By Tony Attwood
On 16 July the Daily and Sunday Express, a wretched and feeble newspaper group that takes a fanatical extremist right wing stance, and has been known to run a story that claim that a baby’s toy as been found on the planet Mars, ran the headline, “Arsenal director Josh Kroenke reveals why Unai Emery has limited transfer budget”.
The piece interested me because I have written a number of stories which state that the Kroenkes have never actually said that there was a limit on the budget this season, let alone state what that budget is.
That is not to say that I am a Kroenke supporter – actually I am not, because I am not happy with the way the family has behave with their franchises in the USA, and I would have much preferred to have an owner without such a history. My idea of an ideal Arsenal is one owned by its supporters, as Henry Norris was setting up until he was deposed by the Hill-Wood dynasty.
But we are where we are, and at least we should make an effort to get things right. The £45m limit has always seemed a bit odd to me so I was keen to read the news that the Express had.
In fact that article reported the opposite of what the headline claimed with Kroenke saying
“Asked why the club have just £45m to spend in the transfer market, Kroenke replied: ‘If we’re going into the finer points I’d have to defer to these guys (managing director Vinai Venkatesham and head of football Raul Sanllehi).
“‘I’ve always told them we need to be as aggressive as possible. It’s no secret that we have a Champions League wage bill on a Europa League budget right now.
“’That’s a fact, and one that we’re figuring out how to face internally at the moment. That doesn’t mean that my father or I have ever said anything about any restrictions on spending.
“’We know where we need to be and we know the areas we need to address on the pitch. We talk about those extensively, usually before the supporters become concerned about those roles.
“’We try to stay ahead of the curve and these guys are working as hard as they can behind the scenes to bring some more talent into our pool.
“Posed with the concept that fans purely want to see the club spend money, the director answered: ‘I understand and to be frank that’s not their job. Their job is only to be concerned with what goes on on the pitch when we’re ready to play a match.
“‘I’m not concerned with the buying and the selling. It’s not who you buy, it’s how you buy. There’s multiple statements to say how to skin that cat.
“’While we’re not going to be in the market for some of the top players in the world at the moment whilst they are the top players, we’re actively scouting the globe to find the next big thing to become great at Arsenal football club.
“’And not only will we bring them to the club, we’ll be able to retain them in the fold going forward.’
“Asked whether fans must stay patient, the 39-year-old said: ‘I would say yes, but that’s also not their job. Their job is to come and cheer us on the pitch.
“’Our job is to figure out how to stay patient. And to me that’s often the hardest part of my role, staying patient. Because I am a fan, I want to win the next match immediately.
“’But I also know that with where we are right now as a club, laying the solid foundation will only allow us to be successful moving forward. And we’ve not only laid that foundation, we’re starting to build up from that now.’
“Ostensibly, Arsenal will have looser pursestrings should they qualify for the 2020/21 Champions League and Kroenke is “very” confident the club can finish in the top four this season.”
That word “Ostensibly” is an interesting one. My understanding is that it means, “as appears or is stated to be true, though not necessarily so; apparently.” So the Express have run a story so that they can run a headline that states the opposite, simply because at the end they say that they don’t believe it.
I think the answer is “Ostensibly the Express is a newspaper, but in fact it is a purveyor of fantasies with false headlines.”
The word “Ostensibly” here means:
” We may make a push for the Champions League by borrowing money from next year’s transfer budget (e.g. Zaha) and if we do so, then we would not have more money next summer. ”
The number one problem with the Arsenal fan base is believing fake news. Many many web site make up stories as click-bait. The perfect example was the managerial interview process a year ago, where 100% of the news site articles were fiction, because Arsenal was successful at not leaking any real information.
Of course, the facilitators are the Agents. They can get more money for their clients if they can start fake “Arsenal target” stories. Then the fans get disappointed when Arsenal do not sign players they were never interested in.
This disappointment caused Arsenal to sign Ozil to an excessive contract that is now their biggest financial albatross.
Media offering garbage as usual. I’m not sure that KSE and the Arsenal management team have it all as under control as he says but the media certainly try to push whatever agenda tgey want as opposed to the facts
I quote ’While we’re not going to be in the market for some of the top players in the world at the moment whilst they are the top players, we’re actively scouting the globe to find the next big thing to become great at Arsenal football club.
Go get them before this sermon. Action speaks louder than worlds…..Finishing in Fifth position or not winning the league is becoming normal in Arsenal….Do you want to take forever to build a Premier League and Champions League winning team?????????
