As the old saying goes, the New Year brings a new atmosphere. Time has jumped from 1999 to 2000. This is not only a New Year's Eve, but also a century and a millennium!
At such a historic moment, Arsenal Club also made a historic move.
Vice Chairman Dane and head coach Arsene Wenger proudly announced: Arsenal is going to build a new stadium!
Many Gunners fans rushed to tell each other and cheered, and there was quite a momentum of spreading flowers to celebrate. After all, the capacity of Highbury made it increasingly difficult for Gunners fans who admired "beautiful football" to get a ticket.
I just don’t know how much sadness and tears are hidden behind the pride of Wenger and Dane.
Arsenal can't do it without building a new stadium and building a stadium with a larger capacity. Gradually, Arsenal will fall from the Premier League championship group to the middle. This is not alarmist. As prices rise, stadium tickets are also rising. Arsenal
Even though they are located in London, the gap in ticket revenue between them and Manchester United is gradually widening every season. This season, conservative estimates suggest that the gap has widened by more than 10 million pounds!
The gap of tens of millions of pounds may reach 20 million pounds or 30 million pounds in the future.
If there is no new stadium, there will be a gap of hundreds of millions of pounds between Arsenal and Manchester United in terms of financial revenue from stadium tickets alone within ten years.
What can hundreds of millions of pounds bring to the club?
The most intuitive thing is competitiveness.
In view of such a cruel competitive situation, Arsenal's new stadium plan is imperative.
Of course, there is no need for them to compare with Premier League champion Millwall. There is no comparison. Millwall has already earned a new stadium by being a human trafficker. Not only is the team's record guaranteed, it will be ready for acceptance of the new stadium in three months.
In other words, Arsenal, a traditional giant, has lagged behind Manchester United and Millwall for at least five years in their development cycle.
Why five years?
Because the groundbreaking for Millwall's new stadium began almost five years ago.
Arsenal only announced that they will build a new stadium. The specific stadium design, site selection, sponsors, loans and other specific businesses are still under preparation. However, their words are better than those of other mid- and lower-tier club presidents.
It should be more reliable and trustworthy.
Like the chairman of Everton who talks about building a new stadium every year, Toffees fans all know that he is farting.
Among the Premier League bosses, Aldridge is certainly not the richest. There are not many richer people than him, but there are still many wealthy people. For example, the major shareholders of Arsenal are richer than him, and some are even richer than Huo
Your whole family is rich.
But when it comes to building a new stadium, they are following the most basic principle of business: living within their means.
This directly led to both Wenger and Dane knowing that in the next few years, no, many years, Arsenal will have to cut back on food and clothing, increase revenue and reduce expenditure!
For this reason, Wenger sent a substitute lineup when he visited the Lions Den Stadium in the FA Cup quarter-finals.
There is no way. The battle between the 3rd to 6th place in the Premier League to compete for the last two Champions League places is too fierce. There are still 6 rounds of the league left, and Wenger must make a choice.
In the first half of the season, he met Millwall in the League Cup and chose to face it with all the main players, eventually eliminating Millwall.
Then, they were defeated by Tottenham, the rivals in North London, in the league. Then, the League Cup did not reach the end. Martin O'Neill really created another miracle. He led the small Leicester City to win the first place in England in the 21st century.
A champion.
Probably influenced by the lesson learned in the first half of the season, Wenger simply sent a substitute to play today and concentrate on playing in the league. Entering the Champions League and getting a share of the profits from the Champions League is more important than anything else.
As the countdown to the end of this season enters. Millwall has full attendance at any home game. The FA Cup may be related to entering the second half of the competition, but in the league, there is almost no suspense about Millwall's successful defense of the title, but the fans
Still flock to the stadium on every home game day to support the team and keep the tickets for that day as souvenirs.
Because Millwall's first team officially plays one less game at the Lion's Den. In the summer, if nothing unexpected happens, they will move to a new stadium. Now, they are in the stage of saying goodbye to the Lion's Den.
In the quarter-finals of the FA Cup with Arsenal, both Aldridge and Wenger were sitting on the coach's bench. The Lion's Den Stadium was shouting loudly. The fans' energy was spent in singing and shouting. They didn't seem to be too much.
I care about the progress of the game just to be here and enjoy the atmosphere here at the end of the Lion's Den. By next season, everything will be different.
In the first half of the game, Millwall basically sealed the victory. Goals from Larmour and Grenchar made the gap between the two teams' substitute lineups more intuitive.
Wenger was powerless in the game, the main lineup had many hidden problems, and the substitute lineup was even more embarrassing.
Let’s take another look at Millwall’s substitute lineup. If they change their team logo and name, they might be able to reach the middle of the Premier League!
He turned to his assistant and complained: "Why do Millwall have so many good players for free?"
Most members of Arsenal's coaching staff chose to remain silent.
I can’t be envious.
Someone said seriously: "Hall's vision for discovering talents and his ability to train players are indeed rare in the world."
"Is there any trick to this?"
Wenger racked his brains to find out Aldridge's secret to cultivating players. No, it should be the secret to discovering good prospects.
When it comes to cultivating players, he considers himself not inferior to Aldrich.
The key point is, where can we get so many good seedlings to cultivate?
"This, uh, I did a survey. Players such as Nedvěd and Grenjaer in the first team, Solskjaer who was sold, etc., were all recruited from the second-tier league, and a considerable number of them were recruited from the second-tier league.
