to the contrary has no clue what they are talking about.

Wenger should have kept the winning momentum by locking down the Invincibles so all he had to do was minor surgery every season, a sort of "pruning", to keep the squad healthy and competitive. But he totally f***ked it up. People say he was the custodian of the stadium move, well I for one do not see it as a success, he failed miserably.

[Salibatelli]

The Emirates move was terrible, Abhramovic was interested in buying us but the stadium debt put him off and he bought Chelsea instead, had we not had this poison chalice we might be in a much better position now.

Stadium money is small fry nowadays anyway, we've had the stadium 14 years now and it's not exactly helped us, in fact we've gone from title challengers with lots of top players, to midtable mediocrity with mostly average players.

You do realise that if we were still at Highbury we'd have had at least 100m a year LESS to spend every season for the last decade - how would that have made us better? Can't argue with the second paragraph but that's om management not bricks and mortar.

Not if we’d been bought by someone like Abhramovic which may well have happened if we didn’t have the stadium debt. We wasted most of that money anyway so not sure how much difference it made in the end.

For years we didn’t spend anyway, we sold all our best players in fact and brought in kids and of course we went from winners to losers to this.