And we all know how wonderful the media tell us Spurs are run and how great their manager is, yet, and yet they’ve won nothing for years.
We on the other hand somehow fluked 3 fa cup and came 2nd 3rd 4th and 5th over a 4 year period, and were deemed complete failures.
Yes I know Wengers last 18 months were not up to standard but he was being driven out well before then, even over that 4 year period.
I’ve said many times, if UE can get close to matching that disastrous 4 year period he will be doing brilliantly.
Far far too early to tell whether he will or not.
He will need a lot of luck and a lot of support.
Will he get the luck? Given Pigmols dark arts I doubt that very much.
Will he get the support? Well he’ll get mine, but given the medias shite stirring and the tendency of an all too vocal minority of our fans to swallow every negative word uttered, I doubt it very much.
To be honest it’s not the pathetic agenda driven media that annoys me the most, it’s our own fans that buy into this shite.
We must buy plz or leave our club man
“Daily and Sunday Express, a wretched and feeble newspaper group that takes a fanatical extremist right wing stance” – please elaborate on why you say this. Do extremists simply believe in baby toys on mars?
The Kroenkes are not above criticism, nor should they be but cannot help thinking this is just a written repeat of “ spend some fuckin money”
Thought Josh gave an eloquent enough reply. They need to be smarter than some on spending, they need to get in or develop youngsters they already have , and of course there are values that need maintaining.
We should watch things carefully, but way to early into a new regime to really judge one way or another.
Despite all the advice to buy, my opinion is that we have sufficient quality in our squad to win anything. The purchase of players will not stop us leaking the odd goal.
Our new system has had more to blame than the players. Passing the ball from behind is not easy if the players do not have a structure to play to. The ball must be played forward if the pressing is high. It must be played into the opponents half away from the center, so that there is time for forwards to attack the ball.
It should also allow time for the defenders to push up so that the opponent cannot get good field position quickly. Our new system is now no longer an issue as Leno plays it well.
Nitram I doubt UE could match Wenger. See he could not even qualify for top4 which Wenger did for us for 20 years. Winning the league is out of question but the, media and the blogtettas told us that Wenger was keeping us back and look now we are broken and rudderless.
The football style we played last year was pathetic.
For me the only way forward is to bring Wenger back with atleast 3 years contract.
Like some of the regular guys above , I am quite content with the way things are run, and patient enough to wait for the pendulum to swing back in our favour. Football like life is after all cyclic , and a bountiful year is due.
I don’t see us breaking the austerity mold anytime in the near future. We will live within our means , but I ‘d rather that we find better or more lucrative streams of income to catch up with those moneybags. We must be good and ready when they do implode .
I like to see more of our youngsters break into the first team and do well. Likewise I hope that we get some shrewd purchases that come good. We may not be the ultimate dream team at present for the top,top players , but I believe we are still an attraction proposition for certain good young and upcoming players.
Up the Gunners !
Well Questioner, to answer this I simply went to this morning’s copy of the paper on line and looked at the articles. The first one I saw was “Moon Landing Shock, “Neil Armstrong admitted it was a sham”. There are then three headlines for articles about the Brexit Party, a party that has no MPs in Parliament and whose views I would call extreme in the extreme. Then we have the headline in which Nigel Farage calls Ursula von der Leyen’s fanatical, and so it rolls on and on. Obviously if you don’t consider the Brexit Party an extremist group then you will probably not agree with me.
Thanks for explaining your position.
Couldn’t agree more 👍👍👍
Food for thought there.
A story of bricks….
Agency: ” Sir, we found three candidates as per your requirements, now how do you want their placements sir?”
M.D: “Put about 100 bricks in a closed room. Then send the candidates into the room & close the door, leave them alone and come back after a few hours and analyse the situation:-
1) If they are counting the bricks, Put them in Accounts dept.
2) If they are re-counting the bricks, Put them in Auditing.
3) If they have messed up the whole room with the bricks, Put them in Engineering.
4) If they are arranging the bricks in some strange order, Put them in Planning.
5) If they are throwing the bricks at each other, Put them in Operations.
6) If they are sleeping, Put them in Security.
7) If they have broken the bricks into pieces, Put them in Information Technology.
8) If they are sitting idle, Put them in Human Resources.
9) If they say they have tried different combinations yet not a single brick has been moved, Put them in Sales.
