What is the biggest mistake the club made that has put us in our current situation?

[bingobob]

It really depends how far people want to go back. Business decision building the Emirates and not foreseeing TV money would eventually dominate. Or the impact of committing so much money over a prolonged period of time. But this has been done to death.

More recently it was not to sign any outfield players and kill the momentum we had built in signing Özil and Alexis whilst winning back to back FA cups. The fact we finished 2nd that season compounds the problem. We should have won the league. Instead it lead to the downfall of Alexis and our contract situation with Özil. And both of those problems still blight us to this day.

 

[Manberg]

Extending Özil's contract
Spending money on the wrong players

 

[GDeep™]

Ornstein made it clear several times that Stan and the board have always been desperate for us to compete for the league title...... me thinks they simply have blind faith in Wenger just like the fans and thought he would lead us to the title eventually again given enough time.

The two managers we hired after Wenger are not title chasing managers. Our spend over the last 10 years is not the spend of a team chasing the title either.

The pattern is clear, Wenger on minimum spend was getting top 4 and CL money, once that stopped, he was removed.

 

[Mo Britain]

Wonder how everything would be, if we moved to Wembley instead of building the Emirates.

Would have just preferred to stay at Highbury, but the Wembley option wouldn't have killed our finances at least.

I was thinking about that, when we played at Wembley the new Wembley Stadium hadn't been built so there was other things going on in there.

But if we can somehow ignore that and dream a bit.... we sold out Wembley easily for the CL, even against teams like AIK Solna. If we'd somehow taken a lease on it then the construction money would have been mostly saved and we'd have had a huge increase in ticket sales and match-day revenue which in turn might have led to bigger commercial contracts. It would have cemented us in a "Big Two" from which we would have been difficult to displace even after the arrivistes started getting injections from oligarchs.

 

[GDeep™]

No need to start posting daft things, moving to the Emirates was the best thing, financially it’s probably yielded more than whatever the alternative was.

The ownership going to Stan was a blow but then there are things you don’t see which change the landscape - when we envisioned a post Emirates era the club surely didn’t know that Chelsea, City, Newcastle, Liverpool etc will be taken over and flooded with cash.

We probably thought after the Emirates we would be on par with UTD, which we probably are now.

 

[Riou]

No need to start posting daft things

If this was the case, then you would never post here.

 

[GDeep™]

If this was the case, then you would never post here.

You have to admit, your post about Wembley was daft. There is more money to be made from having your own stadium. They probably had the idea of eventually selling the club too, meaning a new stadium was a must anyway.

 

[GDeep™]

I feel a little sorry for the club, the intention was to build a new stadium which puts us in the same scope as Utd, and that’s happened.

But what can you do when Chelsea, City etc get billions flooded into it. Big fear now is Newcastle will overtake us and there is even talk Liverpool being primed for a future sale.

 

[Riou]

You have to admit, your post about Wembley was daft. There is more money to be made from having your own stadium. They probably had the idea of eventually selling the club too, meaning a new stadium was a must anyway.

The stadium move and selling the club, benefitted us in no way...we have regressed as a club completely since these two things happened.

Would have taken a long term lease on Wembley over building a stadium which crippled us financially and competitively and eventually selling the club to Stan...would have taken the Wembley move a hundred times over instead of that.

Vaguely remember David Dein possibly wanting the Wembley move too.

 

[GDeep™]

Looking further, whichever way you look at it, you can argue what we all grew up on is now gone and not coming back.

Either we’re going to keep falling back, because we’re not competing with City and Newcastle etc, or maybe one day an Arab will buy us and we’ll be propped up to being a top 4 club again, but in a league which has lost its soul.

This is when I start thinking if there is any point in continuing to follow football. I think the PL should have set rules to ownership, like Germany, it’s open doors now.

 

[GDeep™]

The stadium move and selling the club, benefitted us in no way...we have regressed as a club completely since these two things happened.

Would have taken a long term lease on Wembley over building a stadium which crippled us financially and competitively and eventually selling the club to Stan...would have taken the Wembley move a hundred times over instead of that.

Vaguely remember David Dein possibly wanting the Wembley move too.

If it wasn’t for Chelsea or City being taken over we would’ve won a few titles and remained in the CL today. We would’ve signed better players as the market wouldn’t have been inflated.

Considering the above, your post belongs in the trash.

 

[Riou]

The club don't get any sympathy from me, signing a deal with the bank that basically said "We get all your money for the next decade or so, ok" was terrible...this should have been our "counter offer" to that...

At the very least we should have agreed to pay back the loan over a significantly longer period so we wouldn't be forced to sell all our best players...all our board cared about was making as much money for themselves, bunch of ****s.

 

[YeahBee]

Sticking with Wenger who was out of touch

And/or
Didnt invest the required sums

 

[Macho]

If this was the case, then you would never post here.

He’s got you there @GDeep™

In all fairness, you’ve raised some valid points in this thread.
Truth is it’s hard to pinpoint our biggest mistake as you can see in this thread we as fans are all over the place and don’t even truly know who to blame.

 

[Oxeki]

What do you mean? Chelsea is a sugar daddy club that's why they're successful. We had the chance and turned it down and look at our fortunes vs theirs.

I mean, our fans call them chelski and say they bought their success. Yet, I'm surprised to find an Arsenal fan who wish Roman had bought us instead

 

[Oxeki]

If this was the case, then you would never post here.

Ouch

 

[scytheavatar]

Looking further, whichever way you look at it, you can argue what we all grew up on is now gone and not coming back.

Either we’re going to keep falling back, because we’re not competing with City and Newcastle etc, or maybe one day an Arab will buy us and we’ll be propped up to being a top 4 club again, but in a league which has lost its soul.

This is when I start thinking if there is any point in continuing to follow football. I think the PL should have set rules to ownership, like Germany, it’s open doors now.

Then why is Liverpool able to compete with City and Newcastle without Arab owners? Why is even Sp**s ahead of us despite being a poorer club?

 

[Oxeki]

The two managers we hired after Wenger are not title chasing managers. Our spend over the last 10 years is not the spend of a team chasing the title either.

The pattern is clear, Wenger on minimum spend was getting top 4 and CL money, once that stopped, he was removed.

Liverpool didn't have a huge net spend when they won the CL and competed for the title last season. You don't need to spend big. You just need to spend smart. If if was all about spending big, Man utd would have been competing for the title. Liverpool were smart in their spendings that's why they are where they are.

 

[BigPoppaPump]

I mean, our fans call them chelski and say they bought their success. Yet, I'm surprised to find an Arsenal fan who wish Roman had bought us instead

Yeah but I doubt Chelsea fans care that much, they were going to games waving money when Abramovich first came around.

I was being slightly faceitous but it’s obvious that we’d be happy with more success.

 

[Mo Britain]

I mean, our fans call them chelski and say they bought their success. Yet, I'm surprised to find an Arsenal fan who wish Roman had bought us instead

That's fandom. We used to make fun of Sol and he became an Arsenal legend. Sp uds adored Sol and now call him Judas.