Simon Lloyd
The start of this season is now officially the worst since Arsène Wenger took over. The team looks fragile and lacking in ideas on the pitch, while the silence from the owner off it is becoming deafening. Protest marches are taking place, and the team is being booed of the pitch. The target of all this anger is the manager, but is he really the only one to blame, or are there several factors that have combined to bring us to where we are now?
To my mind, the seeds of our current predicament were sown when David Dein left the club in 2007. Before his departure, the club had enjoyed a brilliant ten years, with three league titles, two of which were doubles, and the Invincibles season in 2004, culminating with the Champions League final and the move to the new stadium. Since he left, we have had nothing but frustration, disappointment and fan unrest. David Dein was the man who fought for the appointment of the then unknown Arsène Wenger as manager in 1996, and the pair quickly formed a working relationship that was the backbone of all things Arsenal. Dein ran the business side, including transfer fees and contracts, leaving Wenger free to run the team and identify the transfer targets. For a while, it was a match made in footballing heaven, with almost everything they touched turning to silverware.
Furthermore, they both appeared to share the same goal, which was to make Arsenal the model of how to run a self-sustaining football club. Their dream was to create a football club that would be run as a business, and not a rich man's plaything. Central to this thinking was the need to move to a massive, purpose-built, state-of-the-art stadium and maximise the revenue-earning potential from it. The plans for this highly ambitious venture took many years, and numerous setbacks, to bring to fruition, and construction finally started in 2004 with the stadium opening in 2006. Both of them knew, and were at pains to point out, that the funding of the stadium would lead to a significant reduction in the funds available for transfers, whilst the stadium was completed. The key to making the stadium plans possible was continued success on the pitch. Without it, the sponsors would drift away, and - worse still - the stadium would not be full to watch a struggling team. This in turn would reduce the income that was needed to service the stadium debts, leaving even less money for team-building. Incredibly, the team did remain competitive, and the ground has, by and large, remained full since the move.
The fact that the stadium was built, and the team remained competitive, was primarily down to two men with the same goal, working together, and concentrating on what they did best. I am in no doubt that their roles had a certain amount of overlapping, but their combined vision, and skill-sets, drove the club forward in a unified manner. It is a tragedy for the club that Dein left in such acrimonious circumstances less than a year after the stadium was opened. Whether you agreed with his vision or not, it is safe to say that everyone knew in which direction the club was heading when he was around. Since he left, we have had rival takeovers bids, and stagnation on and off the pitch, as the club sails a rudderless course, with a silent captain, through the footballing high seas.
The lack of clarity over the club’s direction from current owner, Stan Kroenke, is causing damage in ways that could take years to correct. It may well be that what he is doing will turn out to be the best thing that has ever happened to the club. But if the fans do not invest in Stan's ideas, it will become much more difficult for those ideas to be successful. And if we don't know what those plans are, we can never decide if we want to back them or not. Let's not forget that David Dein was ousted over his alleged backing of the Kroenke bid to buy the club in the first place. He then switched his allegiance to the Usmanov camp when it became clear the board did not want to deal with the American. The board then went and sold the club to Kroenke anyway. Dein knew that a new owner was the only way forward, and the board, fearful of what it meant for them, disposed of him. Had Kroenke taken over with Dein by his side, instead of Ivan Gazidis, I feel sure we would see a very different Arsenal today.
Under the Dein/Wenger regime, the club had strong unified leadership and direction. Success on and off the pitch was almost a given. Now only one half of this partnership remains, and he is receiving all the blame for our current predicament. It seems to me that Wenger is still trying to follow the path he set out on with David Dein in 1996, whereas the current owner has a different idea about the club’s direction. Unfortunately for the club, there can be only one winner in this battle, and it is always the man with the money. Since he took over, he has allowed Wenger to pursue his vision on the pitch, whilst not backing him financially off it. All the best players have been sold for massive profit, and none of it has been put back into the team. This, according to many, is Wenger's fault, as he refuses to spend the money supposedly available to him.
