The Arsenal Thread XI

Rose-tinted glasses? I'm not pessimistic or defeatists nor I'm a blind either. They could have been 2 or 3 up in the first half at the Emirates, yes they didn't destroy us like they did in 09/10 at the Emirates but they still had the huge majority of the ball, played a huge majority of the game in our half and I remember them screwing up a decent few chances.

The tactic we played was to contain Barca for 70 minutes playing counter-attacking football and wait for them to tire, I don't think it is a coincidence we scored our goals in the 78th and 83rd minute, even Wenger said so.

Lets not even get started at what happened at Camp Nou. Watch the 90minute game again like I've done, you'll change your opinion.

is he trolling

All I'm saying here is that the attitude of saying "Thank God we didn't go through the last round, we would have had to play Barcelona" is wrong. I'm not saying we're better than Barca or that we would have a particularly large chance of beating them. But there would be a chance. Even with the loss of quality in the midfield. We were very close to doing it last season, even though we were outplayed overall. Were we raped over the course of the two legs? No, because the score was 4-3. No one goal margin victory is a raping, to say otherwise would be absurd. We were raped at the San Siro this season. We were raped at the Nou Camp two seasons ago. But last season the tie was a lot closer than that, evidenced by the event that with 5 minutes left to go we had a massive chance to actually win it.

I'm not somebody who wears rose-tinted glasses. I like to think I'm a rational optimist. You tell me Arsenal are playing Barcelona, I say there is a small chance to win and that is a lot better than no chance at all which is what we have now, 'cos we're no longer in the competition. We lose the first tie to Milan 4-0, and I say there's a chance to still qualify, even when 99% of fans essentially wrote us off. We showed in the second leg that there was a real chance. So yes we were outplayed overall in the tie against Barcelona but that's no reason to say we'd have absolutely 0 chance if we came up against them this season. It's simply not true.

Anything can happen in football. APOEL can get to the quarter finals. Schalke can beat the holders and get to the semis. These are average teams. When you're talking about Arsenal, we're always going to have a decent chance, no matter what the tie is. That's not overly optimistic or biased, that's a statement of fact.

i'm not sure its risk averse, it also comes down to making a realistic assessment of what success would have been achieved if they held onto the players till their contracts ran out and they left on a free.

For instance samir nasri went for £22m, in a year's time he would have been a free agent. Keeping nasri for a year would have been a write off of £22m as he could have demanded wages as a free agent that only clubs like city or anzhi could have afforded. Would that extra year of nasri had won arsenal the premiership...? No, they would have been 3rd/4th similar to now.

Fabregas was on contract till 2014 and arsenal could have played hardball with him. I expect because barca had been chasing him every year and fabregas had kept his head down without making a fuss, that arsenal felt they owed him a chance and did him a favour by allowing him to leave. The noises coming out of arsenal were all "it was his boyhood club and his grandfather was on the committee" etc. If this was man united no way would ferguson have said that, he would have been affronted that anybody regarded another club as preferable to man united for whatever reasons, and would have taken the view that if you sign a long term contract you only leave if the manager decides. Fergie played hardball with ronaldo for a year but the next year when real put £80m on the table he said fair enough we'll have that.

Other times when arsenal have sold players its been because they have been able to get overinflated prices for them - £25m for adebayor, £16m for toure, £11.8m for hleb, £10m for bentley. I would have shipped on all those players for that money as they were all a little overrated apart from adebayor when in form is a terrific player, but he is unreliable. I would also have put nasri in that category, £22m for a player with one year to go of a contract is good money for a player who is talented but is no way in the league of a pires or giggs.

The other player that i suppose you could say arsenal could have played hardball with is ashley cole but he is a disruptive character, i think had cole been at united and that business with chelsea kicked off, fergie would have made the decision and moved him on, he would not have wanted a personality like that in the united dressing room.

But i think wenger made a good positive statement by signing oxlade-chamberlain for £12m, when you think the fabregas & nasri money more than covered ox, arteta, mertesacker, gervinho and santos i think that was an alright decision, if i was playing football manager i would have done that trade. It's not as though arsenal were champions and selling players from a champion side, the team needed some rebuilding.

Arsenal have a tendency to sell players for way below their market value e.g. Fabregas.

It's strange because Arsenal are one of the most corporate clubs in existence. Locals priced out in place of daytrippers from the home counties. What a sham. Do they even have any players from London? North London?

Vertonghen:

If those quotes are true, then that's encouraging. But where would he play?
DM alongside Song? Because I can't see the Ajax captain being content with being a squad/utility player and I also can't see him displacing Verm or Kos out of the CB spot.

Reserves 3-0 win over WBA, if anyone's interested.