Arsenal Are The Future

He's right about everything except one comment, "everyone can see that now." That's just it, they can't, but they will, trust me, they will. How a side with an average age of about 23 playing its first season together can be in decline is beyond me. It reminds me of something Paul Weller did when he started the jam. Early reviews dismissed him as a revivalist, so he went on stage wearing a sandwich board which said, "How can I be a revivalist when I am just f*****g eighteen?"

Its not just the age they are its the experience they have. All of those mentioned above have actually been to a world cup, its incredible! we must be a little patient with them while they are still learning but trust me it will be worthwhile.

That's another point I agree with gazzap. I think there are obviously other factors at work, but overall this season has to be looked at as a learning curve. Most of these deficiencies iron out with experience. I think a key phrase Wenger is adopting when we lose is, "we did not control the key moments of the game." Winning is not always about playing well, I think a lack of maturity explains that. That is what Cesc will also learn to do in time, control the key moments (like he did at Wigan) more regularly. But you're right about set pieces, the concentration has to be better.

defending set pieces is all about leadership and concentration, the boys will learn but we will all lose some hair while they do! If you check our defensive record pre Gallas injury it was the joint best in the premiership, the Guy is a leader and when he comes back we will improve immensly.

Who are Spurs!!

*to be*

Sp*rs also have their own future Loo and Lasagne company

You do have a few players that could play at the top level of football. I think you will have problems keeping hold of them while they are still playing for you lot though. Money and the chance to play for a top team will be too appealling.

Agree with iceman10, I think you can be positive about your future but without CL it will be difficult to keep all the players. As much as it pains me to say it King is probably the best CB in England, how he doesn't start for England when he has looked like the best player on the pitch when he player is totally beyond me. But hampered by playing for a smaller club. Not a dig at the spuds but just the facts.

Spurs definately have some cracking young players, but without winning anything they will never keep hold of them once the big clubs come knocking. Arsenal have great success in holding on to their players because we have one of the most respected managers in world football, a constant stream of throphies of the last ten years and regular Champions League football, in fact, everything Spurs don't.

Firstly, Spurs are actively looking to develop the WHL site. Owning the land will make it substantially cheaper, and its only the transport links that have been a problem. As mentioned last season you scraped fourth on the last day of the season. This season after 18 games, you are just in fourth. Every team rebuilds and has periods of transition. Sometimes new players never replicate the success of earlier players. Much has been made of our defeat at your place but we had 5 new players in that team plus injuries. We currently have in our team great and YOUNG players like Robinson, Dawson, King, Lennon, Huddlestone, Keane, Berbatov with players who are improving like Zokora, Defoe and Jenas (who is only 23). In the academy it is led by Tomas Pekhart, World Junior Footballer of the Year. Why do you think a financially stable team in the black need to sell? Why do these players need to leave? I hope you are not basing your hopes on the previous Carrick sale? As Everton finished above Liverpool and got into the Champions League, the same thing will happen in London very soon, and we will have benefited from playing in Europe before taking our rightful place.

If you're talking about new players, we have new players all over the pitch (whether they have been bought recently or only just broken into the side, it matters little) Eboue has only been in the side for under a year, Gallas, Djourou, Clichy, Rosicky, Adebayor, Walcott, Baptista, all players who have played regular football this seaon. We are growing as a team, and as Ade quite rightly says, in two years time we will be unstoppable. A new keeper will have been drafted in. The back 4 of Eboue/Toure/Gallas/Clich will have an understanding and will possibly be the best defensive unit in the world. Cesc will be 21/22 and will have matured even further (can you imagine) Tomas Rosicky will find his place and put in constant performances of the levels we have seen him achieve this season. Walcott has been superb in his cameo's this season, in two years time he will be 19!!!!!! Admittedly we give you some undue grief, you have a good young team, but anyone who thinks we are a team in decline is only fooling themselves. I can't wait to see your response when this team finally clicks.

I thought its the ref fault if you lose or dont achieve what you hoped for.

I'd love to see you goons on Motd in spurs shirts! lol Anyway - as much as i think we are catching you up and soon we will finish above you, why would a spurs fan stake so much on something that has not happened for years? A bit like saying i will give you a million quid if you jump of that cliff. The reward is sweet, though you are unlikely to recieve it!

Out of the players you have mentioned i have to admit fabregas isn a star, real quality, but as for the others? not to sure. Who is djourou? Walcott? done nothing yet that lokks like money well spent to me. I thoroughly agree with sir harry's statement. If you look Robinson, Dawson, King, Lennon, Huddlestone, Keane, berbatov we do have better young players than you. In fact if im realistic the only players i rate at your club is henry (soon to be leaving) fabregas, clichy, toure and gallas. You don't have the talent you once did and i'm afraid barring the players i've mentioned your players are very poor. Baptista aint special at all, van persie neither, flamini? eboue?

