Arsenal
Arsenal creates its own reality? Era of Managed Service
Not his type
By Celine Dion
June 7 2012
One of the most interesting, if not a little disturbing quotes of the past 20 years, was an unknown spokesman for President Bush, who, when questioned by a journalist as to the American Governments’ somewhat subjective representation of various facts, responded as summarised in the following passage:
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do...’
Those of you familiar with my occasional pieces will already know that I view the modern Arsenal as a solid component of the Neo Conservative Super Capitalist monolith, albeit that they allow the more fortunate of us to enter their premises once every two weeks to watch their employees kick a football around their pitch for a couple of hours. But that is increasingly all it is, a corporate exhibition, as far as I am concerned, indeed much like Ivan Gazidis’ most recent Q&A session on June 7th.
I have seen it observed that the AST are fortunate to have the opportunity to liaise directly with our CEO, (well, directly after careful pre-submission and vetting of questions). And it has to be said, that Ivan Gazidis is an engaging and sympathetic speaker. But then, so was Tony Blair.
It has also been observed that Gazidis’ said a great deal without actually saying anything, but I cannot agree, I find the pitch of last nights’ address fascinating in every detail. Effectively, Gazidis’ signalled our formal retreat from the upper echelons of modern football, to a role waiting in the wings, for the Fair Play Rules to ride asunder on a white stallion, and restore balance and righteousness to the sport.
I am aware, of course, of the ability of Manchester City and Chelsea to outspend any team in world football. And it is undeniable that this situation evolved since the plan to build the Emirates. Therefore it is unfair to level all the blame for our current stasis, against him or the current board. But his reference to spiralling transfer fees, that 10 million pounds was a large transfer fee ten years previously, but is insignificant now, signals a construction of his own reality.
Why? Well, lets’ go back further, to 20 years ago, a large transfer fee was 5 million pounds. And seats cost in the region of 15 pounds. Anyone with a GCSE level grasp of mathematics might conclude, that, Chelsea and Manchester City excluded, a club wishing to remain near the top level, or at least mildly competitive, might need to be spending 20-25 million on a player at least occasionally. The clubs idea of an expensive player nowadays, is no greater than the expenditure was on Reyes, Henry, or Wiltord. This despite membership price rises in the region of 70% in two years on Silver Membership and a rough doubling of seat prices in the same 10 year period. This is the club constructing their own reality, as far as I can see.
Money can’t buy success
There seems to be a widely held belief amongst Arsenal fans that large transfer fees do not bring about success. And how everybody loves to mention Liverpool in all this, with their less than impressive performance last season after a large outlay. But all the remaining evidence suggests otherwise, that large transfer fees, spent properly, do indeed transform and improve a club. Manchester City, Tottenham, Chelsea, Manchester United, and conversely Aston Villa and Blackburn are some ready examples. All the evidence is that buying better players improves the spectacle and potential of the team. Ours is the false and self defeating, retreating mantra of the clubs fans, which now appears to have been seized upon and translated directly into club policy by the club itself.
Of course, I have read all the vitriol on the internet from protectors of the club about people like me having a sickening sense of ‘entitlement’, and disparagement towards people who require short term fixes of fulfilment in the form of ‘shiny things’. And if we were fans of Preston North End, or Shrewsbury, ratting round with our mates in a half empty stadium for £12 a throw, then I would be with them.
I am a real football supporter; I have attended literally hundreds of meaningless football matches purely for the enjoyment of the sport itself. But this is not the reality at Arsenal, and everyone knows it. This is a club that charges its fans through the nose and appears near the top of every who’s who of rich football clubs that is currently published. This is my first involvement with a football club who views its product as a branded, managed service and hedges its decisions like a gas provider or a supermarket carefully calculating the prices on a punnet of fruit.
I would suggest that other fans look more carefully at the advertising, branding, and communications from the corporate super companies that increasingly and invisibly rule our decisions and our livelihoods. A car advertisement does not simply sell us a car, with reference to petrol consumption and mileage. It constructs an emotional vision of small children cradled lovingly in their parents’ arms to a haunting piano melody. MacDonalds’ ads’ no longer simply sell us a cheeseburger, but do it against the backdrop of ‘real farming’, mooing cows and sustainable farmhouse scenery. Anyone with even a fleeting grasp of the logistics of fast food knows this to be a construct, but no matter, the image is set, the corporation is constructing its’ own reality, its own entirely false self image. If it sells to enough people, as the current Arsenal brand is calculated to do, then it walks.
