You seem to be stuck in year 2008. Right now Arsenal is the club which pays higher salaries than Chelsea, has bigger income and budget, much higher ticket price and bigger stadium. Wenger had an excuse few years ago, when he had no budget to spend on transfers. But last two years he spent more than during previous 16 years. Profit Arsenal makes is paid as dividend to Stan Kroenke, the major shareholder.
And it's became obvious that Arsene without Pat Rice isn't a good manager.
You seem to ignore the fact that Wenger really is to a great extent, an economist. In 2006, Wenger also said that 2014 would be the year when Arsenal would be able to compete on the market with its rivals once again. This after having stabilized the clubs finances after the construction of Emirates. There are alot of articles on this, and I guess you've already read them?
Also, just because Wenger had an amount of money piled up, doesn't mean it would be a great idea investing it in big signins, right away, would it? Last year with Özil was also not an thought through signing from a financial perspective, it was an presented opportunity which also served to indicate the sums Wenger was now ready to start paying, after being satisfied with the results of his fincancial project.
Alexis is the first big signing to have arrived on Wengers generally preferred terms, and signings like this will most likely be fairly frequent the coming years.
Yes, Arsenal nowadays pay more wages than Chelsea, but there are also 2 major factors to consider. Chelsea boosted their economy for 10 years, paying MASSIVE wages, until they just recently started adapting to FFP, and by doing so also cut down on wages of already contracted players but also the new signings. There is a significant difference here, and it's hard to argue that Chelsea hasn't benefitted from this advantage over the years. The change in the hierarchy in this department is too recent to have had any noticeable effect, hence why I'm not troubled by this yet.
And the second is that Arsenal pay solidary wages, it is a system which most likely played a part in seeing Cesc, RvP, and played a major part in seeing Clichy and Nasri leaving.
The system however let us keep f.e Ramsey after his injury, I don't agree that this system is horrible or even very bad. But it is a thinking which in some aspects put us below in the hierarchy of the biggest clubs in the league.
How did you figure that? The year after he left, we had one of our most promising/best seasons in maybe a decade. I love and miss Pat, but Wenger is more than capable of handling his abscense.
I can't say I've noticed any major change with Pat gone, if we're talking strictly about the pitch/results.
