Cronky

That situation was a turning point, but it's more complex than that. Unless you're backed by an oil billionaire who effectively has a bottomless pit of money, then you have to put a cap on spending at some stage. That was the point Shepherd reached. More seriously, we failed to adhere to the long-term plan that we'd been following of finding and developing younger talent, and Shepherd was at the heart of that change of focus. We allowed Shearer to continue as a first-team regular right up to the point of retirement, to the serious detriment of the development of the side. One by one, all our young talent went over the next few seasons - Bellamy, Woodgate, Dyer, Hughes, Jenas - and we were left having to go even further into debt to shore up a sinking ship. If we'd let Shearer go at that point - which Robson proposed - then we may have had a short-term cost but longer-term I'm sure we'd have been better off. If your only answer is to spend money then you only store up problems for the future.

You'll not have seen the Alan Smith thread then. IIRC there was a fair bit of wage discussion after relegation, and understandably so. FWIW here's what one Arsenal fan apparently said about wages: ""Arsenal's year ending 09/10 shows the spending on wages at £111m, marginally (approx £20m) below Man Utd and City, with Chelsea being the top spenders. If we look down the list we will see Spurs at £67m for the same period. This is an extraordinary statistic and it needs some pause for reflection : Arsenal spent £44 million more than Spurs on wages in one financial year. This is shocking. Many gooners complain that Spurs seem to outspend us in the transfer market (which they do) and many neutrals and gooners alike think that Arsenal's brilliant book balancing in the transfer market is one of the main reasons why he should not be sacked. At the same time we all know that the addition of 3 or 4 good quality players would probably be the difference in winning the league this season and possibly 2 or 3 previous seasons in the last 5 years. So the question is two-fold : a) why does Arsene spend so much money on wages and b) why do Spurs spend so little? The fact that Arsenal reward their huge swathes of mediocrity should be a source of grave concern amongst us fans. Players like Rosicky on £80k per week, and on a long contract, Denilson, Bendtner, Diaby & Almunia not being far behind is criminal. Spurs on the other hand pay a top whack of £60k per week and the top earner is Robbie Keane and he is currently off the wage bill altogether! OK, perhaps it is not going to be possible for Spurs to remain with such a low top wage, especially if they want to keep some of their best players such as Bale & Van Der Vaart, but what it shows is that Arsene has totally lost it. He is wasting millions and millions of pounds on garbage players and this is restricting him from spending that money on better players. Make no mistake, this is his decision and his alone." The whingeing gooner is one of the strangest phenomena of modern football. They've got a great stadium, play great football, they're second in the league with a reasonable chance of winning it, they enjoy regular Champions League football, but their manager has supposedly 'lost it'. The problem seems to be that because Wenger brought them league titles before, it's a disaster when it doesn't continue to happen. Past success becoming an accusing finger. I love the way that bloke talks about adding '3 or 4 good quality players' as though it's a matter of going down to Tesco's and handing over the cash. Players that are better than the ones they've got are not in plentiful supply, and will be chased by other major clubs as well.

Great story. Let's hope there's a happy ending.

Hopefully Pardew told him to put a sock in it and concentrate on his football.

Again, PR is not Llambias's strong point. Whatever he means there, the figure that leaps out at you is '10th', and that's not very inspiring.

Rooney will play left as he did v Wales. England still look like they'd get crucified against a top team but certainly look better than they did playing 442 of recent. I see the argument for playing Rooney on the left as he has played there more than a few times for Man United, but the way he has been playing he looks like the ball will just bounce off him everytime he takes a touch. Capello is a dead man walking anyways, so it's a bit of a moot point, but it would send a very big message if Rooney were to be left out for the rest of the qualifying campaign. Good point about Rooney and his first touch, which seems to be the main part of his game that has deserted him. I'm still not sure if it's mental (public revelations of involvement with prostitutes after birth of first child) or physical (manager plays him a week after an ankle injury, and then keeps him on for 30 minutes after the injury flares up again) I think it's the former, in which case I think/hope he'll come back to form. He's our big hope for international success.