Hence Gazidis’ reference to the Fair Play Rules, is as cynical as can be. Like a man falling out of a window, everything feels fine, until he hits the floor. And the evocation of this spectral Fair Play scenario, a return to the Garden of Eden, where the pantomime villains of Chelsea and Manchester City are banished to the dungeons of history, is calculated and designed to provide us with a beacon of hope and keep us tumbling towards the unknown, piling cash into Kroenkes’ pockets. The club needs a change of direction, that much is clear to most supporters, so it has simply changed its branding direction, not its sporting one, and is creating a reality, however tenuous, of a small time organic concern, heroically rallying against distant, grasping villains.
If the board don’t like Usmanov, and don’t want him involved, let’s be plainer about the reasons. There are plenty of us that actually agree, given Usmanovs’ dubious reputation. Then again, discerning persons might note a distaste for Kroenke’s riches, given the subjugation of small town America’s traditional system of commerce and livelihood at the hand of his associate businesses. But let’s not pretend that large injections of cash ‘are not good for the game’, as stated by Gazidis yesterday. This is falsehood. The game at large does not care whether large injections of cash are injected into Arsenal. The club spends plenty, if not all of it’s time trying to secure ‘large injections of cash’ from the paying fans. ‘Large injections of cash’ are pretty much what the modern game is all about. It’s pretty much what all modern life is about.
This re-branding of Arsenal into a non-participating, helpless concern, with small-time, static aspirations, is a complete reconstruction of the reality that we should know exists. It is conveyed via the asinine language of the Corporation, sitting smilingly and engaging with the little man whilst simultaneously robbing him blind. It is nothing to be celebrated.
This is football as a managed service, where profit is calculated via a brand ethos, that will only be altered once the profits projections alter, and where the quality of the product is secondary as long as the consumer market is cornered.
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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:06:18:11:12:00 by eduardo.
You have solved the riddle of the Russian mastryoshka nesting nesting dolls:
Arsenal management has become Marcel Marceaux wrapped inside of Gordon Gecko wrapped inside of P.T. Barnum.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
Quote:Padre Pio
Thats an insult to Marceu I suggest Basil Fawlty
Ah, the Barcelona connection - I see it now!
If only we had a Sybil around to snuff out wenger's crazed schemes ....
I try to read as much as I can about Arsenal both results wise and financial wise, as far as I am aware no dividends have ever been taken since we moved to the new stadium, so the fans are not being fleeced. On the cost of going to see an Arsenal game, it very much inline with the other two main London clubs, the only difference is we can host almost 20k more fans per game. The other reason for the high cost is the quality of the venue and the quality of the football, the football bit might have come in for some critism however it is consistantly some of the best football available in the UK, when you combine this it is only logical that Arsenal charge what they do. Some might argue that Chelsea are marginally cheaper but win more trophies however I might see this with rose tinted glasses but would you prefer to watch the Chelsea Barca game or last years Arsenal vrs Barca, for me every time it is the Arsenal one as I am paying to be entertained after all and while Arsenal might be less effective it is certainly entertaining.
On the clubs ambition, I genuinely believe that the club want to win however he clubs margins are very thin and can spend to the level of other clubs, people will remark that Arsenal make massive profits but it is not true, last year we only made £2m from football the other £13m was for property the previous record profit came from selling Ade and Toure to City. The clubs is living within its resources peope may argue use the property profits to invest, well we are we are investing it to reduce net interest payments which have reduced from £30m to only £14m. While I accept that we are making mistakes, such as our flat wage structure which the club have promised to change, but it was a noble idea that failed as it wanted to build a group of players at the same age to be equal, not to dissimilar to most work places, but it failed and will be addressed. The club is a little hamstrung by the astronomical growth in sponsorship deals and that we are the only club to have built a stadium with no support no tax payer money like Spurs will get, we even had to upgrade local amenities as part of it, which costs us the most of extra that the stadium generates over Highbury until the stadium debt is clear. The corporate deals we have cost us probably £40m+ a year due the massive increases that have come since we agreed to these deals however we needed that money and hindsight is a wonderful thing. We could try to buy out of Hesse deals like Chelsea but that wouldn't be the Arsenal way while also being very disrespectful to the very companies hat supported the project. So in the meantime we have set about trying to expand our brand across the global in time of the renewals meaning we might find a nice surprise come renewal while not burning any bridges in the process.
