Joe Fitzpatrick 
In a recent interview with the Sunday Mirror the masterful van Basten sent a clear message to the maturing van Persie, "Robin has been in London for six years. He can’t help it that Arsenal have won nothing in that time. So much has changed in those six years in the Premier League. Chelsea have become a big club and have massive financial resources. Manchester City have become a big force and are richer than any other club. Manchester United and Liverpool have American owners. The amount of money which is flowing to these clubs for transfers is unbelievable.
“Arsenal operate differently. I admire that. And I still think Arsenal are the most beautiful club in England. At Man City and Chelsea, they will never have that class and style. Arsenal have the most amazing stadium, they have a style of play, they have a beautiful shirt – in every way I consider Arsenal as the ultimate football club. It is the club where Robin belongs."
Firstly, I should like to like to say that it is an honour to read those comments about our beloved club coming from an all-time great such as Marco van Basten. I am around the same age as Robin van Persie (almost exactly a year younger, I'll have you know, so you can't write me off as some old moaner!) And I can tell you that every school I attended was chock-full of kids pretending to be Marco van Basten, Boban, Papin, Weah and Gullit, so I can only imagine what it was like for van Persie growing up in Holland at the same time. It's therefore reasonable to assume that van Persie is also possibly a huge fan of Marco van Basten, and the elder Dutchman might just be coming to the rescue of Arsenal F.C. - much to the relief of Gooners everywhere.
While at the recent home game against West Brom, I felt like a sleazy politician as I unwittingly found myself answering a question with a question. I was asked by a chap who sits near me if I thought that Robin van Persie would sign a new contract at Arsenal. Without a moment’s hesitation, the two simple words rocketed out of my gob like a van Persie screamer.... "would you?"
Yes or no? It's a 50/50 straight-up question and your honest answer to this question will tell you a lot about your character and morals as you ponder it carefully. Try to imagine yourself in Robin’s position... if you can that, is. On the one hand, Arsenal have stuck by you and paid your wages every year as you have suffered terrible luck with injuries and have hardly played a full season while at the club. On the other hand, the club have just sold off two of the best young midfielders in the world and then once again shopped in the bargain basement on deadline day.
No disrespect to Arteta and Benayoun, but they are not in the same class of player as Fabregas and Nasri, and van Persie knows it. Van Persie, being a football man, probably also knows that Weder Bremen and Everton are cash-strapped while Fenerbache and the Turkish league in general have had a controversial time of it as of late to say the very least.
Van Persie must surely be questioning Wenger as to why the club are dealing with these desperate clubs in the final hours of deadline day for paltry £6m or £9m sums and securing free transfers from former direct rivals such as Chelsea (a damning indictment on where our former rivals now see us, in and of itself, and that will also worry van Persie, but we still managed to beat Chelsea so that's two fingers up to them! Ha!) while van Persie's current employers, Arsenal, have made a profit of £35m on Cesc Fabregas, who cost Arsenal almost nothing except his wages, and around a £15m profit on the sale of that gobby little twat Samir Nasri, for whom we paid around £10m.
Top Football players are not always fans of the club that they play for, and therefore come pre-programmed like T-800 Terminators or Irish American Robocops with three footballing "prime directives"... (1) win as many trophies as possible, (2) earn as much money as possible and (3) seek out and join forces with other players of similar or greater ability, wherever they happen to be on the planet. The order in which these prime directives sway a particular player is dependent on factors far too numerous to mention, but it is often sadly the case that the teams with the most money attract all the best players and therefore win the most trophies. It's simple cause and effect. Unless you reprogramme the player’s mind to believe in your club and brainwash him into your culture, history and tradition by showing your maximum strength in the transfer market and competing for the signings of top talent, you will lose that player.
There seems to be no loyalty in the game anymore, and with good reason, as Arsenal and Arsène Wenger have virtually made the careers of players like Flamini, Hleb, Henry, Vieira, Cole, Fabregas, Adebayor, Clichy and Nasri from scratch, but none of them could show loyalty in the end. To varying degrees, they have all s**t on Arsenal, Arsène Wenger and the fans by moving to so-called "bigger" and more established clubs with more financial muscle. This robotic, almost pre-programmed behaviour from these foreign mercenaries and one sir Cashley Cole is emerging into a very worrying trend. Players are leaving Arsenal with greater frequency than ever before in recent history and heading to clubs which they all deem as more ambitious than Arsenal because of their activity in the transfer market.
If Wenger has lost control of his dressing room and cannot get his players to believe in him and his philosophy anymore, it is because he isn't using the whole of the resources that are reportedly at his disposal, while never refuting the board’s numerous claims that money is there and available to spend. It's all about ambition or the perception of ambition. Manchester United and Barcelona have brought through a lot of fantastic kids over the years, but they have also spent vast amounts of money on top talent to supplement their youth policies. The young players wanted to stay at these clubs because these clubs went out, season after season, and added as much quality as they could every year with the resources that they had available.
Arsenal have failed to do this, and have instead promoted from within or bought players who were deemed to represent "good value." instead of going out and signing established international talent like van Der Vaart, Tevez, Agüero, Ya Ya Touré, Sanchez, Rivaldo, Ronaldo, Figo, Villa, and Suarez. Arsenal have been rather more conservative in their transfer dealings, and therefore lost their own marquee names in the process. By signing a few big-name players, Arsenal would have perhaps managed to delay the departures of Fabregas and Nasri, and avoided any doubt as to whether van Persie would sign a new contract at the club.
It seems like Wenger has to now go out in January and sign at least another player of van Persie's level at least to make him consider sticking with Arsenal while he has the world at his ridiculously-talented feet. How on earth can Wenger possibly hope to convince van Persie to stay at Arsenal and override his hard-wired programming while asking him to play alongside players like Rosicky, Benayoun, Arshavin and Chamakh, when he could be lining up with players like Silva, Nasri, Ya Ya Touré, Fabregas, Iniesta, Xavi and Leo Messi? The answer is by installing and activating the emergency prime directive number 4 into the "van Persinator". And the only way to do that is to use all of the resources we now have at our disposal - a £20m+ profit in the last transfer window and a reported £40m+ transfer "war chest" no less!
If Wenger doesn't attract some top international talent soon, he may just find that trying to convince Van Persie to sign a new contract at Arsenal with rousing Churchillian speeches and empty promises is about as fruitful as attempting to program a killer robot from the future to feel is. As this video clearly demonstrates...
Let's hope that the Van Persinator isn't thinking what Fabregas and Nasri were thinking during negotiations with Arsène Wenger... "this idiot believes that I'm his friend....". You are just their Manager, Arsène, and Arsenal are merely their employers. You are not really that much of a father figure to any of them, or so it would seem. Hopefully Van Persie will prove me wrong and show that he isn't another one of these robots and that he actually remembers how we have stood by him as a club during his numerous injury nightmares and paid his princely salary. Van Basten believes he will, Wenger believes he will. But do any of you fans believe it?