Enjoyable game. I can't remember an away crowd making such a noise. Our back four looked a bit dodgy throughout.

According to that, Spurs spent £30million more on players than Chelsea over the last five years. Is that actually, like, true?

..... and incidentally put in a written transfer request after being refused a pay rise.

It often seems to come down to whether you think that Ashley sees the club only as a business opportunity, or whether you think his motivation is more complex. Just because the financial angle is important to him doesn't mean that it's his only consideration.

Oh shit.

Video's from 2009 Ah...... Not sure Marseilles would have been too happy then... Unless he was playing for Lyons at the time.

Impressive, but..... Not sure Pardew would be happy to see a player who's been out for six months, catching a steel ball on his foot.

Well no, naturally he isn't. Not a particularly fast defender really but still a top one. Agree about the 2 Arsenal lads. Just different in style and it was good to see Wilshere driving forward with it - and also playing the simple ball where necessary. All in all England did what they needed to do. Disappointing to see them look disinterested in getting more goals but I suppose the job was done and Capello obviously told them to not take risks in the 2nd half, hence the boring 2nd period that ensued. You can only beat what is in front of you so this game didn't really teach us much. Milner provided his usual dose of f*** all, Johnson didn't look solid despite having the minimum of defending to do, while he didn't give much going forward. Rooney once again was alright but hardly setting the world alight. The Wilshere-Parker-Lampard combination looked pretty encouraging and is worthy of another try. Lampard will be 34 when the EC rolls around, personally think you should be starting to phase him out too. Although I admit I can't think of many alternatives. Wilshere, McEachran, Rodwell (although more of a cb I believe). I think it's time we take a hit/the gamble. We know with the current set up we aren't going to do anything. The Germany game was played out as predicted. We need a new start, get some of the youngsters in and some experience then in 4 years we will be much better placed to progress. Germany are much better for it and we need to take similar gambles, we have some talented youngsters who although won't immediately offer more but will in the longer term. Rodwell alongside Wilshere in the middle of the park. Long term, yep. Rodwell's had some injury problems though which has stalled his progress, and he hasn't really got going this season but there's no doubt he's going to be an England starter for years to come. Admittedly, I'm resigned to him not being at Everton that much longer. Is he more of a midfielder? Was always under the impression he was a centre back playing in midfield. He was initially seen as a centre back but for the past 2 years he's primarily played in midfield, due to his superb technique. He perhaps needs to have his position clarified because although I see him as a defensive midfielder long term, he enjoys his drives forward. I don't really see what all the hype is about Rodwell. Ok he has had a stop start season with injuries but I don't understand what is so special about him. Speculated £25m price tags on his head are just crazy talk. I think I'm in the same position. I've not actually seen Rodwell play that game when he produces something that really makes you sit up and take notice. However, so many good judges (apparently including Fergie) seem to rate him and they can't all be wrong. Wilshere has been playing with amazing authority and leadership, for both Arsenal and England. He's more than ready and I think he'll be a fixture in the team for a long time now. I reckon the casualty will be Lampard who now looks very slow despite that footballing nous that he's got. Gerrard is the better natural athlete and his international career still has some legs.

Wilshere and Ramsey have that Arsenal stamp - always looking to play a positive ball forward rather than just a nothing pass to retain possession. Is it just my imagination or is Terry not as quick as he was?

What has changed is we now have a much better stadium and much better training and youth development systems. Those inadequacies had held the club back in past years while other clubs were moving forward. The club isn't behind the times any more, as that article was saying in 1987. Despite the limitations of the current first team, the foundations are there, and my hope is that the new financial fair play rules will level the playing field a bit and give us a chance to get back up there.