This is just my take.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
However, how can the people in charge of Arsenal create their own reality?
Certain things are absolute in football, such as the Laws of the Game. 11 v 11. One ball. Played on grass. Etc.
Certain things in life are absolute, such as if you continually spend what you don't have and don't have the means to pay it back then you find yourself in deep sh*t.
This has applied to Leeds Utd, Portsmouth and many other clubs.
It also applied to Chelsea which is where the problem lies. Would Bates have sold out to Abramovich if they weren't about 5 minutes from administration? No. And they would be currently on a par with Tottenham or Everton. Would the Glaziers or Sheikhs have invested in Manchester without seeing Chelsea buy their way to success? I doubt it.
And what would you have Arsenal do?
Find a billionaire to pump loads of money into our Club? Because neither of the current shareholders is going to.
And if we do then we would be creating our own reality. By spending money we don't earn and putting a side on the pitch further out of touch with the punters than even most of the current lot are. Do we want a side full of Tevezs' and Ballotellis'? I don't. And I don't want to see my Club bear absolutely no resemblance to The Arsenal I know. At least we still have class, unlike ManCiteh, Chelsea, ManU and Liverpool who have all trawled in the gutter at one time or another.
So please be careful what you wish for.
And if there is no billionaire handy then should we just spend with no thought for the consequences? Because, as I said earlier, in the real world you can't spend what you don't have.
And at least by putting a load of your money into the Club you know that it's needed by the Club whereas Chelsea and ManCiteh haven't actually needed supporters which makes them more like a privileged audience to the owners rather than supporters. Mind you it's not as if half the 'fans' at The Emirates don't behave like a f*cking theatre audience. W*nkers, the lot of them.
And I don't see that Arsenal are being rebranded as small-time, non-competitive. That, I think, is your reconstruction of reality.
And thinking about it, half the Arsenal 'support' appears so out of touch with reality and is so eager to see us fail so their vision of an ideal solution can.....Oh, their isn't one because I haven't heard a single credible solution, just vague scattergun criticism of anything and everything that Wenger, 'The Board' (whatever that is) and Kroenke do or don't do because we don't happen to be winning all these trophies.
Well boo f*cking hoo and welcome to the real world as it actually happens.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012:06:07:23:36:13 by celine dion.
Pretty much my sentiments exactly, as a club we get things wrong but then again what clubs don't?
Fans need to look at the positives, we have built a starting 11 that cost less than Dezko, Augero, that is no mean feat add to that we now have at least one third of players are youth development and 4 possible England internationals Gibbs, Walcott, Ox, Wilshere, which negates the old argument that Arsenal don't play enough English players.
On your last comment you seem to contradict yourself, you suggest that we should strive to improve, how are we not improving?
We won more points this year than last after a very difficult summer, while having most of our defence missing for 2 months and missing Wilshere the whole season.
You also suggested that we spend all of our transfer income however if you bother looking at our accounts you would understand that tht would send us into losses each year.
Except our Custodians sold our Class off Simon.
And our nobility as well Roman.
There was no noble idea here merely a money-saving exercise that would not have been necessary had we simply sold Highbury.
The only beneficiaries of that additional property profit were those supposedly noble amen and women who sold us to Stan Kroenke for huge personal profits for themselves and no other discernable reason.
Quote:Arsenal make massive profits but it is not true, last year we only made £2m from football the other £13m was for property the previous record profit came from selling Ade and Toure to City.
@RomanRock
Get your facts a bit correct, Arsenal's declared pre-tax profit for last year of assessment is £56 million!
Quote:Fans need to look at the positives, we have built a starting 11 that cost less than Dezko, Augero, that is no mean feat add to that we now have at least one third of players are youth development and 4 possible England internationals Gibbs, Walcott, Ox, Wilshere, which negates the old argument that Arsenal don't play enough English players.
