Quote Originally Posted by World's End Stella View Post
This shouldn't surprise you, Rich. Anyone who believed the 'catalyst for change' nonsense hasn't been watching Wenger for the past 20 years. His fatal flaw is his combination of arrogance and stubbornness, there was simply no way he was going to look at players like Coquelin, Ox, Theo, Ramsey* and Wilshere and say to himself 'I got it wrong so I'm going to sell, take the proceeds and the cash the club holds and buy high quality replacements'. If he was capable of that, there would be no Wenger Out signs all over the Emirates and we would be challenging for the league more frequently.

The sensible conclusion at this point is that the incomings are done and that some of the excess you refer to you will be sold at a cut rate price and as you suggest, we will probably have to pay some of the wages.

And yes, City and ManU and others have left us behind, yet again. It's why we'll finish 4th or 5th and be out of the league by February, yet again.

* this may or may not have been for SW's benefit
True, he isn't going to change. We knew that. Moving to a back three must have been hard enough for him.

I think the one key area where we are light is midfield, where we pretty much know we are going to struggle again for periods of the season as the usual suspects struggle for fitness and form.

The players you all mention will mostly end up going on loan for a season. We are not going to be able to sell all of them/any of them because they are either ****, constantly injured or hugely overpaid- sometimes all three.

The squad is a bit better than it was. Can’t really ask for much more than that. The nagging problem is that we kind of know the problem isn’t just about the players. We know how, why and more or less when our season is going to stagnate/blow up and we know we will finish between 4th and 7th. I doubt that activity in the transfer market in the next two weeks is going to make any real difference to that.