With the loss of Robin van Persie now seeming inevitable, there has been much speculation as to whether Arsenal are becoming a selling club or not. In recent seasons the club have lost Cesc Fabregas, Samir Nasri, Gaël Clichy, Emmanuel Adebayor, Mathieu Flamini, Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, and now soon to be RVP, seemingly against Wenger’s will. The club appears to be losing its best players on a regular basis which has led to a scathing attack from shareholder Alisher Usmanov directed at the board. Some are beginning to speculate whether Arsenal can compete at the top level or not and whether they will be able to not only attract top players in the future but also keep hold of their brightest stars.
Usmanov’s criticisms
The crux of Usmanov’s criticism was that the club are more interested in selling players for profit rather than enjoying success on the pitch. Usmanov believes that the club are directly to blame for the departure of RVP as well as Fabregas last season. In truth, all clubs should strive for a balance between financial stability and success. It appears that Arsenal however, at least in the short term, are prioritising financial stability over success.
Arsenal fans will claim that the club needs to be financially prudent in order to repay their stadium debt, as well as the fact that if the Financial Fair Play (FFP) rules are enforced the club will be at an advantage due to their financial model. It does however remain to be seen how strictly this regulation will be enforced.
The fact of the matter is that Arsenal will have lost two key players, both captains, in two consecutive seasons, which is hardly reassuring to fans that the club is moving in the right direction. The club have yet to win a trophy since 2005 in which time Chelsea have risen to prominence thanks to large spending, as have Manchester City, meaning that the competition has intensified more than ever.
As a result of the new pressures from big spending clubs, Arsenal and clubs generally do need to spend in order to attract the best players as well as keep hold of their stars. Arsenal were previously interested in Eden Hazard but when Manchester City, Manchester United United and Chelsea expressed serious interest it seemed incredibly unlikely that he would move to North London. This is the problem Arsenal now face, had they signed Hazard they may actually have kept hold of RVP as it would have signified real intent. The club instead opted for Lukas Podolski who was cheaper, but less high profile and whilst an experienced German international is unfortunately not considered to be a world class player.
What impact will RVP leaving have?
On the face of it, it appears that Arsenal will suffer greatly if and when RVP leaves. He was overwhelmingly dominant for the club in goal scoring stakes last season scoring 30 league goals compared to the next top scorer, Theo Walcott, scoring only 8 goals. Without RVP last season, Arsenal would have undoubtedly finished below Tottenham thereby not making it into next season’s Champions League, however the squad is stronger now.
Even with RVP, Arsenal would not have realistically been strong enough to challenge for the league or the Champions League. The difference may be whether Arsenal can finish 4th or not. The squad has definitely improved with the arrivals of striker Olivier Giroud from Montpellier and Lukas Podolski from FC Köln, so Arsenal are equipped to deal with him leaving in terms of their squad depth. Whilst the club have lost 30 goals, the burden will now be spread more throughout the squad and hopefully Podolski and Giroud can pick up some of the slack. Many pundits felt that United would struggle without Ronaldo’s goals but the club have enjoyed success without him as a result of other players stepping up and taking more responsibility.
The only issue here is how quickly Giroud can settle in England and whether Podolski can hit the ground running. The last time Podolski played for a big club he did not perform particularly well, managing only 15 goals in 71 league appearances for Bayern Munich. Podolski has also never hit 20 goals in a league season, his best tally being the 18 league goals he hit last season. Of course he will not be the main striker with Giroud probably filling that role and Podolski likely to be playing a support role out wide.
Another adverse impact of RVP leaving is that it may dissuade players from joining Arsenal as so many of their best players have now left. Arsenal have no genuine world class players any more. This may seem a harsh assessment but their other top performers from last season Mikel Arteta and Laurent Koscielny for example don’t make their national team starting 11s, or even the squad in Arteta’s case. This is not to say they are bad players; they are both very good, but not top level performers.
