Jesus I can't believe some of the posts in this thread, I mean have some of you only been supporting Arsenal for a month or somethin???
We have ALWAYS conducted our transfer dealings on the QT purely because AW is regarded as the best talent spotter in the business, and he doesn't want other clubs hijacking any prospective signings, remember him famously wearin a disguise complete with hat and false moustache when he went to watch Reyes!
When we do sign someone it's usually for an undisclosed fee, and same goes for when sell, in fact I think the offical club line is that TiTi's fee is undisclosed and the rest is pure media speculation!
Again this is probably cos AW does not like other clubs knowing how much he is prepared to pay for a certain class of player, or how much money he has burnin a hole in his pocket from the sale of an ex player!
I also can't believe how short-sighted and negative some people are bein, is it not clear to everybody that we will NEVER compete with ManUre or Chavski when it comes to buyin superstars, because they are by far the two richest clubs ON THE PLANET, and also because AW refuses to pay more for a player than he thinks he's worth!
I believe he genuinely wanted Ribery but there was no way he was gonna match Bayern's 23M bid, jesus even when Souness thought we were sniffin round Jenas he said he would cost us 20M yet he ended up goin to the Spuds for 8!
This is one of the reasons why AW's total net transfer outlay in his 10 years at the club is only 30M and why Sylvain Wiltord is still our record buy cos Jose was only 10.5 plus extras for success which as we all know he didn't achieve!
In fact I firmly believe that the only way we will ever be able to take on the two "superpowers" is buy building a young team so that when they reach their physical peak in 2 to 3 years, not only will they be able to match the likes of Chelsea who can afford to buy ready made players, but they will have been playin together for the previous 4 or 5 years, then we will hopefully have a team that can dominate the league and give us those back to back titles which we all crave!
This, arguably is what gave the scum all those titles even the ones we should've one, because they had that hard core of Scholes, Giggs, Beckham, Butt and the Nevilles, supplemented by some key signings, but remember they broke the British or World transfer record probably 5 or 6 times during that period - Yorke, Stam, Veron, Ferdinand, RVN and Rooney, I mean there's no doubt that we should've been champs in 2003 but there is also no doubt that they went on a hell of a run to catch and eventually overtake us, that takes some team to do that, and IMO it's only us and them that have had that in recent times and yes that includes the Chavs who are more machine than team!
Sorry for the long post guys but what does AW and the board for that matter have to do to earn our trust, because what they have achieved together in the last decade is nothin short of miraculous, and they're lookin at the big picture and buildin for the future so don't sweat it cos there'll be more good news before the summers out, and I for one think we're privilaged to be Gooners in this era
