;

Could the pressure created at the bottom of the Arsenal End at the City of Manchester Stadium highlight why we went ahead with a huge stadium?

No.

It does highlight the effect of a passive prudent approach. The effect of clinical almost sanitary football building that was so fearful of the clubs around them - spending money wasn't an issue.

I've seen a lot of balance sheets and financial reports regarding Arsenal over the past 8 years or so and a great deal of analysis too. Although, I have never seen it like this as I thought about it yesterday.

Say we bought one world class player every year and played in him regularly, since the year 2000. If those players remained at the club until the year 2010, we would almost have a whole team of world class players and pay them... about 110, maybe 120 million a year in waged (if we compare that to what we have).

Of course, this would go way beyond our budget, whatever our budget is and whatever it is made of, but I am sure we'd survive. We are worth close to a billion pounds and this partly down to clever loan and mortgage agreements with a Bank that almost went over. We could be owned by the government... but... anyway... We may as well be owned by the British Tax Payer - well, 70% of us.

I think this is possible. Of course, it doesn't guarantee a Champions League trophy or a few but if Wenger can get us to the brink of the trophy with the prudent approach we've had - would this have worked? Say we had offloaded players, sold some of our embryos to other clubs and created a faster, fluent transfer system from the club... I can't say we'd have been as rich now, unless we won more trophies and sold more shirts because we had more world class players... right? Glamour players means Fans, means shirt sales, means babies in Arsenal togs with say... Ronaldo, Messi or that player called Henry on the back of them.

The player we didn't want who left us was Adebayor.

I am sure there were managers like Hughes around the world saying, wow, we need him or we need Kolo... they weren't happy at Arsenal - one of the richest clubs in the world. It's so bizarre how we're afraid to take the leap, the plunge to go deeper and faster and stronger. That kind of fear, that kind of trepidation...

...is a disease and we've had that disease for a while.

We can't ignore the climate in football today. Clubs are in debt. Clubs are struggling. They need to survive - so we can't be all prudent and cautious either out of arrogance, egoism or otherwise. We're in such a lucrative position compared to clubs around the world and we're wasting that.

So what went through the minds of Arsenal fans as they pushed themselves forward to the edge of the pitch on Saturday? What went soaring through their subconcious like an avalanche as Adebayor came hurtling from 100 yards to slide in front of them, like a repressed memory of a demon you were told of hiding behind the curtains or under the bed.

I bet it was the fear.

Adebayor just decided to put a face to it. He was the wake up call...

but that doesn't work when you have faith in a club.

You have to wonder if the risk is greater than the security.

I think in our case it is. We've got infinite solutions with the money at our disposal. We're the lords of football at this point in time and we're struggling with our own foot steps. Our players say it, our ex-players say it. A lot of our fans say it but we're missing out.

I despair at the lack of vision we have. One day we hear from the extremists among us who think this is it. What a disturbing view these kind of fans have. What is their life like when they are redundantly in the grip of caution. Without some fear and anxiety to take steps life means nothing - no matter how high your possession percentage or the number of passes in a game are.

If Wenger is worth anything as a manager, I'd like to see risk, like every other manager in the leagues around the world take but that being said we're at a loss because behind the scenes we've got some strange men in our boardroom justifying to fans that we can't spend, we have no money - what are we? Giving away tickets and shirts for free?

I need a time machine. I could go forward 10 years and listen to what fans have to say as they compare what we have then and what we have now. How much we lost. How the new resources, the new global economy - the digital investment has brought new opportunities to the world of sport - and we wasted our time as kings.