Do t think anyone’s denying you sold your best players quite consistently and spending was hampered for a while by the move to the Emirates. But most of the accolades you listed, certainly the titles were done before he had to sell them.
He maybe would have win more had you not moved. He was a genius. But who of those players did he sell when you and United were the top two? Only Petit and Overmars I think? Think that was about 99 or 2000 and you did still spend a bit on replacements back then. Oh, and Anelka too. But that was more a case of him wanting out or having his head turned by Real wasn’t it?
I think 1 of the the most frustrating 1 was the failure to really kick in and eventual break up of the 2007/8 team.
We had lost guys like Henry, Pires, Ljungberg, Reyes from the invincibles, but replaced them well and led the league for 2/3 of the season before the famous Eduardo injury and implosion.
Team / Squad had the likes of Lehmann, Sagna, Gallas, Toure, Clichy, Diaby, Diarra, Gilberto, Flamini, Cesc, Hleb, Rosicky, Adebayor, Eduardo, Van Persie, Walcott.
A lot of talent there, and you would say add a couple of players to that and that should be competing for a few years.
You just felt we were always replacing rather than adding, we lost Lehman, Hleb, Flamini and Gilberto and added the likes of Narsi, Ramsey and Arshavin.
But we never seemed to get a settled team. Eduardo, Rosicky, Diaby, Van Persie all suffered horrible injury luck, and that continued with the likes of Ramsey, Wilshere and Vermaelen going forward each of them missing at least a full season and never really returning to the player they were pre injury.
And of course the Sheikh arrived at City and started to buy our players, players were getting restless at not competing at the top of the table and were getting their head turned by more money and different opportunity elsewhere.
We were regressing and losing players and it basically all came to a head by the start of 2011 season when we lost Cesc and Nasri within weeks and lost at Old Trafford 8-2. That forced Wenger into a spend and he bought the likes of Mertesacker, Arteta in a end of window transfer panic.