Arsenal simply cannot attract top players anymore due to a lack of finances and a perceived lack of ambition that has been fuelled by failing to keep hold of RVP. Now they will need to gamble on players such as Giroud who could be somewhat hit or miss. Another factor may be that their better performers may also seek moves away, although as long as Wenger is at the club one would imagine he will be able to both attract good young players as well as continue to nurture them.
How far can Arsenal go next season?
The squad as stated is relatively strong in terms of depth, although it is arguably somewhat light in terms of serious quality. The main areas that need strengthening are that the club are desperately short of a natural defensive midfielder.Alex Song is more inclined to play the role of a box-to-box midfielder and would work better with a natural defensive screen such as Rennes’ Yann M’Vila working in behind him. In fact we may see the best of Song when he has a player behind him as insurance.
The club also need to bring in a centre-back to act as cover for Thomas Vermaelan, who seems to be rather injury prone at the moment. Getting a full season out of him and Koscielny is necessary for the club’s success next term. The midfield is still very good especially if Jack Wilshere is able to build upon the quality he has shown in the past. It will remain to be seen who might be dropped with Song, Arteta and Rosický all playing well last season, but this does demonstrate the options Arsenal have here, especially if they bring in a holding player. Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain is also expected to play a much more influential role next season.
The striking options are also interesting with plenty of options. Gervinho, Podolski and Giroud could be the starting front three which would offer different options and dynamism. The issue is that Podolski and Giroud need time to settle. Gervinho is definitely a useful player and whilst his form tailed off post AFCON last season he might have a better season now he has settled in more.
Expectations exceeding reality?
In reality Arsenal are not in a position to challenge for the title with their best chances of silverware coming in cup competitions. Arsenal will likely be competing with Spurs for fourth place and if they finish there it will be a good season for the club. With a lack of spending as well as the loss of key players finishing fourth in every season of Wenger’s reign must be considered a great achievement. It is only when Arsenal fans have ambitions of winning league titles that they seem to be unappreciative of the significance of this. If Arsenal do not make the top four next season (I suspect they will edge it) then questioning of the clubs policy will only intensify.
For now though Arsenal are in serious danger of becoming the sort of club that ends up selling their best players every season because of the fact that the club are unwilling to invest. Having not won a trophy since 2005 one could argue that Wenger’s project has failed. Whether Wenger is to blame or the board is a different matter altogether. Arguably two cycles of teams have gone without success as well as having been dismantled due to sales. Usmanov is probably not the answer but the club will need to reconsider, or at least tweak their strategy if they want to experience more success on the pitch.
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BECOMING ? HELLO !
Isnt Sagna considered world class ?? He will probably be a future Arsenal captain and in a few seasons he will be ready to graduate from the academy and join Man City. I guess Arsenal is the Valencia of the EPL.
“one could argue that Wenger’s Project has failed”; what is that project? Building a new stadium, participating in the CL every year despite not being bankrolled by oil money or huge debts? Some failure that is. I bet clubs like Everton, Spurs Villa etc would love to fail like that.
Wenger has built a club with a long term vision, Arsenal will still be a top club in 10 years time. Chelski and Mansour City might win trophies now but what will their fate be when the oil barons have had enough of their toys? If they’re lucky they’re going to do a Blackburn, they might end up like Glasgow Rangers however.
A football club is for life, not just a trophy.
Overmars,Petit, Veira to 2011 summer show that the gunners have been a selling club. I don’t know when it will end and I don’t blame RVP for leaving. As a player and as aclub you want to win trophies and finish first.
Until the gunners get their priorities right,getting in to the cl is the height of their ambition. Btw ,please don’t increase ticket prices. One day the long suffering fans will say enough is enough and vote with their wallets.That will leave gaping holes in the es terrace and the waiting list will vanish overnight.
Cesc Fabregas – Was always going home – 40M, Samir Nasri – Head turned bench Warmer – 24M, Gaël Clichy – seriously needed to go – 7M, Emmanuel Adebayor – Delusions of grandeur now with sp***s – 24M, Mathieu Flamini – Bench Warmer, Thierry Henry – Ledge but at the end really when he left – 16M, Patrick Vieira – Pls see Henry – 11M, and now soon to be RVP – One season wonder if he is as unlucky as injuries have suggested -20M TBC.