Hold on, you ask what Djourou & Walcott have done yet you say Dawson Lennon & Huddleston are better. Walcott has played more Prem games than Huddleston Djourou has played more international games than all of them put together, yet is still just 19 years of age. None of the players you name have acheived anything. van Persie is a regular in the Dutch national team and has scored more goals this season than any of your players. Eboue has played in a champions league final and is a regular in his nations side, Flamini played left back for 10 Champions league games and helped keep a clean sheet in all of them. He also has league and fa cup winners medals. The only player I cant comment on is Baptista because we havent seen him. None of your players have achieved anything!!

And lets stop for once and all this nonsense about how we will want and have to sell our best players. What a hoot!! This evidence is based on what? The fact that our players are all signing long term contracts (Robinson, Dawson, King etc) ... that our English players have only a passing acquintance with the bench, that we have (finally) qualified for Europe albeit this year in the second competition, that we are regularly scouted by the national manager for the full international team, that the team they have joined in the last two years is significantly improving, not treading water or slightly regressing, that we are an enormous 2pts from the Champions League qualifying places? In years past you would be a small blip on the horizon at this stage - those days are over. You are basing all your hopes on the sale of Carrick - with all due respect, you sold Petit/Overmars for a hugely inflated price with Arsene knowing already who would be the replacements as he also did with Anelka. For us to turn down £18.6m for a player where we already had a potentially superior younger version on our books would have been stupid in the extreme, and all we've done by selling Carrick is to show that we are now not a stupid club

It's not that you sold Carrick, it's that Carrick wanted to go. Because when all's said and done, it's the players choice. He wanted to leave because he wants to better himself and win trophies and that is the cold hard facts. He will never win anything of meaning at Spurs and if these good young players you have live up to their potential and become world class, do you honestly believe they would want to stay at Spurs rather than Man Utd, Arsenal, Chelsea, Real Madrid, Barcelona, AC, Inter, Munich????? Please don't lie to me by saying yes, because you, I and everybody knows that aint true.

SH - Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. Flamini was out of contract and had only alledgedly agreed to resign for Marsielle verbally. The ruling of the court of arbitration is not law, however I believe Arsenal did pay around 1 million in total for Flamini's services. No rules were broken by Arsenal.

And that means what? he's gonna stay? or he's trying to keep you lot quiet? the guy doesn't need booing does he? very clever to say he wants to stay then he can slam in his transfer request when the time suits. What a wise man henry is after all. Enjoy the time you have remaining together rocky, this guy wants to WIN the champions league. Not lose in the final

Ok rocky keep telling yourself that cos if i am right, which i have an uncanny knack of then your side is gonna continue it's steady decline, fabregas will want to follow then what? ill leave you ponder that anyway i'm off to work, i live in a house and i pay for it unlike you benefit claiming pikeys.

The Court of Arbitration from Sport said Arsenal had acted illegally and FIFA were wrong to sanction the transfer. The fact they do not have the power (yet) to over turn the process does not however mean that laws were not broken. Why else would Arsenal pay more money - because of the kindness of their heart :)

Carrick had over two years left on his contract. We were not forced to sell. However as a business it was understood that a players value in the final year of their contract substantially falls. Knowing that we have a superior player to step up made it an easy call. It is called business. Our top players will stay at the club because they are well aware of the nature of the game, that at some point some teams will fall away. Carrick has gone to ManU and done exactly what .... open up further competition for his England place through Huddlestone. This preening arrogance from down the road about what a fantastic bunch of youngsters you have is pathetic. In recent times you have won plenty, but last season you finished fourth and were nowhere near the Premiership, caught a break with poor Juventus and Real Madrid teams and scraped past Villarial to get to the Champions League final. This year you are again out of the Premiership race and only just scraped into the knock out stages of the Champions League. Poor seasons become a habit .. we should know. Unlike in previous years your expectations are no longer based on fact.

Are Spurs fans really bringing out the Henry is leaving argument again??? It's like last season all over again. I know it really annoys you guys having to live your dreams through your superior neighbours but seriously where does the belief that you are Arsenal's equal stem from?? The last time you won the league JFK was still alive, man hadn't been to the moon, the Beatles were just getting it together. Are you seeing some kind of recurring theme there??

sir harry, i havent read all your comments, just read the thing about us selling overmars petit and aleka for hugely inflated prices. that is true, but the replacements arsene had for them were thierry henry and robert pires, and there isn't a better goal scorer around than him, and robert pires with 84 goals in 6 seasons. no midfielder on the continent can match that record. you havent had players like them in the last 40 odd years. and then you are calling us arrogant for thinking our youngsters are fantastic. wenger turned a flop winger from juventus into the best player on the planet. robert pires used to contribute around 14 goals every season on average. and before these two, he made patrick vieira itno a world champion after rescuing him from the milan reserve team. so it's not arrogance on our part, it's just belief in our manager and our team. we don't have the money like the other big boys do still we are making the best use of our resources. and wenger is trying to make a team here that will go onto dominate european football for years, and we believe him, and that's why we are giving him the time he needs. he knows best what to do with these youngsters and how to make them champions. sure we struggled in the league last season and just scrapped through to fourth place, but we also reached the european cup final, something which we had never achived before. success has a price, in the years gone by, we dominated the league, but were always found wanting in europe. and last season wenger gave more importance to europe than the league, an dthat's why the results were not upto our usual standards in the league..