Players were discovered by Hall before they even entered the formal youth training system, such as Villa, Brazilian Ronaldinho, Vicente, and Joaquin. Some of them are incredible to us, Klose
, Phillips, who ranks third in the Premier League scorer list this year and has scored nearly 30 goals, was discovered by Hall from the amateur league. Some players who have not yet made a name for themselves, such as Ribery, Drogba, etc.
One was given up by Lille, and one was rejected by Paris Saint-Germain. The one who just scored, Larmour, was also a player given up by Liverpool. Instead, Hall took the opportunity to recruit him to Millwall."
Wenger scratched his head and couldn't figure it out.
Amateur league. An abandoned player from another club, looking for gold in the second-rate league.
This guy, to put it nicely, is Aldrich’s discerning eye, but to put it worse, this guy is a weirdo who specializes in collecting scrap metal and turning it into treasure!
Wenger has been a bit nervous lately.
All he thought about was how to improve his hematopoietic ability, but after hanging around in the youth team for a month or two, he became really frustrated. No matter how precise the processing procedures were, the texture of the material itself was not up to par, and the quality of the products was still not up to par.
?
Now you have to spend a small amount of money to do big things.
Damn it, Barcelona has been seducing Overmars recently. Even Overmars himself lamented in an interview that the team's two Champions League experiences were disastrous and wanted to change leagues to meet the challenge.
Wenger really can't sit still. But he has no confidence to retain people. The club cannot be indifferent to the transfer fee, but the team's season is not over yet. The league is competing for fourth place and the UEFA Cup is also on its way to the semi-finals. However, the team is still indifferent.
First there were rumors that the general was leaving the team. No, it was not a scandal, it was indeed true. Peter Pan Overmars himself had expressed his stance.
Arsenal is very good, but I can’t afford to wait for the Champions League!
Wenger is thinking about how to recruit more star players, while Aldridge is thinking about how to accelerate the growth of the young players in the team.
Successful teams do not take the initiative to seek change, but must strengthen the stimulation of internal competition and maintain a high level of competitiveness and even self-improvement through internal competition. This season AC Milan is a counterexample. After winning the championship last season, there is a lack of strong internal players this season.
Supplementary. The lagging behind in the league is quite obvious, being thrown out of the championship group by Juventus and Lazio.
Aldrich held his chin and looked into the stadium, wondering whether he should loan some players to first-tier clubs for training next season.
People like Klose and Grenjar can stay in the team. As long as the main players are injured, they can immediately take over.
But for players like Vicente, Joaquin, and Villa, cup games alone are no longer enough for them to accumulate enough experience.
What Aldridge fears most is that it is easy to loan out players, but he is afraid that after being loaned out, the players will not be willing to come back.
In the second half, Klose scored twice, Van der Meyde scored a hat-trick of assists, and Millwall's substitute lineup won a hearty 4:0 victory.
However, the on-site commentator mercilessly criticized these two teams at the end of the game.
"What do Millwall and Arsenal think of the FA Cup, which has the longest history and the most influence in England? This is the quarter-finals, and everyone is looking forward to the peak showdown between the two teams. As a result, the two teams understand each other tacitly.
They sent a substitute lineup to play this peak match, the peak substitute match! The FA should punish these two teams. They lack respect for the FA Cup, lack of respect for the fans, and lack of respect for all spectators!"
Aldridge definitely didn't know what the commentator said. Anyway, he calmly shook hands with Wenger after the game. Wenger lost the game and seemed not to be too affected in his mood, but he felt a lot of disappointment.
, at least show it on your face.
It’s not that they don’t respect the FA Cup. Before the 1990s, the FA Cup was indeed more influential than English League One. But in the Premier League era, how much is the broadcast fee for the FA Cup? How much is the prize money? Will there be a Champions League to win the championship?
Every team needs to be more pragmatic. To put it bluntly, it means focusing on money. Wherever we make more money, we will focus our efforts there.
Aldridge looked baffled when asked about the commentator's anger after the game.
"I'm not sleepwalking, am I? Millwall seems to have won the game and advanced to the semi-finals. If we lose the game and hear someone criticizing me, I think it's normal, but if we win, do we still need to be scolded? This is
What’s the point?”
Aldrich scoffed at the unfounded accusations.
There is only one truth in football: winning is everything.
If I lead the team to win, you should praise and criticize. Sorry, because I won, you don’t have to buy it and get out!
The next day, the Lions fans cheered as Millwall's FA Cup semi-final opponents were announced.
Good luck in the FA Cup.
The opponent in the semi-finals is Aston Villa!
The FA Cup substitute battle is over, and Millwall's attention has once again turned back to the European competition.
When preparing for the second leg match with Bayern Munich, Millwall has been very mysterious and declined training interviews, as if they were conducting some secret experiment.
At the press conference before the Champions League game, Aldridge also said that Millwall would strive to quickly end the suspense at home. He spoke loudly and spoke with great arrogance and confidence.
"We score one goal against Bayern Munich, and Bayern Munich has to score three goals to bring the game back to the starting point! We score two, and Bayern Munich has to score four, and we score three..."
"Ahem, Mr. Hall, we all understand what you said."
The reporter in the audience had to interrupt Aldridge who was using his body movements to "declare war."
Aldrich paused, then said calmly: "Now that you all know, I have nothing more to say, goodbye."
