Wengers foresight....

GuanYin

well maybe.... I've always thought he was just about the shrewdest manager around when it comes to the Transfer market, but just looking at the most high profile players currently unable to find a club......

Kluivert (Wenger turned down the chance to sign him 2 years ago)
Overmars (startlingly transferred by Wenger, looks good deal now)
Petit (Ditto)

and now

Wiltord (Wants a long term contract, Bayern weren't willing to offer it either)
Kanu (*Cough*)

He's gone for unknowns again this year. Wonder how they'll turn.

Xterminator

I wonder did he forsee Viera leaving?



X

irishgeo

But how much did wiltord cost. Not a mention of that but i supposeif Liverpool had won the league we wouldnt have heard so much of the cost of diouf.

kida

What about his purchases??

Nelson Vivas
silvinho(now with Barcelona)
remi garde
Gilles Grimandi
Oleg Luzhny
Alberto Mendez
Kaba Diawara
Paulo Vernazza
Davor Suker
Stefan Malz
Igors Stepanovs
Tomas Danilevicius
Francis Jeffers
Sylvan Wiltord
Junichi Inamoto
Stathis Tavlaridis
Giovanni Van Bronckhorst
Pascal Cygan

GuanYin

Originally posted by kida
What about his purchases??

Nelson Vivas
silvinho(now with Barcelona)
remi garde
Gilles Grimandi
Oleg Luzhny
Alberto Mendez
Kaba Diawara
Paulo Vernazza
Davor Suker
Stefan Malz
Igors Stepanovs
Tomas Danilevicius
Francis Jeffers
Sylvan Wiltord
Junichi Inamoto
Stathis Tavlaridis
Giovanni Van Bronckhorst
Pascal Cygan

To be fair, the best way to look at that is how much he's spent Vs. How much he's recouped and you see he's miles ahead of anyone (although thats probably from Anelka alone).

Van Bronkhorst, Grimandi and Garde did well but were only ever fringe players.

Cygan covered exceptionally well last season. Look at the players he released and apart from Wiltord I dont think he spent much on any of them.

eirebhoy

He paid a lot for Wiltord but he wasn't exactly a bad player. 46 goals in less than 100 starts for the club domestically (he wasn't the best in Europe though ).

Big Ears

£11,000,000 for Wiltord , a club record at the time .

{me wonders why people went on about lack new blood at Arsenal for 4 pages and then I bring up a thread saying Almunia joined and only 2 people other than me post on it . am I on that many peoples ingnore list }

Jivin Turkey

Originally posted by kida
What about his purchases??

Nelson Vivas
silvinho(now with Barcelona)
remi garde
Gilles Grimandi
Oleg Luzhny
Alberto Mendez
Kaba Diawara
Paulo Vernazza
Davor Suker
Stefan Malz
Igors Stepanovs
Tomas Danilevicius
Francis Jeffers
Sylvan Wiltord
Junichi Inamoto
Stathis Tavlaridis
Giovanni Van Bronckhorst
Pascal Cygan

Jeffers is the only one there that any material amounts of money were spent on that was a flop.

PHB

Find me a manager that hasn't bought a crap player! G'wan try.
The true measure is how many great players he has bought in the long run, and hes not doing too bad atm

Raskolnikov

Selling Petit, Anelka and Overmars when they were just at the start of their downward spiral was a masterstroke, combined they netted Arsenal £83.5M! His worst purchases (incidently some of his most expensive) were Sylvain Wiltord for £13M and Francis Jeffers for £10M. I don't understand why a top flight team like Arsenal could actually spend less than what they've taken in from transfers.

Some asstute buys were Patrick Vieira for £3.5M, Fredrik Ljungberg for £3.2M and Henry for only £11M.

The Muppet

Originally posted by PHB
Find me a manager that hasn't bought a crap player! G'wan try.
The true measure is how many great players he has bought in the long run, and hes not doing too bad atm

Vic Halom at West Bromwich Albion, Well you did ask.;)


They all make mistakes in the transfer market and spending big is no guarantee of success either. Wenger much as I dislike him has found some excellent signings in his time without spending excessivly.

Pepe LeFrits

Sylvinho, Cygan, Grimandi, and Wiltord don't deserve to be in that heady list imo. Sylvinho was class. Cygan was cheap and played way better last season (i think Arsenal only conceded 4 goals in the 10 matches he started), Grimandi was a useful squad player and Wiltord scored 49 goals often from the wing.

The rest however are ones Wenger will probably want to forget. Possible exceptions might be Franny Jeffers in the unlikely event he comes good, and Van Bronckhurst who was incredibly unlucky with injuries.

The only possible good thing I can think of that would come from a possible Vieira departure, would be that Fabregas would move up the pecking order. From what i've seen of him, he has the potential to eclipse all of Arsenal's current elite.