Goonersworld

swipe right wrote:The amount of nonsense people on this forum talk is unbelievable.
Ibra - came around for a trial as a kid when we had prime Henry, Wiltord and Kanu in the team. There is no way he was ever going to be a first team player that year.
Yaya - did not get a visa
Hazard - we could not pay his 24M transfer value when our record signing was Arshavin at half that.
Gnabry - messed up those two seasons when he was being watched for first team opportunities. His agent chose west brom despite the club being against it, he got injured and put on weight. It was only when he went for the olympics that he blew up at which point he refused to sign a new deal.

Please stop rewriting history to your convenience.

It's not about previous transfer records, it's about using your budget wisely - and we had the budget to bring in Hazard.

Here's a breakdown.

Arsenal made over £70m from sales and ended up using ~£58m to bolster our squad on the following players.

Needed at the time (CM, CB, LB):
£10.80m → Arteta
£10.17m → Mertesacker
£ 6.30m → Santos

Needed at the time (winger - one sufficed):
£12.42m → Chamberlain
£10.80m → Gervinho

Redundant/mystery signings:
£5.85m → Park
£1.01m → Jenkinson
£900k → Campbell
£675k → Eisfeld
= ~£58m on incoming transfers

Had we gone for quality over quantity and went just with Hazard instead of both Ox/Gervinho, Lille's £24m asking price for Hazard could've been met with ease. His transfer wouldn't even have prevented us from being able to bring in Per, Santos and Arteta.

£24.00m → Hazard
£10.80m → Arteta
£10.17m → Mertesacker
£06.30m → Santos
= ~£51m on incoming transfers

That's still ~£7m less than what we factually ended up spending.

You're accusing people of rewriting history, sometimes rightfully, but then, by suggesting we couldn't meet Lille's £24m asking price for Hazard, you end up doing it yourself.

Ibra - the failure of the deal fell on the insistence of wenger in having ibra take a trail.

Ibra refused and turned us down insisting he was too good for a trail and he proved wenger wrong.

Gnabry - simply wasn't given enough chances compared to ie iwobi has been. Proved wenger wrong at the Olympics and continues to do so.

Man, these hypothetical scenarios are doing my head in.

Ibrahimovic really? We were looking at him in 2001, during Henry's god mode era. How do you think a player with Ibra's ego would have reacted to playing second fiddle? He would have thrown a tantrum, fallen out with the manager and left, like he did at Barca.

His average stint at clubs is 2-3 years, which is why he bounced around between Ajax, Juve, Inter, Barca, AC Milan all within a decade.

Realistically he would have left Arsenal by 2004, when we were ticking along nicely with a team full of winners.

Wenger made a lot of mistakes but the timing of the Ibra transfer wasn't one of them.

Zenith wrote:

swipe right wrote:The amount of nonsense people on this forum talk is unbelievable.
Ibra - came around for a trial as a kid when we had prime Henry, Wiltord and Kanu in the team. There is no way he was ever going to be a first team player that year.
Yaya - did not get a visa
Hazard - we could not pay his 24M transfer value when our record signing was Arshavin at half that.
Gnabry - messed up those two seasons when he was being watched for first team opportunities. His agent chose west brom despite the club being against it, he got injured and put on weight. It was only when he went for the olympics that he blew up at which point he refused to sign a new deal.

Please stop rewriting history to your convenience.

It's not about previous transfer records, it's about using your budget wisely - and we had the budget to bring in Hazard.

Here's a breakdown.

Arsenal made over £70m from sales and ended up using ~£58m to bolster our squad on the following players.

Needed at the time (CM, CB, LB):
£10.80m → Arteta
£10.17m → Mertesacker
£ 6.30m → Santos

Needed at the time (winger - one sufficed):
£12.42m → Chamberlain
£10.80m → Gervinho

Redundant/mystery signings:
£5.85m → Park
£1.01m → Jenkinson
£900k → Campbell
£675k → Eisfeld
= ~£58m on incoming transfers

Had we gone for quality over quantity and went just with Hazard instead of both Ox/Gervinho, Lille's £24m asking price for Hazard could've been met with ease. His transfer wouldn't even have prevented us from being able to bring in Per, Santos and Arteta.

£24.00m → Hazard
£10.80m → Arteta
£10.17m → Mertesacker
£06.30m → Santos
= ~£51m on incoming transfers

That's still ~£7m less than what we factually ended up spending.

You're accusing people of rewriting history, sometimes rightfully, but then, by suggesting we couldn't meet Lille's £24m asking price for Hazard, you end up doing it yourself.

Wasn't the issue that Hazard wanted to stay at Lille for one more season, which is why we couldn't get him in 2011? By 2012, we were already priced out. Of course Hazard signed up for around £200k a week iirc, which we couldn't match.

I also remember that Man City, ManU, and Chelsea were all in talks with Hazard. I don't think we ever stood a chance.

Zedie wrote:Ibra - the failure of the deal fell on the insistence of wenger in having ibra take a trail.

Ibra refused and turned us down insisting he was too good for a trail and he proved wenger wrong.

Gnabry - simply wasn't given enough chances compared to ie iwobi has been. Proved wenger wrong at the Olympics and continues to do so.

Ibra didn't prove Wenger wrong. Imagine just signing young unknown players without seeing what they capable of. To top it off we had Henry and Bergkamp. Knowing Ibra's ego he would have left by 2003 due to not being the main man.