Re: Let's NOT Laugh At Arsenal
Oh, OK then if you want to be pedantic. Imagine if Team GB had signed Usain Bolt because his grandma once had a scone in Windsor and we have much better facilities than Jamaica. Then he wins the 100m and we laugh in everyone's face jumping up and down with our backs turned to the track, doing the Poznan and proudly proclaiming how finally, after all these years of failure, we've finally broken the hoodoo and won the 100m at the Olympics.
And we've done it the right way, oh yes.
Just pointless.
Oh and Jimmy, some people have principles.
Principles? What principles?
If we happened to be bought by a wealthy benefactor, what would we be doing wrong by continuing to support the club? In the past, we've been bought by owners that took us to the brink of bankruptcy. We've been bought by an owner who squandered a hundred year heritage and the opportunities offered by the nascent Premier and Champions Leagues, allowing the club to slip into a decade of what could easily have become a terminal mediocrity. We stuck by the club then. So why on earth should we suddenly be considered unprincipled if we continued to stick by the club if it happened to be bought by an owner who actually took it to a bit of success? It's a preposterous notion, mate.
People throw around words like cheating. But investing money in a company isn't cheating, is it? Rich owners have been lavishing money on their clubs for many, many decades. It's how a significant number of them grew to be great clubs. Yet because those clubs now operate within their (vast) means, they're okay? It's just a matter of timing, surely?
Is it somehow fairer that a club like Man Utd can outspend most other clubs by hundreds of millions per annum just because they generate their own money? Is it good for competition? Why is it right or healthy for a very few clubs to have a massive financial advantage over all others in perpetuity, purely because of past success (itself possibly gained as a consequence of investment)? Such logic leads only to a virtuous circle for those few clubs and a vicious circle for the rest. The truth is, outspending other clubs by a massive margin is unfair regardless of where the money comes from. There is no level playing field. Trying to behave as if there is is an act of Canute-like futility.
It's not as if Spurs are some no mark, no fan, no history club that would rise through the divisions merely on the back of a tide of unearned money.
If we were bought by a wealthy benefactor, his wealth would only augment what is already there - a big club with great history and a huge fan base that is only prevented from reaching the very top by the financial disadvantage we suffer (and will always suffer unless there is investment) by comparison to four or five other clubs. What's more, it's a gap that will only widen. The likes of Utd haven't even begun to tap their full commercial potential. The likes of Chelsea and City WILL find loopholes in FFP. And it's likely that more clubs will, in time, join the billionaire club. Arsenal included. And Alisher Usmanov is richer than Abramovich.
What would it take for you to change your stance and ditch the stubborn belief in our superior virtue? That Spurs could expect, at best, to finish 5th? 6th? 7th? That we miss out on the formation of a European Super League? That, say, Arsenal and Chelsea go from strength to strength while we shrink and fade to virtual irrelevance? I'm not suggesting that all of these things would necessarily happen (though I suspect that they're not far off the truth). I'm just interested to know how far down your "principles" would take you - and Spurs.
Oh, and fans behaving like gobby tacos and laughing in the faces of others, should we win the league, would be equally likely and equally smack-able regardless of whether we do it by operating within our own means or with the help of a wealthy benefactor. It's not an argument you can use against investment.
"Fans" who insist that they would walk away from the club if it was bought by a wealthy benefactor should ask themselves this. Do they want to be like Canute (according to common misconception), standing impotently in the waves, raging at them to stop? Or do they want to be like Christopher Columbus, the fortunate recipient of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain's patronage, sailing on the waves and on to glory?
P.S. I've replied in here but since this discussion belongs more in the Financial Fair Play thread, I've also posted it there, if you want to reply!