But anyway, gotta agree with you, fans need to look into the positives. The cost argument, if you call yourself Arsenal fan you can't ignore the biggest bragging rights of the club the whole 1st team is cheaper than Dezko, Augero, that's another trophy Arsenal wins every year!! Great point. Acknowledged.
That was for the first 6 month of this financial year not the last full years accounts so my facts are correct, the only reason for the profits for the first 6 months was due to the sale of Fabregas and Nasri not to disimilar to the season that when we sold Ade and Toure, if you are not convinced check this out [swissramble.blogspot.co.uk]
@ Celine
While I want to win the league etc it is not as easy as people make out especially when other clubs go after our players and transfer targets. The club needs to maximise its profits until new commercial deals are signed as if you read the above you will understand that the club really does not make strong profits without bring in players and being able to sell them for more than we bought them for. As for the statement about not caring about incurring losses as that is what other clubs do that why other clubs are in so much trouble even the top clubs, AC Milan one of the biggest clubs in Europe has lost £250m over the last 5 years despite having TV revenues of over £110m a year andselling their best players such as Kaka etc had they not sold these players their losses they would have been well over £400m. The scary bit is these are not even the worst losses in Italy where Inter have lost more than double that despite winning multiple titles and being the European Champions which will only get worse this year as they have failed to qualify for the Champions League.
I personally feel the boarder view is to look at both short term and longer term goals. The short term is to remain as competitive as possible while having poor commercial deals and clubs spending above their means with the long term goals that spending should be bought more in line with FFP and our new deals will bring in significant and much needed additional revenue allowing us to invest more in the team.
"
Indeed Ivan Gazidis defined ambition specifically as "adding value" to the club. Which is all that we saw done from 2005-2011 value be added. What assurances do we have that the next seven and then the next severn years after and the next seven after that will be any different? I head nothing whatsoever that tells me that really with any certainty. Yes he talked of amending the wage structure eventually but he also indicated that the policy that went hand-in-hand with this wage structre will remain a cornerstone of our how we build this team which frankly makes little or no sense.
So it all sounds like they want to as as again Mr. Gazidis himself suid believe in the promise of Tommorrow and tommorrow and tommorrow indefinitely and ignore the frustration of today and to also forget that the long term is actually several short terms strung rogther meaning that any further short term decline could destroy even a genuine long term vision if there even really is one.
Quote:celine dion
Roman Rock I tend to take a slightly broader overview than a couple of points difference each season. My point should be fairly clear - the clubs outlay is hedged carefully to allow minimum outlay for maximum profit.3rd or 4th place, 2nd rnd of the CL or quarter final at most, and both domestic cups get binned in the process. I couldnt care less about a deficit any particular year, its what other clubs do, and weve got better equity than most. You either believe the protestations of large companies, or you dont, really.
Outsanding post and spot-on analysis of our real business model Celine.
I certainly don't feel that I am being naive, I believe too many football fans are naive believing that clubs making large losses in order to try to deliver a trophy is naive.
Clubs have a responsibility to ensure the club is run in a proper maner thus ensuring the club prospers both short term and long term, by incurring loses in the short term with the hope of success is no more of a guarantee for success than tightly managing budgets in order to deliver longer term prosperity. I would much prefer a competitive team for now with the hope of more success in the future rather than a trophy or two now with long term unsustainability.
Technically Birmingham, Liverpool, and Portsmouth have had short term success would you swap places? Is winning a domestic cup that important playing in the Champions League. Let's not forget only one team can win he league each year with 6 teams realistically trying to win it, three of the 5 ever winners of the league have done so due to false (Blackburn, Chelsea and City) but this model fails long term Blackburn now play in the Championship, Other clubs that have tried this model are Leeds, Portsmouth, Bolton, none of which have deliver any real success. PSG and Malaga spent masses this year but won nothing. Even Liverpool who spent £320m over the last 6 years and won only the Carling Cup but also failed to qualify for the Champions League for the last 3 years, so money does not always bring success.
Success is not just about how many trophies you win particularly in the short term, it is about numerous factors, Barca went through a period without winning 6 years without winning the League until 05, 10 year without the copa del rey until 08 and 13 year without a European trophy until beating us in 06 because of the super spending Madrid so instead they turned back to focus on La Masia and produced won of the best teams the world has ever seen, football is cyclical.