Ultimately, it's the Chairman / owner's job to manage the finances, and they are responsible when things go wrong financially, not the manager. The downside of having the excitement and status of owning a football club is that you do have to disappoint both the fans and the manager, who want to sign or retain particular players who cost more than you can afford. It goes with the territory. That's unless you have so much money that you can outbid every other club, which of course isn't our situation. Shepherd's biggest problem was that he got too involved in the playing side, becoming a kind of Director of Football rather than a Chairman. Everything went more and more haywire.

You are all over the shop defending your pals Mike & Del. Barton has made clear he is willing to take a pay cut So do you reckon Barton has went out of his way to mislead people by not mentioning bonuses. I don't. Any of the big hitters? Jose = NO. Barton = No. Once AC knew his value had increased it was also a no. a) I know what Barton has said, but so far he hasn't signed anything so we don't know his exact position. Action, words, louder etc b) Obviously we don't know what's going on, but I think the idea that Joey hasn't given us the full picture is perfectly plausible. The club has been talking about making a large part of new contracts performance-related, for both players and coaching staff. I'm not sure that Joey would necessarily regard giving a partial picture as deceitful. He might see it as street-wise and canny in this dog eat dog world. Joey also loves to attract sympathy and attention and this may be another example of it. c) Tiote, Carroll and Ben Arfa are certainly big hitters. The fact that Carroll later asked for more when Liverpool came in isn't the main point. He was sufficiently satisfied with his contract this season to sign it, as were several others. It seems to me that the big problem, as with Owen, isn't that the new contracts are too small. It's that the old ones were set at too high a level for the club to afford.

Let's not get too naive here. A player coming into the final year of his contract knows that he can ask for an inflated wage at the end of the year from any interested club because they won't have to pay a transfer fee. Barton's comment that he won't agree to go even if the club wants to sell him has to be seen in that light. As for the 'I've only been offered a third of my current salary', we don't know what is offered in terms of bonuses for the team's performance. A lot of players seem to have been happy to sign up to Ashley's contracts so let's hang fire on this one.

We don't know what the figures are, but as I say the likes of Tiote, Ben Arfa and others have been happy to sign up. Barton likes the attention, and I don't think the terms of his contract offer are as restricted as the idea of a two-thirds cut would suggest. At the end of the day, we do have to have a salary policy, and if that means the likes of Barton or Enrique moving elsewhere then so be it. In the long run, we'd be better off than joining in the madness of paying over the odds, like we were doing before.

As feared/suspected/expected. I suspect that Barton's new contract means a big cut in his guaranteed salary, but there would be a lot of performance-related top-ups. I think that's what happened when Owen's contract came up for renewal. There's been talk from the club that this is the style of contract that they now want to offer. If so, we've seen players like Tiote and Ben Arfa quite willing to sign up in the last few months, and this is the first we've heard of any major rift between Barton and the club in terms of the actual amount being offered. The previous talk has been about whether it should be 2 or 3 years, or whether Barton wants to wait and see how the Carroll money is going to be spent. We do have a number of players on inflated basic salaries, and it was always going to be a problem when, as with Owen, their renewal came up. An offer based on the performance of the player and/or the team seems a reasonable way forward. Continuing to pay huge amounts when the players who are coming in are being paid far less doesn't seem a viable option to me.

The title should go to a player who has the added dimension of being a disappointment. I'd rather ignore young players who come through the ranks and aren't quite good enough. With this is mind, Andreas Andersson must be a contender. He had both a lack of ability and a lack of belief. He seemed embarrassed to be out there. If you want to go back further, of those who saw him, none will forget the immortal Frank Pingel.

Ridiculous decision. Losing the captaincy wasn't a punishment for a misdemeanour in his personal life. It was an acknowledgement of the difficulties for squad morale when the captain if found shagging a team mate's partner or ex-partner. It's not as though he plays as well for England as he does for his club either.

Despite his experience, Harper has always looked a slightly nervous keeper to me, prone to the odd blunder. Krul looked raw, but Harper wasn't that great an alternative and I wouldn't have dropped him.