- Arsenal has the best defence in the league – and an attack that is sparkling too
- Looking back at chants from years gone by
By Nitram
There’s a big article in football365 today exploring the reasons why Manchester City have suddenly had this massive downturn in form. The reasons range from the FFP charges hanging over them, the loss of Rodri, being out tactic’d, to the loss of the fear factor.
All of which are possibly part of it, but there’s not a mention of what I believe is the main reason: MONEY. Or more accurately their low net spend on players.
Over the past 5 years Man City have, relatively speaking, stopped spending. They are the 11th biggest net spenders in the Premier League behind the likes of West Ham, Crystal Palace and even Nottingham Forest.
Football365 has a full list of Premier League spending and this shows that the top spenders are Chelsea on £795 million, and we can see what it’s done for them, eventually.
Manchester United are second top spenders with £547 million, but as we can see, they still can’t get it right and they currently languish in 13th place, and are the biggest underachievers. But they will get it right, eventually. To do this they will have to keep spending though.
Arsenal are third top spenders, and as we all know, currently sit in 3rd place. Par for the spend.
Liverpool, who are currently sitting top of the pile, are 7th biggest spenders with £253 million and are the biggest overachievers.
Manchester City, who are currently languishing in 6th place following a run of one victory and one draw in the last eight Premier League matches, as I mentioned, have the 11th highest spend at £139 million.
Oddly enough, despite sitting sixth, they are actually over-achieving in relation to their net spend, but of course they are seriously heading in the wrong direction. And guess what? The only way to arrest this slide will be………to SPEND LOADS OF MONEY.
Well, they’ve already got the best manager in the world, and that alone isn’t enough, is it? So, it has to be the fact Pep has not strengthened the squad and kept up with his main rivals. If he sees this crisis out and stays at Manchester City he will have to spend, and spend big, as will anyone else who replaces him.
Wenger maintained a top four finish for 10 years with a ZERO net spend over the period. I always maintained it was a miracle. I also always maintained that a massive part of Pep’s success was the ONE BILLION net spend on the squad in the early years of the State Sponsorship.
There is no denying Pep is a great manager, but I never believed he was the genius many suggested.
I always asked the question. “How would Pep cope if he had the financial restrictions imposed on him that Wenger had?”
It appears the answer is, “not very well.”
My take would be a) The loss of Rodri , who was an exceptional player , and b) The PIGMOB abandoning them !
Why ? I know not , but rats deserting the sinking ship , comes to mind !
They no longer get all those favours and blind eye turning from the refs .
Interestingly, at the beginning of the season I had a fiver on Man City to get relegated. The cash out since then has been a fiver….until a few weeks ago.
Now I seriously don’t see City not accumulating enough points to stay up even if their dreadful form continues. Yet I’m now being offered a profit on my fiver to cash out early. Maybe, behind closed doors, the word is that they will be getting a points deduction that is likely to send them down. Hopefully we’ll also be retrospectively awarded the title for the last couple of years too!
Happy Christmas fellow UA followers and many thanks Tony for all your hard work 🙂
Brickfield and Mikey
I agree that the odious PIGMOB appears to of deserted them somewhat, but the cynic in me puts this more down to who is at this moment the prime candid to inherit their championship crown, the media favourites Liverpool.
As we saw to our cost at the Etihad early in the season when Arsenal would of been seen as the main danger. At that time the favours were still being handed out to them. More so even than favours to Man City, we were clearly targeted in an effort to de rail our challenge against them.
I think Liverpools challenge has come as somewhat of a surprise, but has clearly invigorated the media, and in turn the PIGMOB, to put everything they have behind their title challenge.
The medias desire to see Liverpool succeed is palpable, and if we can see it, so can the referees.
I agree also that there may well be rumblings that Man city are heading for a points deduction, but again I certainly don’t believe it would of happened if it looked in anyway like it may gift the title to Arsenal. But gifting it to Liverpool is another matter altogether. And whatever punishment they get, I certainly don’t see any past titles being awarded to Arsenal, or anyone else for that matter.
I know people think this is all just ‘conspiracy theory’ nonsense, I certainly don’t, although I prefer to call it an agenda. Arsenl are detested and targeted by the media ceaselessly day and night.
I know we have regular posters accusing us of being paranoid, but the other week following our Carabao cup win over Palace for example when I put up over a dozen Articles in one paper about Arsenal with a negative tone, they don’t have a word to say by way of explanation.
I have mentioned this before, but I worked with a guy who had been in the media, and he told me it was a known fact that negative stories about Arsenal sold papers and the rule of thumb was to have a negative story about Arsenal at least every other day. And if you didn’t have one, find one from the past, or if necessary make one up.
He wasn’t an Arsenal fan, he was a United fan, and he insisted it was true and actually found it quite funny. It’s called an agenda.
These are facts:
There is a Northern bias in the PIGMOB.
There is a Northern Bias in the pool of Referees.
There is a Northern bias in the media.
This is NOT by accident.
I remember back in the days of the Arsenal Man Utd duopoly, a head of the FA or PL, I cant remember which, once stating publicly that a successful Manchester United was essential for the premier League brand.
ARE YOU LISTENING REFEREES!!!
You couldn’t make it up. Image the shit storm if he had said it about Arsenal.
The success of the power houses of the Northwest in general is seen as an essential part of the English game, be it Man Utd, Liverpool or Man city, and everything possible is always done to help one of them. This season the focus is clearly on returning the title to Merseyside.
As far as Man City are concerned I fear for them it may be a case of ‘The King Is Dead. Long Live The King’.
