Enough is enough now! This week has been disgusting and embarrassing to be an Arsenal fan! In the game against AC Milan we just looked like we never wanted it and yesterday we crashed out of the FA Cup, meaning it is now SEVEN years since our last trophy. The Arsenal board has once again let the fans down. They pushed up ticket prices 6.5% this season and we are having our worse one ever on our 125th anniversary! Yesterday we suffered three more injuries and we cannot afford to lose anyone else – at this rate we are going to struggle to field a side!
So who is to blame for this? Does the buck stop with Arsene Wenger? In my opinion, no. Getting rid of Wenger will not resolve the problems because he is powerless under the current Arsenal Board of directors, who seem more interested in putting money into their OWN pockets rather than investing in the club’s future.
At the heart of the board we have ‘Silent Stan’ a.ka. Stan Kroenke. The fact he is known as ‘Silent Stan’ says it all really. We don’t want a SILENT board of directors, we want a board of directors who are passionate about the club they invest in. We don’t want 6.5% ticket price increases unless it means 100% more investment going into the squad.
There is no point in having this kind of price increase if the quality of the team continues to slide. You have seen it this season, seats are continuing to get lighter and lighter, less people are going to games and the Arsenal board have only got themselves to blame.
Wenger stated before yesterday’s game:
‘We had a team [in 2002] that could go and win everywhere and when you can do that you get into the finals. Sometimes you lose the finals but most of the time we won finals. We had the potential to do it.
‘Disappointments are a part of the game but we had previously always found the resources to get up again when it was down. That is what’s at stake tomorrow.’
Well Mr. Wenger this time I don’t see a light at the end of the tunnel, we are going to be lower than you have ever seen us before and with a tough run of games coming up my assumption could prove accurate. Arsenal put on a wicked package to go to the game yesterday which was a £5 return trip for the game, under any other circumstances is amazing. However, after seeing the performance yesterday, I’d be asking for my money back!
Those of you who follow Gunnersphere will perhaps understand just how frustrated I am right now, and I have snapped because I’ve seen a team play twice this week with no passion or desire to win. That is not the Arsenal I love and have supported for nearly 32 years! The board have lost touch with what it means to be an Arsenal fan and that is inexcusable. They have become more concerned with lining their OWN pockets than anything else.
A group of workers at Dial Square armaments factory in Woolwich decided to form a football team, each giving a sixpence – two and a half pence in today’s money – for the purchase of a football.
That’s what formed Arsenal passion! From a fans perspective we’ve lost that! This season was supposed to be about going ‘Forward’, that was our biggest mistake. In looking so far forward we lost who we are as a club. The 6.5% ticket price increase during a recession meant Arsenal fans are finding it harder to attend, money is not being put into the squad, and we are in real danger of losing fantastic legends.
Everything that Arsenal players have put on that shirt for the past 125 years is in real danger of meaning nothing if we don’t realise WHO we are and WHERE we came from.
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You forget one thing,Wenger have had all the time in the world to fix the problems but he have stood idly by his underperforming soldiers,let us not forget that Arsenal is a finacial powerhouse and culd easily spend 100 mil in one season on transfers but Wenger refuses to do that he is on some sort of hellbent mission trying to prove to the world that his way is the only way.
http://twitition.com/am7pm KROENKE OUT, im campaigning for this to happen i know its only a twitition but its a start, i will give my last breath to see change, i just need the backing and help from all gunners, i urge u to sign this petition and help get kroenke out, usmanov is what we need he has ambition, follow me @Arsenal_Fans_UK and please sign the twitition thanks all
I did not agree with Danish Gooner. This stateside dude has seen what Kroenke’s teams do. he buys them and does not invest. They are like trophies on the shelves. He took over the Rams(NFL) after a Superbowl and they have gone steadily downhill. I mean I am a Niner season tiket holder and get no joy from the fact that our traditional rivals are now toothless. All of his teams from hockey, NBA, all slide to mediocrity.
We saw ManU up Rooney’s wages to 200+ a week while Arsenal’s highest is 90. The wage structure in light of the money they make is ludicrous. They failed to sign Mata, or any of the big signnings that would have made it more feasible to keep Fabregas, but not only him but Clichy! Clichy has not been replaced, the coaching structure and the management structure of the club are falling behind times. Today I watched Stevenhage play with passion against Spurs. A passion that our lads would like to play with. Who the hell will fire the board? No I think it will get worse before better and if Wenger leaves, the club will sink lower. If I were Arsene I would leave because obviousl the board has no ambition.