Agreed with you h57ben .. where is the achievement in winning something while sat on the bench, also compromising international aspirations especially if they are still going to get 60K per week staying put? And while we are out of the top4 after 45 years of being in the doledrums we have in the last couple of seasons began to shake ourselves out of that. Recently Arsenal and Liverpool have proven vulnerable as have ManU and Chelsea occasionally. A number of posts seem to want to continually speak of past glories and future hopes so much so that you sound like us ... oh how the mighty have fallen.

and you can't call last season a poor year for us in the champions league. we finally reached the final for the first time in our history and almost won it. and how can you call that juve and real madrid side weak and poor. we went into those matches with our worse possible defence. 3 of our first choice defenders barely played a part in our campaign, and juve dominated the serie a last season, and real came into our tie in teriffic form, we had a right sided central midfielder playing as a left back, and with that defence we kept 9 or 10 clean sheets, and against villareal, our keeper was amazing. when the defence or the midfield play well, you call it a great performance, but when a keeper does brilliantly, how can you call it luck? villareal had their chance and they blew it. so you need to stop your non sense first and open up your eyes harry. writing large comments with little sense to it is of no use. we know what to expect from our team, and we know when this team will be ready to challenge for the title. we didnt win anything from 99-01, and were way off the pace from united, but wenger was building the team with so many new players, and the invincibles went onto dominate english football from 02-04, and he is doing the same thing right now. so judging our team and our manager based on a year or two is really foolish. you should be worried about your team. you have a good core of young players, but they arent exceptional yet. don't hold them up so high before they have won anything. and if you dun win anything soon or give them the champions league qualification which they need to progress or take their game to the next level, it will be very hard to hold onto the so called talented stars and you'll be back to square one..

we never made an excuse for even last season. the season is not even half way through and we will have a successful season, more successful than your club's entire history, so come back here in may and then we will talk. and only comeback if your team does better than *****ing their own pants this time around..

How mature Luckys_10. You and your colleagues keep on going on about how much Spurs spend and how Arsneal cannot compete but bring along cheaper youngsters but in the Independent today there are some interesting facts. Arsenals NET expenditure in 2006 was £26.3m. Only Chelsea were higher (£38.62m). Liverpool came in at £24.52m and ManU at £8.9m. Spurs NET expediture was a massive £250,000. So your extra £26m has brought 2pts advantage. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Still laughing about those 2 points, look what mediocrity can do to you. Actually the money we spent was mainly in January last year on 3 youngsters, Diaby, Walcott and Adebayor 2 of which helped us to 4th place in the premiership. In some of your posts you have stated how you spend, spend, spend and how difficult it is to integrate your new players blah, blah so stop moaning when we state the same things. Anyone can use statistics to win an argument but they mean nothing, look at your poor statistic analysis of Jermaine Defoe which has been totally blown out of the water by his form on the pitch. Anyways you keep on laughing at that 2 point defecit and enjoy your weekend :)

Iceman you too, this kid nothing to say other than his baseless comments, so lets not waste our time in giving it back to him, he's getting more attention here than what he gets on his own site..

True Luckys....He used to post quite articulate comments but since the gap has been 2 points the posts have become stranger and stranger, one article on vital sp*rs even suggested all managers should behave like Jose Mourinho because he apologised to AJ! Can you imagine!

If you read correctly I stated most of the money was spent in January not all of it and thats why i never mentioned Rosicky. Your correct I rarely read the broadsheets but the fact you do does not give you a superior football knowledge to me, I found that comment offensive and rather snobbish. The fact is you were touting the thought of Defoe being sold and used statistics to suggest he was only going to get worse. A lot of people disagreed and said a good run in the side would give him goals, you said otherwise, your knowledge of the broadsheets wasnt very effective their was it?

LD, its facts and figures. They have done basic arithmetic and discovered that you are the 2nd heaviest net spenders in the Premiership. And Iceman10, yes I said Defoe should be sold because of his goals to chances ratio and general all around play. Whilst he has improved his play, his conversion rate is still not good and if a big bid came in then I'd say take it. His recent form just means it will be more money offered. In a couple of years he'll be replaced by Tomas Pekhart anyway. The red top reference was to the fact that the information was 'not a baseless comment' from the frequently inaccurate redtops but from a broadsheet who can be relied upon for greater accuracy - the article about Mourinho was an example of a change in behaviour where having viewed the evidence, to admit he was personally wrong. It was too subtle for you lot, but it drew a comparison with Wenger calling Jol a cheat when two Arsenal players tackled each other, an opinion only still held by Wenger and Arsenal fans. If Wenger had any personal credit left he would have said "My players were clumsy, the ref indicated that neither were injured, so I apologise for using those words". I guess it must be embarassing that even Mourinho has jumped on the managerial honesty bandwagon of Pearce/Jol/O'Neill

My God is Martin Jol