I don’t care what people say, there is a media agenda against Arsenal, and there is a bias in favour of the Northwest powerhouses, and in there wake the Referees happily follow.
Nitram,
What sane person or me , could disagree ? Not I.
@Nitram
You infer in your post, there always appears to be an “agenda” that the EPL follows. I totally agree with you but I would say this seems to be the case in most of European football
I remember reading a comment on a German football fan site that whatever the agenda the media wants to follow is uncannily how VAR and officials on the pitch seem to gravitate towards this outcome.
I have given up watching a lot of games now. I now have a rule that if I find after 10 minutes or so I can see bias from the officials I turn off. I watched a game from the Europa League a couple of weeks ago – I started watching at about 9 minutes in – within 2 minutes the ref had booked a player for a normal tackle. After 19 minutes I turned off because the opposing team, 3 minutes after this incident, had an identical tackle – NO yellow card, The ref managed to make 3 errors in 10 minutes all benefiting one team! I checked the result after the match – sure enough the team that benefited from the decisions won the game! How convenient!
I know this is not scientific but the perception to me is that results are more and more appearing to be manufactured to fit the agenda.
Like you say it seems to a lot of people that Liverpool are the favourites this year- maybe to upset Jurgen Klopp after all David Coote was sacked for making comments about him. I know this is all a “conspiracy Theory” because the refs are all clean and fair and this would never happen.
I must say that I saw ONE game this season where the ref played fair – it was very strange seeing players and officials smiling and laughing. Funnily the ref had NO problems with players. They accepted every decision without dissent.
In my youth, I played on a team that was sweeping away all in front of it. About 2/3 through the season, we played a match with about 5 players missing. I asked one where he was and he said that he had gone golfing…he was sure we were going to win, anyway…We all remember Haaland, and his “Stay humble,eh” gibe at our players. In addition to those things mentioned above, I can’t help but think that there is something off with Man City’s attitude. One thing that bringing in or up, new players does is to keep the hunger in a club. Those who weren’t there when the trophy was won are always trying to prove themselves to those who have won, or are trying for something they haven’t achieved, yet. Man City’s squad is settled…or stagnant.
Further, not many have mentioned Man City’s age. With the exception of Rodri, who is out, and Foden (who is off form), Man City’s key players are getting up there in age. Combine that with complacency and you have a prime recipe for decline. As an aside, Liverpool’s key players are also old in football terms, however, they are getting great results from them…for now…we’ll see how the contract negotiations play out.
Les Williams
“I remember reading a comment on a German football fan site that whatever the agenda the media wants to follow is uncannily how VAR and officials on the pitch seem to gravitate towards this outcome.”
That, in a nutshell has been my argument for years. The media run the referees. They set out an agenda regarding which team is currently in vogue. Which one they would like to do well. The officials, having taken that on board, subsequently officiate accordingly by generally favouring who has been ‘chosen’. They may even be doing it subconsciously, but they are doing it.
But why would they? They do it because their reputations and even their jobs could depend on it.
If they make a big call, correctly or incorrectly, that the media don’t like, they tear them to shreds.
If they make a call, rightly or wrongly, that the media do like, they will defend them to the hilt.
We have witnessed this many times this season already, especially on SKY’s ref with Dermot Gallagher.
It’s not even difficult for them to do. Referee an unfavoured team by ‘The Letter Of the Law’ one day. Referee a favoured team with a bit of leniency the next.
They don’t even have to cheat. Just give 90% of the 50/50’s to the ‘favoured’ team and that is often as not enough to swing a match, after all over 50% of matches are won by a single goal, and that increases dramatically in games between the main title contenders. In other words it only takes 1 or 2 major calls in a match to favour 1 team and it can be job done.
It’s easy, and the referee doesn’t even appear to be cheating, although he is of course if he is doing it intentionally. But how can we know that, let alone prove it?
GoingGoingGooner
Good points as well.
An aging squad could be part of it, but that is as a result of not spending money for younger replacements.
Complacency and stagnation could also be part of it, but again that could be happening as a result of not spending money to freshen up the squad?
Most of these issues are ultimately down to not spending money on the squad.
Throughout the Mansours tenure they have been spending on average around £70 million net per season on players. There was one 10 year period when they spent an average of £100 million per season. The last 5 years their average annual net spend is under £30 Million. You may of noticed how this ‘Thrift’ has been lorded by the media over recent seasons.
Well of course it was, it gave them something to bash Arsenal with. Look at what Arteta has spent compared to pep, yet he still cant win the title. Blah blah blah. But as I kept saying, we were playing catch on Man City’s years of mega spending. Alas for them it seems the chickens have now come home to roost. The fact is Pep’s been living off of the fruits of those mega spending years and now the fruit has spoiled, and he’s failed to plant new seeds.
Pep is a great manager, but he is not the God everyone said he was. He spent his way to the top, and he’ll have to spend his way back, just like every other mortal.
Nitram…I agree, Man City not spending recently is helping to cause their stagnation.
As to why they aren’t spending…it is hard to say. Perhaps Pep is completely happy with his squad. Perhaps the high end talent that they would be looking for is reluctant to come to Manchester what with the upcoming court decisions.
Regardless, they are doing poorly right now. Pep apologists point to this recent lack of spending and their latest titles as proof of Pep’s genius. We disagree. 10 years of spending has meant a deep squad that is hard to beat over 38 games.
I truly believe that one reason Guendouzi was let go was because of his arrogance. We saw that with Haaland, too. I’ll take humble Bukayu any day.