The question should be how long can Arsenal go on fleecing money out of teams?
The only real losses have been Cesc to date and possibly RVP.
We have a manager who can pick talent he will have a pool of players who do win the title, then they will stay, we aren’t a selling club, we are just havent won the trophies to glue players to the club.
Arsenal already are a selling club but Whinger is great at balancing the books. Just dont expect them to win anything. Another seven barren years I am afraid!
The truth is a far cry from what Arsene supporters would have you believe.
Vieria, Henry, Cesc,Cole, RVP, Nasri, Flamini, Adebayor, Toure- Arsene might make stars but he can’t keep stars- its an inherently flawed system- where we never get the full benefit from the time and money invested in their development. Having one or at best 2 top stars in our team at any one time has never been enough to overcome the club’s lack of investment in mainly defensive positions for the past 7 seasons.
Usmanov’s letter was right in almost every respect-almost-the Board and the manager may be over-cautious and running the club out of self interest but they are not money grabbers-but they are misguided and lacking ambition. Entering the Champions League each season without the faintest chance of competing for the main prize seems to be the limit of their and some fans ambitions. That is very sad because 10 years ago we were much more competitive.
It is not the selling of our best players but our demonstrable inability to buy players of equivalent ability that is a demonstration of our decline in players strength-we simply can’t afford to-and this Board never will be able to until the 225m stadium debt is paid off in about 15 years time.
The club has to be able to meet the terms and conditions that other clubs can offer our best players and it has to offer a realistic chance of silverware- it can do neither at the moment and shows no sign of changing course- and we will continue to lose our best players as a result. When RVP goes don’t be surprised when others like Theo and TV5 follow him out of the club followed by every top player the club develops..
The simple fact is Arsenal is and will remain a selling club whilst it can’t balance its books without making profit from the sale of its best players each year. Where else would we have got the 70m from we received for the sale of 3 first choice players to Man City?
The fact is no top player joins any club to be “sustainable”- they join to win trophies- and this club, this manager can’t offer that.
Lets get something straight before we start, I’m a man City fan, born in Manchester, a season ticket holder and have been watching City since 1968.
Ok now I appreciate whatever I write will probably just be overwritten with the hatred Arsenal fans have for Manchester City.
Jealousy is one thing, bitterness another, and being backed into a corner again something completely different.
Some fans have a belief that their Club has some right to always be at the very top, and that their heritige is enough for this standing to continue indeffinately.
Some fans have had it rough for a long, long time, when other have been lavished with success on a regular basis.
I personally believe what Arsene Wenger has tried to achieve is very commendable and the fact Arsenal as a Club have tried to show that a model of financial stability can still be adhered to whilst continuing to challenge at the top table, should be admired.
However, if finacial prucence is achieved at the cost of success in respect of trophies, it cannot be viewed as anything other than failure, the whole point in surviving as a Football Club is to achieve success and not to balance the books or make a profit.
I know that in recent years financial might seems to have risen to new levels, but in fairness, it is not really any different from the way Football has ever worked since the 1800′s.
I recently heard a very balanced Arsenal fan talking on ‘Talk Shite’ who gave an example of this, when saying that it was Arsenals financial might in the 1930′s that made them the huge success they were around that time, and Football chairmen have always had to accept that Footballing success is directly linked to the amount of money spent, we all know that you can’t have one without the other unless you are are incredibly lucky with a brilliant batch of Youth team players that come through at the same time, and then go on to fulfill their potential at senior level as with, it pains me to say it, the Rags ‘golden generation’.
I have for over 30 years had to accept that my Club could not compete financially with the top ten Clubs in this Country, and I know it’s hard to stomach when your tallent is regularly stripped by wealthier or by Clubs with money that they are willing to splash, but times change and if Clubs are not prepared to match what others stake, then like it or not they will fall further behind and not achieve competetiveness or success as a result.
