Starting With Watford at The Emirates, Arsene Wenger Needs To Show His Hand

There is that periods during the season when something inside snaps and you immediately know that in spite of all the work done prior; Arsenal will come up empty again. Once more, the season is dead and the annual chase for Champions league qualification is all that remains.

Last season, it was that FA cup quarter final at the Emirates where Watford knocked us out without a whimper. We were on course for a consecutive FA cup but had one eye on the Wednesday trip to Camp Nou for the second leg of round of 16 tie. Just like now, we were eight points behind the league leaders (Leicester).

With Watford tonight at the Emirates, like any other mid-table team, you just don’t know what to expect. What we know is that we cannot afford to let it slip once again thanks to poor schedule management. 

Wenger Not So Stingy After-all, Arsene Overpaid Chelsea 11.4 Million Euros For Petr Cech

"Welcome back" by Mase would do for this occasion. 

I looked at the last date that we posted here and it was simply embarrassing. As embarrassing as this summer's transfer season ala the unending Benzema fiasco. As embarrassed as Arsene Wenger should be over that '3 month' Welbeck lay off, so much so that he couldn't do it himself, Hodgson had to. Other than that, Arsenal news review is pretty much a desperate affair consisting of hype over Theo Walcott for scoring two past part time footballers to finding out how long Ozil lasted in Germany's win over Scotland tonight.

It is in these Arsenal news drought times that guys like those crunching the numbers over at CIES Football Observatory make the headlines. In their weekly post, the nerds hang it all to dry painting a football version of some suburban neighborhood desperate housewives out on a shopping spree. According to their estimates, this summer's window was 23% inflated compared to 2009-2014. 

We paid 11.4 million Euros over for Cech (Estimated value of 3.6 million vs reported fee of 15 million). No surprise really for Manchester United's Antony Martial fee where Monaco skimmed a free 27.9 million of the 50 million fee but they recovered part of that (15.3 million) from PSG for Di Maria. Liverpool lost 32.1 million Euros on Raheem Sterling as CIES reckons that the nine goal? winger is worth at least 95 million pounds. Tiny totts actually made a 7 million Euro super profit on Roberto Soldado! Shock.

At the very least this report by CIES lends credence to Arsene Wenger's assertion that there was too much money chasing after too few players. 

Upfront: Arsenal vs. Chelsea The Mind Games

Upfront seems to be the keyword; that is  62 pounds at MINIMUM it will cost you; and who will play (that word) for Arsenal ii against Chelski come Saturday’s early kick off London derby at the Emirates; financially and football-speaking  respectively.

On the back of the news of freshly minted cash- 36million pound net profit made by Arsenal PLC the past financial year as per the released end year returns, all that bloody dough made in the midst of a hostile investment climate globally, most certainly Europe, as rightly pointed out by Wenger; understandable it is why tagging entry to London’s hottest sporting event since the XXXX Olympiad at such a premium finally makes its way as trending sports news in mainstream media.

This ‘revelation’ unmasked way after the deed had been done when the big dogs at Arsenal decided on the abridged ticket prices structure.