You seems to be buying into the "all or nothing argument" the club has successfully used, the one where if we spend any differently we end up like Leeds, as though there simply is not other choice. Yoy even make the very same argument naming the teams you nam.
I think it ignores the fact that most people aren't calling for us to spend money we don't have at all. Some are calling for us to borrow money for investment in the team, a call I do not agree with at this point. I did support that back in 2005 or so but my views changed on that as i studied things more closely and carefully then.
But most of us are still calling for money we have that we can spend to be spent and not even all of it under the self-sustaining business model.
In fact I have consistently argued that had we spent a bit more of this money earlierr over the past seven years we wouldn't need to spend as much of it as we have to now, let alone how much more we will need to spend if Robin or anyone else among our best players leaves, or if we drop out of the Champions League.
The choice is not simply between spending as we are or spending like Man City or Chelsea. It is not between spending as we are or ending up like Leeds or for that matter Portsmouth, Birmingham or Liverpool. It is not between spending nothing at all and spending more than we have. There is a huge middle ground our club have ignored since 2005 really on transfers and on wages and continues to ignore because we let them get away with it and you are oignoring or have not been aware of that middle ground.
We occupied that middle ground quite successfully from 1998-2005 and before that even back to the Graham Era. So why not returnm to that now while we can?
Arsenal's cycles are usually 18 years apart, more akin to decline, Barc didnt win league for 6 years and now its 8 years for Arsenal, soon to be 9.
Unless the ethos or playing staff change it will be another 9.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
I am not suggesting the policies hat have been chosen are prefect and that there is no alternative but what I am suggesting is that the board and manager have made a lot more correct decisions than wrong ones and hat it is not as easy as it sounds.
It is all well and good saying just buy but it is not that simple, let's say look at this summer for example where everyone complained about Nasri leaving and was replaced by the inferior Gervinho yet Gervinho contributed in the same number of goals this year than Nasri did in his final season and more than in his final season.
People also complained that we never bought Mata instead which shows a lack of ambition but I don't agree he only contributed in a few more goals per game than Gervinho but cost £14m more and double his wages, so instead of buying him we bought Gervinho and Ox that seems like like a far better plan to me.
Again the issue is simple can we afford to do more than we have the past several years and the answer is clearly yes.
I also think your analysis comparing players is flawed severely, because it does not account for whether the players in questions would have performed differently and more or less effectively if say Mata was at Arsenal and Gervinho at Chelsea. I'm not sure what the real answer there is but I know this Chelsea achieved far more with Mata than we did Gervinho and AOC just as Man City achieved far more with Nasri.
That says at the very least that our team as a whole isn't nearly good enough by comparison to City and Chelsea and given that we haven't spent any of the resources at our disposal since 2005(we have an anuual net profit in tranfers) it suggests that if we did spend some money maybe the gap wouldn't be so wide or even exist at all.
And again this wouldn't require us spending every peeny we have or even close to it really given what we do have.
I think the term Board now refers to the people essentuially running the Club. I think from 2005-2011 they were in fact running it to increase their own personal wealth and now are running it to increase Stan Kroenke's wealth.
I think the best way to say it is there is a Board and there is now a seperate ownership.
"When we had to suffer the team is a lion because they suffer together." 4 July 2020 at Wolverhampton Wanderers
Arteta on his team's first away victory at a club above them in the Premiership since September 2015 at Leicester.
He's the one that backs out of desks, not the board. He's the one that didn't sign a defender when we were too of the league in Jan 2011. He's the only person that didn't see cesc and Nasri were leaving and its his fault they weren't replaced. It's Wenger who has persisted with people like diaby, Denison, Djorou when the football world knows they're not good enough. It's also Wenger who doesn't practice tackling in training (according to Clichy) and therefore partly his fault we get so many injuries. It's also Wenger's decision since 2005 to try and build a Barcelona lite instead of sticking with the very successful strategy of having both flair and physical strength, aggression Znd height in the team ( ie the pre 2006 team).
The board would back wenger if he wanted to sign someone, of course not 40m on one guy but I'm sure they'd go to 20-25 if wenger asked. It's not his fault that other clubs pay more of course but it is his fault there's so much dross eating up the wage bill at 50k a week odd.
