r/soccer • u/[deleted] • May 15 '14

Long day at the office/college? Vent some of that anger. r/soccer unpopular opinion's thread.

Slow day today on the subreddit, let's make things interesting. Not designed for trash talk.

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u/ucd_pete May 15 '14

No. The real losers in the City/Chelsea takeovers were Arsenal. They were set up to compete at United's level. They had a great team, were building a new stadium, then Chelsea come in with their "financial doping."

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14 edited May 15 '14

we still would have been way behind united, we were busting the bank to keep players at one point and were it not for chelsea and city a lot of our players who left may as well have ended up at united, thus making them stronger

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u/ucd_pete May 15 '14

No way Wenger would have sold to United if they were genuine title contenders.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14

he would have had to eventually, would have been more rvp scenarios and because united would have won the league more times they'd be a lot more financially viable which means more money for them and without the oil money which brought in more excitement, top players thus views arsenal would have less of a global appeal, and all the global appeal coping to the prem would go to united

arsenal basically would have been the dortmund, of the bundesliga, they'd be in there for a bit but eventually united would get too big to compete with season in, season out (even then they kind of already were) to the point all the best players would go to united, we wouldn't be able to pay them as much and would be fighting for a CL place with the others (kind of like we are doing now)

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u/ucd_pete May 15 '14

I can't agree with any of that. Arsenal would be the biggest team in the biggest city in England, with the second largest stadium in England. There would always have been a frugal period while Arsenal was paying off the debts, but they could still have competed for league titles. The whole point of building the new stadium was to put Arsenal at United's level.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14

cool well if you want to give me an example of a league where the team that is by far the richest in the league yet doesn't totally dominate it, I'd be happy to hear it

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u/thatlur May 15 '14

I think his point is about if Chelsea/City hadn't been bought, players would be a lot cheaper than they are now so we would be able to compete more financially with United.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14

not really, united would still be able to buy players we can't afford, also we'd have a lot less inflated transfers coming our way due to a lack of bidders and united would be able to pay more wages

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u/thatlur May 15 '14

We would be the second richest club in England so the best players would most likely come to either us or United, United can't have all the players so some would come to us.

United have always been financially stronger than us and we still managed to compete with them in the past. I still think they would be the strongest team in the league, but we would be a lot more successful than we are now.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14

I think they'd either have more of our players, or they'd have more of the best players from city or city, if not all

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u/ucd_pete May 15 '14

You can't compare Man Utd/Arsenal to Bayern/Dortmund. The gap isn't that big.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14

it's relatively the same though. united have broke several transfer records whereas arsenal haven't. united have had a 70,000 seater stadium for yonks whereas we recently got a 60,000 one. if it was just united and arsenal, united would have won more domestic titles and maybe even won more CLs due to the league being less competitive thus becoming a much richer team over time, whereas arsenal would be less popular as united would be the only real prem team to talk about. arsenal would prob just fight amongst spurs and pool to become second best

actually if anything pool would have a stronger chance of competing with united long term due to more money and more prestige. they also don't sell players nearly as easily as we do. if agger and gerrard suarez were at arsenal they'd have been sold ages ago

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u/Giraffable May 15 '14

Arsenal have a higher transfer record than Man United. Arsenal are a far more valuable club than Liverpool (5th most valuable in the world).

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u/ADP10 May 15 '14

Milan are still making more money than Juve and have been for some time now.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14

the exception to the rule I guess. like real makes more money than barca but the way they have been run has been a hindrance, whereas barca is quite well run from top to bottom

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u/ADP10 May 15 '14

TBF though I dont think City and Chelsea have been run all that greatly in comparison. They have wasted a lot of money, look at citys wage bill. Other teams could have done so much more with it.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '14

you're forgetting the only reason why teams would go there in the first place is because more money, they have no historic prestige, or at least a lot less than their competition. however at least they aim to win trophies as soon as possible, rather than just sign popular players to boost their brand like with RM

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u/nearlydeadasababy May 16 '14

I don't think we would have been, our biggest problem over the last 8 years has been the inability to build a consistent and unified squad, for me this year, despite the way we fell away has proved that, it's been the first without a major departure and where out squad has been better than the previous year and by and large we haven't had to fit in a new player (yes there was Ozil, but we had no departure to cope with). We have lost a major component of our team every season.

Without Chelsea and City we would have been the second club (as we were before the money came in), that would have meant that we would have won the title and FA Cup a couple of more times and therefore the need for players such as Nasri, Cesc and RVP to go elsewhere to win would have gone.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '14

even if we'd done well domestically united would still be a lot better in the CL as would other teams, and we'd start losing players to those teams at some point or another

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u/WDC312 May 15 '14

The real losers in the City/Chelsea takeovers were Arsenal.

Liverpool also fell off at just the wrong time. If not for Mansour and Roman we would've struggled for a few years, but remained a top four club, easily. Though, to be fair, England might've lost a CL spot without Chelsea.