10) If they have already left for the day, Put them in Marketing.
11) If they are staring out of the window, Put them in Strategic Planning.
12) If they are talking to each other and not a single brick has been touched, Congratulate them and put them in Top Management.
13) If they however have no idea of what the bricks are, and they blame you for what they ought to do, put them in Parliament…
The point, that some people seemed to have completely missed, is that nobody at Arsenal has said there is a limited budget let alone put a figure on it; yet the media still criticise Arsenal for having a limited budget and then attribute a number to it. They area no more and no less than parasites with an agenda.
Trouble is, those people (“supporters”) who have the least possible chance or ability to manage a football club seem to believe that they know better than highly experienced, well qualified professionals. I wonder whether they would tell a surgeon who was going to operate on them how do do his/her job just because they’ve watcedh some documentaries about it on TV? Bloke-down-the-pub mentality. No wonder this country is in the mess that it is.
A different perspective –
Economy is not struggling…the business models are changing.
Often heard nowadays that ” Economy is struggling. ”
Sit back & dispassionately think, “Is the economy really struggling or are business models struggling ?
Some food for thought:
1) Car sales are going down… but Grab / Uber usage are rising.
2) Restaurants are going empty… but home delivery is rising.
3) Tuition classes are not getting students but online studying is rising.
4) Traders are struggling but on line market sites are breaking all records in sales.
5) Old commission based businesses are snivelling… but online services, at low cost, are finding takers.
6) Cell phone bills have reduced and internet penetration is increasing.
7) Stable (read “Govt Jobs”) are dwindling but “Start up” jobs offering equity & Flexi work time are expanding.
If truth be told what we are experiencing is a transition phase and any transition is painful for the “well set”…… “the masters of the past”.
It’s challenging for those who’s business models are based on ancient data.
It’s a mystery for those who have never looked beyond traditional methods or have assiduously resisted change of any kind.
The Economy is not struggling…the business models are changing.
Rosicky..Let it go.Wenger has gone and the time was right.We finished 6th in Wengers last season and got to the semis of the Europa League.Last year we surpassed that finishing 5th and made the final and thats with a new manager. If you believe what Tony writes about not many managers being sucessful in their first season ,he did ok .Dont remember Klopp and Pep doing well in their first season and look at their respective teams now.
Kronkes spin on things is quite laughable.Hes basically wafling about being sucessful without spending and that they care massively about Arsenal.Its pure rubbish .All they care about is maximising profits and fleecing the fans.Us supporters pay some of the highest prices in world football to watch the games and they want that to remain..
Oh and Tony if you believe the Brexit party is extreme what do you call Remoaners who cant abide by democracy??
Hi all, I have been reading Untold for many years and enjoying the wonderful articles, posts and comments, except the useless and negative contents against our beloved Arsenal. Consequently, this is my very first contribution on Untold Arsenal and I want to make a request for the English media to help us with information regarding the transfer budgets including figures of the rest of the 19 clubs in the EPL.
Good luck Onos…………the EPL clubs jealously guard any information about their budgets,transfer targets, methods of making transfers successfully, etc.
I’m just can’t wait for this EU trade deal to be done that we were told by Davis would be the “Easiest deal in human history”
Or the £350 Million the ‘leave’ campaign said would be available every week for the NHS
Or to hear Farages justification for his racist campaign poster that said: BREAKING POINT: HOW THE EU HAS FAILED US that was full of almost entirely non white migrants, when I was led to believe it was the Poles, Bulgarians and Russians tacking all our jobs.
Still it’s refreshing to hear how some people see democracy as an opportunity to lie, exaggerate and incite racial hatred.
If that’s anyone’s idea of democracy I feel sorry for them because it’s certainly not mine.
I know Nitram, bloody immigrants coming over here expanding our economy, paying taxes and winning us the Cricket World Cup 😉
Sorry Nitram that more people want us to leave the EU than stay in it .You can cite everyone that voted to leave as being racist but you dont know why people voted that way.Maybe they are sick of proping up and bank rolling the Eu without having any say on what goes on there.The way i see it is that we have nothing in common with France Italy Greece etc .That showed with the leaving negotiations and what they really think of us .We need to get out asap .Our only real ally is the US and if the shit ever hit the fan again id rather have them by my side than any Eu country.
nick
“You can cite everyone that voted to leave as being racist”
Were did I say that?
Exageration. A common trait with you leave voters it seems.
Honestly nick you are a worrying individual.