Jack Wilshere and our future midfield

[Özim]

Pretty much everyone in football does though, clubs are falling over themselves to get up there. I'd rather win the FA Cup than finish top 4 too by the way but unfortunately finishing top 4, qualifying for the CL and the resulting money and prestige is extremely important. I seriously doubt we'd have signed Ozil if we weren't in the CL.

I agree it shouldn't be like that but that's modern football. To finish top 4 for as many years as we have, especially during the stadium move and the rise of the billionaire backed clubs, is a remarkable achievement.

I don't understand why, it's one thing if you have an outside chance, but if you don't other than the money it's a pile of sh*t, the fact they let 3-4 teams for some countries also devalues the competition massively.

The CL IMO is ruining football somewhat because now winning cups is suddenly not that important but winning nothing and coming 4th is something amazing, history books aren't going to remember who came 4th, they won't be saying Arsenal came 4th in 2014 in 20 years time.

[Özim]

How did that turn out?

Obviously it didn't work out, that wasn't the point though, we seem happy with 4th but you feel certain other clubs would if in our position be setting their sights higher. I seriously re-sent the attitude at the club and the fact we get force-fed cr*p about how getting 4th = a wonderful season.

It does, for the owners and shareholders.

[Niall_Quinn]

We're not happy with 4th. Now that the stadium project is supposedly yielding the result we wanted to see it's time to start delivering on the pitch. This project isn't open ended, it has a start and an end date. Now the big deals are signed if we don't press the benefits we've put up with so much shit to gain then that would be a problem.

[IBK]

Pretty much everyone in football does though, clubs are falling over themselves to get up there. I'd rather win the FA Cup than finish top 4 too by the way but unfortunately finishing top 4, qualifying for the CL and the resulting money and prestige is extremely important. I seriously doubt we'd have signed Ozil if we weren't in the CL.

I agree it shouldn't be like that but that's modern football. To finish top 4 for as many years as we have, especially during the stadium move and the rise of the billionaire backed clubs, is a remarkable achievement.

Letters - you need to remember that there is still such a thing as a club to have greater ambition. Under Wenger, fourth is pretty much a given for us - as it should now be given our resources. We need to start aiming higher and show some ambition.

[Letters]

Letters - you need to remember that there is still such a thing as a club to have greater ambition. Under Wenger, fourth is pretty much a given for us - as it should now be given our resources. We need to start aiming higher and show some ambition.

Agreed and I do think we have greater ambitions but till the new commercial deals were in place we were slightly hampered.

[saintnickle]

Agreed and I do think we have greater ambitions but till the new commercial deals were in place we were slightly hampered.

I will wait till the end of august to see if we have greater ambition or not.I wont be getting too excited though after we signed the amazing kalstrom in january.

[Letters]

I think that's fair enough. We have made progress this year but there's more work to do this summer.

[Chippy]

I will wait till the end of august to see if we have greater ambition or not.I wont be getting too excited though after we signed the amazing kalstrom in january.

Even though we have signed the big sponsorship deals and most of the stadium is paid for, if we failed to finish in the top four, the board would use that as an excuse not to spend too much money.