I just don't get Arsenal fans whinging like bitches to be honest.
They obviously have a very capable knowledgable coach in Wenger who can put a Premier League winning team together. It is a well known fact that clubs that spend the most money on players and salaries tend to finish higher up the League than those that don't. When AFC were competing for and winning the League and cups they had bought the likes of Henry, Pires, Viera, Petit, Overmars, Bergcamp, Wright and loads of others and mixed them with some of the English stalwarts of Seaman, Bould and Adams etc it was a successful strategy they have since abandoned. With the demise of that strategy has been a dearth of trophys. Since then Chelsea, United and more recently City have spent big and often to usurp each other in search of silverware and in the main all have been successful. AFC have very wealthy owners who have been reticent to put their hands in their pockets for players although they also whinge that Wenger won't splash out anymore on big money players as their is no value in the market (Where have we heard that before) and they like to bring players through their academy. More likely raid smaller clubs academies for the best talent i.e Southampton and various other European clubs of which Wenger is aware and then pass them off as Arsenal products, of course their are some youth players who are AFC academy products but not as many as you would like to boast about. Yes I know the money and finance to pay for the emirates had to be found but surely this should have never been at the expense of the team. Blaming us and labelling us as some kind of demonic club for copying their strategy and being successful at it is somewhat bemusing.
The funniest thing being their attempt at the maintenance of the Cartel with the infamous letter on Gooner headed paper getting all the Premier League turkeys to vote for Christmas and accept their perennial 4+ place in the scheme of things whilst Gill and Gazedis rubbed their hands at the though of stopping City or any other wealthy owned club from gatecrashing the party by means of FFP. That attempt will of course fail as anybody with the remotest concept of European Law and restrictions on trade / investment will know in it's current guise FFP will fall on stony ground and only this week the article by Dupont indicates that is exactly where his challenge of such a device to control trade will be made. He clearly states that large organisations / clubs who can guarantee (and maybe even pay a premium) monies up front fulfil the criteria about which FFP was originally conceived, that is to prevent clubs overspending and getting into financial difficulty re borrowing.
Of course there is a moral component about the obscenity of spending money hand over fist allegedly ruining the game. It is this that AFC fans fall back on and seem mostly affronted by. However we have now come full circle and the cosy Cartel that they, United, Liverpool and more recently Chelsea created was by massive investment over a period of time in their footballing squads to varying degrees. If anybody disagrees with this please refer to the upper echelons of the simulated present day cost of players - you wont be surprised to see if full of players from those clubs. Of course City have spent hugely over the last 4 years. AFC and Yoonited gave us no option but to do so in order to get the club to a level where we could compete with them before they firmly shut the FFP door (hence ending our challenge). However another thing they didn't count on was the enormous spend in the academy and infrastructure in order that over a period of time the club could start to become to a degree self sufficient. They still haven't got that bit yet and it won't bear fruit for some time but the shoots are already sprouting. The club have no intention of continuing to spend the enormous sums of money that have had to be spent to "catch up". However i'm sure if the current manager needs funds to supplement his squad with a quality player or 2 it will be made available as the situation of having a first team made up of academy products is a utopian fantasy.
FInally growth. The hypocrisy of these tits knows no bounds when they point the finger at us with regards to sponsorships and accusations of cooking the books with overweighted deals with Companies alleging some form of impropriety and related party contracts. Of course major sponsorship deals with Etihad wouldn't have come our way if our owners were not from Abu Dhabi, christ i'm not that naive. But neither would AON be sponsoring United or Standard be sponsoring Liverpools shirts if their owners weren't from the USA. I don't know what links AFC owners or directors have to those owning Emirates but i'm sure if you look deep enough there is some form of connection. It doesn't mean impropriety just a form of nepotism. I'm pretty sure if the advertising of these companies wasn't reciprocal in terms of increasing revenues or exposure from an advertising perspective they wouldn't last. I believe since Etihads association with City their profile and profits have gone up and up. Just for the record the Etihad deal now only makes up 25% of our commercial revenue. The value of these commercial contracts is forever rising and the affrontary of the sponsorship deal for the Campus has somewhat died away looking at the recent renewables at AFC. Not so gobby now are we now that your deals are so much larger than ours! Fucking Hypocrites.
Yes we lag behind AFC ability to make money on match days but we all know why that is and our owners are busy putting in place plans and developments to at least equalise the numbers in respect of attendance figures. However they won't be as keen to charge us all 1900 quid a season. (At least thats what I believe). It's just a coincidence that we'll have a capacity 3k over yours, at least I think it is. Will we fill it? Probably not to start of with. But the hollistic vision of the club and how it will be playing it's football has been on show for all to see this year. Thats not going to change. If the pricing of the tickets is right and the football remains as attractive (which is the plan) there are plenty of MCFC fans to take those seats and then there will be the Johnny Come Lately's and those from overseas queuing to watch as well. Quite frankly there's never been a better time to be a City fan. Please continue to vent your spleen at the drop of a hat in relation to our "lottery win" and the fact we got given a ground for free, lol it's not true but you think it is and use it as another stick to try to beat us with. No matter if you call it the "Council House" or the "Emptyhad" both rag offerings or the "OilRig" on one of your websites. Thats water of a ducks back to us and please keep on asking us where we were when we were shit? Why? Because we were all right here!