Wenger would spend if he was allowed to, the Arsenal board remind him that he is the Arsenal manager and with his passed record of finding great players on the cheap they expect him to keep doing the same year in year out. When David Dein was with us he would push the club to dig a bit and spend some cash and Wenger would openly do so (Vieira and Henry were not cheap at the time when they were bought).
I would love for Kronke to sell out to Usmonov as he has made it clear that we needed to invest in the team before the start of the season and Kronke has said piss all again. Usmonov will bring back Dein and I do hope we stick with Wenger. With the right men behind our manager I am sure that we can bring back the good old days or somewhere near them.
What is so very clear to me is that we need Kronke out followed by Ivan Gazidis and Mr stick your foot in it Hill Wood, for the sake of our club let this happen.
sack wenger and the board now
i personally..blame A.W for the problem @ the emirate….coz A.W refuses to spend the cash realizes on samir & cesc on good players…believing in his ~verage player…i wish RVP.. shud leave @ the end of the season & let see what arsenal remain.Up gunners
It is not Wenger’s money to spend. The Board is to blame. Go to work tomorrow and buy a new Porsche for the company with funds that are not yours. Tell your boss it is not his place to tell you how to spend the company’s money. See what happens.
Please explain how the Arsenal Board make money for themselves when the club pays no dividends?
By redeveloping Highbury into posh , expensive apartments and selling them on at a large profit. Then acquiring land right outside the Emirates and build more posh apartments using Arsenal money to line there own pockets. In effect, Arsenal has become a property developing firm to make money for Hill Wood and Co.
All the money from the property developments went to pay for the new stadium – how else do you think it was paid for?
i agree with the blogger.
to me, the problem is not with wenger completely (he is sharing a bit of responsibility) but the main problem are the owner and the board.
it is clear they voted for this cheap thieving american instead of the russian because kroenke guaranteed them a seat on the board (who knows..perhaps a permanent one) while usmanov would have sacked the lot and would have put an immediate pressure on wenger to deliver while proving the type of money needed nowadays to compete in all honesty.
the board is living a dream by attending games for free, getting free celebrity status while seeing their share value go up as time passes by.
they are not interested even for a second to spend money on the team.
wenger’s economic model is flawed. if the economy tanks, fans will not attend games so his dream of the field evening amongst teams will not happen.
on top of it, not winning will even alienate fans further and this is what will happen by end of this season as i expect many fans not to renew tickets.
no money to spend and no pressure to be the top team is a deadly combination which can oly be resolved by having usmanov around.
even if wenger is replaced tomorrow while the same owner/board being around, i suspect it will be more of the same in the future.
If noone is buying tickets to watch Arsenal especially in the fucking Emirates, then the board would be panic. Do you guys remember Highbury?
We need to keep AW and kick Kronke out. Please sign the petition to get Usmanov and Dein IN and Kronke OUT If there is enough pressure we can get a board that cares for the club because if Kronke thinks he can hold on to an EPL team when the fans want him out then he is making a big mistake. Arsenal has been vauled at 1.1 bn this week with share sales of £16,500 per share. Kronke should sell to make a profit and leave as he is no longer welcome. Please sign the petition and lets get back to talking about FOOTBALL and not MONEY.
http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/savearsenalfc
Would not allow me to sign with this link so if you google ( sign Arsenal petition ) it is listed third on google search. Board out Usmonov and David Dein in.
I am tired of all the ongoing finger pointing at arsene wenger.
Yes he may be culpable do a degree but comments saying that he has money and has not spent are opinions. You cannot possibly know that.
Arsene wengers record speaks for itself. You are either too young to remember that or too fickle.
Can the same be said of the board. Arsenal has gone into decline since kroenke and gazidis
And if they wanna stick by this stance of a business model then why is this business not conducting a review given the likely huge decrease in revenue with short cup runs and no champs league. There is no forty million this year from Selling cesc and nasty.
In any real business heads would roll. Redundancies and restructuring.
I hope when usmanov gets thirty percent he reveals the truth about transfer budget and the bids we have made. I suspect that the budget is tiny and we didn’t make half the bids reported.
This could prove that the board have NOT allowed wenger to spend