On the other hand hes one of the greatest managers ever and I'm not saying I'd get rid of him. But the state of arsenal isn't the boards fault. It's just so frustrating that AW won't go that little bit extra for us.
I didn't sign Xavi Alonso because it would 'kill' Denilson. There you go.
I don't think you can take anybody at their word at this point Slordio
Otherwise then you know because Mr. Wenger also said this these policies will not change before 2031, when the stadium is paid off in full no?
Exactly what class are you talking about? I find these reality constructs of some supporters very charming, they seem to imply that we're not like those other success-hungry clubs that currently win all the trophies, we operate on another level. Unfortunately in the real world football is played on one level, that measured by success.
Define this class we have. Is it a petulant manager that acts like a spoiled child when he doesn't win? Or the crazy prices supporters pay for an inferior product?
Maybe that is the difference between British and American culture.
Arsenal for me are the fans-they are also the manager and the Board of Directors-but the Manager is an employee-and not the club itself and the Board of Directors are custodians-. The owner is someone who owns the most share capital.
The so called sustainability model that Ivan and the Board have adopted is a deception-any detailed analysis of Arsenal's accounts reveals the need to sell players to generate capital-and they are not able to be replaced with players of equivalent transfer value.
No business remains sustainable if it sells its most valuable assets and replaces them with inferior ones-especially when it sells them to its main competitors.
Does Ivan not realise that the market can all see this and the club won't be able to convince big investors to increase its commercial revenue until the team if it ever does becomes properly competitive by entering competitions with a reasonable chance of winning them.
The issue that many fans of the club don't grasp is that the ownership model is wrong-it is undemocratic,lacking in transparency inherantly exploitative of fans, its profit driven and ultimately the only motive of the owner is to make a profit and take it out of the club.
-so many fans believe that "Arsenal is a well run club" because it isn't facing liquidation-and have become inured to mediocrity. In my eyes Arsenal are a great club but not a well run business.
And your solution is?
That'll be the sugardaddy solution I presume?
And what sort of club would that make us?
Chelsea or ManCiteh.
No thanks.
As it is the statement about not being able to attract big investors is wrong in my opinion. Look at Liverpool's increased sponsorship.
Arsenal is known worldwide and has as much presence in more parts of the world than any British club other than ManU. We didn't have a plane crash to cash in on.
All blue chip sponsors care about is global recognition for their brand in partnership with a hugely respected and admired club who provide a top quality product. (Inferior product hippogunner? Really?)
Say what you like about lack of trophies (and when did Liverpool last win the league?), but our name is massively respected for style and class worldwide, despite the best attempts of the media and press in this country to denigrate us.
And your attempts hippogunner, but yours probably being not quite as influential.
Your deluded view that our higher class is some permanenet reality no matter is dangerously deluded and if you have ever seen the Maysles documerntary or HBO movie by the same name about the Beales and their descent out of reality and higher society into madness and social obscurity without ever realizing it was happening you should understand this. Class is not permanent unless you actually behave with class at all times.
And we stopped doing that ages ago, or more accurately right around 2005. We became about as Ivan Gazidis puts it so succintly "adding value" to the company by any means available including overcharging and deceiving honest loyal and trusting Gooners for a cheapened product because that adds value to the company and thus the shares in it. We did this by conciously choosing to sell off pur best players and conciously choosing not to invest in replacing them because that adds value to the Club. They chose to put the Club at greater financial risk to try and add value to the Club. Every time since 2005 the club has borne the risk and the multi-millionaires claimed the reward for that risk.
That is class? That is better than having a sugar daddy(which I don't even think we really need
let alone should seek) or spending a bit more like say we did from 1998-2005 - like a properfootball club with real class and ambition spends?
No Simon, That is not the same kind of class you foolishly hold onto to the hope we still behave with as we did in the past. I hope you realize that though I seriously doubt it.
You're happy to go trophyless solely to let a bunch of already ready rich people put even more money in their pockets for themselves fine but again call that what it is. And it isn't class or honour or dignity on their part or yours.
If you want to hand your wife or girlfriend or even yourself over for the old rite of prima nocte like a good citizen that is your choice but don't pretend that its proper loyalty we all should show okay? You want to bend over and take it because you think you're supposed to just call it what it is.
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