Making a profit is not really what a Football Club should be about, it would be an ideal if both success and profit could both be achieved, but the model cannot be sustained except over a very short period, I saw the downside of this first hand at my Club when Peter Swales tried to impliment a wage limit, whilst other Clubs were doing the reverse, and I can assure you that money in the bank isn’t worth anything in footballing terms.
Arsenal are still potentially a Great Club, but if they don’t completely overhall their model, then failure and falling further and further down the pecking order will be the only certain outcome.
I feel for Arsenal Football Club and it’s fans, and appreciate all the current turmoil at your Club these days, and hope they do have a complete change of direction and vision, but if this doesn’t happen fairly quickly I fear what has been built up over the past 2o years will count for nothing, and a Great Arsenal will be a thing of the past.
On a seperate point, as was suggested by a previous poster, who seemed to pin his hopes on the wealthy tycoons at City and other Clubs getting tired of their new toys, then I do hope that you don’t get too carried away with this notion, the Arabs as a race have always had very close ties to our Country and have always shown that they, above many others are not fickle and are actually very honourable, trustworthy and generally succesfull when it comes to business agreements.
Good luck, it would be a shame to see Arsenal fall into mediocrity, but unless something drastically changes, I think there is more chance of Arsenal becoming the English Glasgow Rangers than either City or Chelski.
What is striking to me is that both North London clubs operate on a very similar financial program (IE operating as if debt were a thing and it’s bad) but they are, at this point, extremely close in quality despite Arsenal’s revenue stream being much bigger than Tottenham’s. Arsenal has a 60k seat stadium and an international brand. Spurs have a 36k stadium and a pretty small global brand (I have still not met a fellow Tottenham fan in the USA). But where Levy is stretching every penny we get to pay our (admittedly, lower) wages and bring in the best players we can afford (his activity so far this window: 8 million for Sigurdsson, a possible VDV successor, 9.5 for Vertonghen, the captain of the Dutch champions and a Belgian international who can play three positions), and now 5 million for Adebayor. In other words, for 2/3 of what City or Barcelona pay for a benchwarmer, he’s brought in three very promising players. If Arsenal used their money as well as Levy used ours, they would absolutely bury us. Easily. And if FFP has any teeth to it and other teams really do have to start functioning as if debt was a thing and it’s bad, then Arsenal would be one of the top 5 clubs in the world. What clubs have bigger global brands and a stadium that size? Man U, Real Madrid, Barcelona. Those are the only ones that are absolutely bigger. Arsenal is probably on par with Liverpool and Chelsea (but has a bigger stadium than both) and probably even on par with the Milan clubs.
Point being: With better use of their money and, as much as they don’t want to hear it, a more adventurous manager, they could still be fighting for Premiership supremacy with the Manchester sides and be, by some distance, the kings of London.
I agree, I don’t think Arsena/Wenger use the meagre resources well enough. Not signed a top player in a while. Reyes/Rosicky/Hleb/Arshavin/Walcott cost a bit of cash and none of whom are that good. VDV/Sigurdsson/Bale are a higher calibre. I’d say Arteta is a great player but they should have sigend him two seasons ago. Wenger has done a good job and if they finish 4th he must be commended for it but he does deserve a portion of the blame.
Arsen Wenger might be a bad sport when things do not go his way but placing blame on his shoulders for not wanting to spend big money on players is probably the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Arsenal are in a situation they are in because and only because of their owners. I chuckle every time someone says how proud they are of Arsenal business model and how rich clubs are destroying football. Well , football has always been a game of passion and rich clubs have always dominated . Perhaps having an owner who isn’t passionate about the sport as much as about the healthy bottom line isn’t so great after all. Wenger will never complain about the lack of funds because hi is a loyal employee and hi is being compensated handsomely for his work.
Hold on, RVP hasn’t left yet.
Arsenal are interesting because isn’t their revneue like the highest in England.