Yet if you look at his transfer dealing before the stadium move, he was never afraid to spend large sums if the right player was available. And in most case they were astute buys. Now he trades in the poundshop of premiership transfers, spending only the money that has been raised by previous sales. He knows the players he wants, but I don't believe Stan will release the finances to acquire them. Many of the recent buys are not of the standard required by a club like Arsenal, and if he does find a good one we all know he will be sold for a massive profit as soon as someone dangles a large enough cheque under the club’s nose. Under Stan and Ivan's regime, every player is a commodity, and will be sold as such when someone matches the club’s price. Instead of being a football club that is run as a business, we are becoming a business that runs a football club.
This was not the style of Wenger when Dein was in charge. Wenger was a man who used to build teams in the knowledge he would be backed by the board. How many players from 1998 to 2005 can you name that were not good enough for the club, but hung around anyway until their contract was up? I keep reading blogs about the likes of Bendtner, and many others, who are still at the club on massive wages whilst contributing little to the team. This apparently is all the manager’s fault, yet where were these players in the golden years? I am struggling to think of any, although I'm sure a few of you can name the odd one or two.
I accept that he signed all of them, but look at the flops that other clubs have signed. Man Utd for instance with Eric Djemba Djemba and Massimo Taibi to name two from the past, and more recently Bebe. Today the critical difference between our flops and United's flops, is that they cut their losses and ship them out for a fraction of what it cost to bring them to the club. We used to be able to do the same, but now a player has to be sold for the club’s valuation or he stays regardless of whether he is any good or not. The best we can hope for is to send him on loan, to the club who are prepared to pay the biggest percentage of his wages. Players like Bendtner should have left the club for whatever we could get for them, and, if there were no bids, offered on a free transfer. When Dein was in charge, the financial loss would have been accepted as part and parcel of running a football club, and an expensive replacement would have been signed to fill the gap. Managers like Wenger and Ferguson do not usually make the same mistake twice, and the replacement is often a success. Under the current regime, Wenger cannot correct his mistakes, because unless he sells them for a good price, there is no money available for a replacement. So they hang around like a giant millstone, not good enough to sell and too expensive to give away.
The make-up of the team has suffered because of it, and everyone can see that there are too many players in the first-team squad that are simply not good enough. Wenger knows this; he also knows that he signed them and it is his problem to deal with. At the moment, nothing he tries seems to be working, and the seemingly endless injury list usually robs us of an influential player just when we need him most. For years now, we have all expected a spending spree every time the transfer window opens, and every time we end up spending the same amount, or less than, what we bring in. A modern football club cannot compete at the highest echelons with such a transfer policy. You may get the odd good season, but ultimately it is a policy that will turn you into a mid-table team. That is where we appear to be heading this season, and unless there is a major change of direction regarding transfer funds, mid-table is where we will be for some time to come. We may scrape into the Champions League or sneak a cup here and there, but the league will almost certainly be beyond us until investment in the team matches our expectations.
Finally, I hear a lot about the bargain basement signings that are sensations for their current teams. Why can't Wenger find them, is the basis of the argument? Michu of Swansea, bought for £2 million, is the current buy of the season, and the subject of the predictable “why didn't we sign him” shouts. The problem with these overnight sensations is that they rarely produce the same form for two seasons in a row. Last season, all the talk was about Pavel Pogrebnyak at Fulham. What has he done this season at Reading? The only way to all but guarantee top-quality performances year after year is to buy a proven player for big money. This is how Europe's top teams maintain their domination. They may also develop their own talent, but year on year the Barcelonas, Man Utds and Real Madrids all spend big on new talent while retaining the players they already have. Until Arsenal do the same, we will never be able to properly compete with Europe's top clubs. Money talks. Petrodollars talk the loudest, and they will make a mockery of the much-heralded financial fair play rules that the club are supposedly relying on to level the playing field.
If anyone believes that Arsène Wenger's successor will suddenly transform the club into one of Europe's elite, with the current transfer policy still in place, they are extremely optimistic. I accept that he has made mistakes, and I also find some of his playing decisions strange, to say the least. But for him to bear the brunt of the fans anger alone is extremely unfair. Silent Stan is equally, if not more, responsible for the current malaise. He should either back Wenger with a large, no-strings-attached, transfer pot, or put him out of his misery. Wenger deserves better than the abuse he is receiving. He is probably the best manager the club has ever had, and without him I believe the club would have been in its current state many years ago. For that alone, he deserves more time to turn the club around, but to do so he will need a transfer pot to match.
