Who is even in a firm these days? I didn't think working class fans could afford to live in London anymore.
@hayvis German papers say Arsenal are buying Granit Xhaka for 43m Euro.
Meh. Barking and Dagenham aren't really London, although apparently it's expensive round there too these days.
I have completely lost faith in transfers and the ambition of the club. Over the last few years, Stan Kroenke and the Arsenal board's method of sports investment has become very apparent. He is happy to run the club with limited success to try to turn a profit, without risking significant investment, and this trickles down to the manager and the players. Wenger is happy with this, as he is an economist at heart and likes the challenge. It's a completely stupid way to run a sports club though, as it whittles down the asset in various ways, if not completely noticeable year in and year out due to both the size of the club, and the way in which commercial revenues and sports tv rights are getting bigger across the industry year on year. What's utterly crazy is that if we invested from funds that we already have, Kroenke could win a couple of titles, strengthen the club's status for the future and increase profits from higher commercial revenues, but I think he's just too damn dumb to see that. He's the type of business man that's happy with a few percent a year, and when a crisis hits, claims that no-one could have foreseen it.
This year, the unhappy players are Ozil and Sanchez, who quite rightly are pissed off with the way things are going and apparently the club's faith in Giroud (what I have heard). It will be like RVP and Nasri all over again. He will do some kind of shell game shuffle, and bring in a couple of signings, whilst trying to convince fans that it's not his fault or the fault of the club if either Sanchez or Ozil or both leave. At the same time, we will generate relatively big fees for the shifting on of mediocre players such as Walcott. This transfer window could be amazing for us, if we simply sold a couple of the dead wood players and invested the profits, plus some of our reserve fund, but that just won't happen, and is the reason why we won't keep Ozil and Sanchez happy. I can bet your bottom dollar that our net spend will be even and the results on the pitch will be the same next year. It is ground hog day.
Not a surprise at all that season ticket holders such as myself are gradually giving up their seats. Kroenke and co may not see what's happening yet, because it's such a big club, but one day in the future, he'll hopefully wake up and see that the club has lost it's status and half of it's loyal fan base. Or my biggest hope is that LA will bleed the man dry and he'll cash in to Usmanov.