The Hampshire Gooner
I received in yesterday’s post a merchandise catalogue from Arsenal making sure I was fully aware of the launch of the new away kit. The first thing that hit me, other than the fact that the kit manages somehow to look even less like an Arsenal kit than the white one we had a few seasons ago, was the members of the current first team squad that were not involved in the promo photo shoot for the kit launch.
Was it a surprise for any of us to realise that our current captain was nowhere to be seen? Was it a surprise to see a distinct lack of Gael Clichy? The lack of our current number one left back was further highlighted by the appearance of Kieran Gibbs on the front page. The lack of our team captain was also highlighted by the man likely to be his replacement in the first team for next season - Aaron Ramsey - being splashed across none other than the front page as well.
The new launch has seen the away kit being branded as explosive, but for me the main point that exploded in my mind was the average age of the ‘men’ on the front cover of the catalogue. They are just about old enough to be served up a pint at your local pub.
At the end of the day, if Cesc wants to leave (and who could really blame him?), then fair enough: let us get the best price possible for him and move on without our current captain. I have not got a bad word to say about him as I do not expect unbridled loyalty from a man that clearly hasn’t mentally been at our club since last summer anyway. Is Ramsey the answer in replacing Cesc though? I personally don’t think we can rely on a player that nearly had his career ended and has only played a handful of Premier League matches since recovering from that horrific injury. To be honest, from what I have seen of Aaron, even if he was fully fit, he is not an out-and-out replacement for Cesc anyway, and in my eyes it would be a step back to promote our young Welshman as Cesc’s ideal replacement.
It does remind me of a recent conversation I had with a number of Arsenal regulars, where we were discussing who out of the current squad would we be that bothered about if they did decide to leave the club. The answers to the question were, sadly, few and far between. The highest number anyone had was a three (RVP, TV and Cesc). My answer for, what it is worth, was a big fat zero. I knew Cesc would be leaving anyway and, for me, RVP and TV have clearly both got injury issues which make them both replaceable in my eyes. Samir? Not for me either, as he has had half a good season out of a possible three, and when the going got tougher than good in the second half of last season he seemed to go AWOL.
When our current captain does finally pack up his bags for warmer climates this summer how would you go about describing his Arsenal career? To call him an Arsenal great in my opinion would be going too far. I would personally sum up his time at our club by describing him as a very good player in an average Arsenal team. To be hailed as a club great, I personally feel your medal cabinet has to be far fuller than Cesc’s. Modern-day genuine Arsenal greats for me would have to include Mr Arsenal himself, Tony Adams, David Seaman, Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires, Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. The one common theme here with all these ex-players is that they won trophies on a regular basis with the club. Sadly, Cesc has not managed those achievements and therefore in my mind does not make the grade as a true club great. I would have to add at this point that the fact that Cesc’s medal draw is pretty empty isn’t in any way his own fault, and does not reflect his own abilities as a footballer. I feel that the ambition levels of the club shown during his spell at Arsenal are to blame for his not securing more medals.
As we are now roughly half way through the summer period, it is interesting to see the whole transfer season really starting to kick off. I feel we have been waiting to get the Cesc deal announced to clear some funds for our own assault on the market place. Without one or two of our biggest stars being sold I would have put a cap on the transfers coming in at two. With a minimum of one of our top names leaving, and some pretty big transfer fees being recouped, I can personally see this number rising to a maximum of four.
If the names being banded about are to be believed then you would expect one of these incomers to be Alvarez and one to be Gervinho. The other two for me are likely to be Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain from Southampton and Christopher Samba from Blackburn Rovers. If we go mad and throw money at a further centre back it would seem likely to be either Gary Cahill or Phil Jagielka. So, in turn, I can see the likely outlay figure to come in somewhere between £50-70m this summer.
When you then factor in player sales this figure does not then seem overly ambitious. For example if we recoup £30m+ on selling Cesc, £8m or so on selling Bendtner and around £6m on selling Denilson these three sales alone would bring back in a minimum of £44m. On top of this figure, you can expect to add to it the sale price achieved for Gael Clichy (min of £6m) and possibly even the sale price of Samir Nasri (min of £12m) which could push the incoming figure to around £60m+.
Therefore, in all likelihood, the net spend will be hovering around the zero mark and, even though the turnover will be big, the real-time spending will not be. I personally would be amazed if the net spend figure is anywhere higher than £10m. The reason behind this amazement is the simple fact that it never is higher than this figure, regardless of how much we spend on incoming players. We never layout more than a £10m net spend.
It will be nice to get rid of a few players this summer that clearly do not want to be here any longer and the most important factor is that we need to replace them with players that are prepared to put their bodies on the line for the greater cause. We have missed this mentality in recent seasons, and last campaign this fact shone through like a beacon in my eyes. I would therefore love to see the likes of Samba, Jagielka and Cahill pulling on the jersey come August. We currently need this type of player far more than the Nasris and even the Cescs of this world, in my opinion. That is what we are missing as things stand: true grit and determination to turn one point into three wherever possible. Not simply a determination to make things look as pretty on the eye as possible.
Let us bring in some new faces during the next six weeks or so and let us - the fans - then get behind these new faces and the current ones as, even though we ended last season on a low, we start the new campaign every season with renewed hope and optimism as does every other club in the country. This fact is what keeps us coming back for more each year. Who knows? If we do get in the right personnel in the upcoming weeks, we could yet see Cesc looking back on us in a year or two wishing he hadn’t left us at the time he did.
You can always hope.
