Peter Le Beau
I have desisted from writing about developments at Arsenal for some time. This is partly because I simply don't know what is going on and partly because it is not appropriate to write too early in the close season about developments, but it is clear that the natives in Goonerland are splitting again into the different camps that divide our support.
It is only July 9th as I write and there is plenty of time for things to alter fundamentally, but the euphoric early indications of the close season are giving way to real rumblings of discontent and apprehension. On recent evidence Arsenal don't do close seasons at all well.
The recent polls that showed a big positive shift in Wenger's popularity were interesting. Compared to before the Bayern away leg the increase in the number of fans who want to retain him was illuminating. There are three camps - two of which are very distinct ones. There are the AKBs who write blogs for Untold Arsenal and feel that Wenger is a misunderstood genius who has done wondrously well to retain Arsenal in the Champions League without access to the sort of budgets so many European superpowers have, in one corner. It was noticeable in the afterglow following our win at Newcastle that Gary Neville, that unlikely Wenger supporter, waxed eloquently about the scale of the job Wenger has done. As Phil Wall pointed out in his estimable blog shortly thereafter his analysis of our finances and outstanding debt was simplistic and slightly misleading but in fairness to Neville, we knew what he was getting at. Neville's admiration was sincere and meaningful but it was contingent on a big 'If' which I will analyse shortly.
On the other hand we have the disbelievers who have felt for many seasons that Wenger is a busted flush and that he can never reinvent himself as a trophy winner again. The two big criticisms are that he is a control freak who is far too conservative and parsimonious in the transfer market and whose increasing focus on less than stellar players on pretty stellar contracts has hurt us financially just as much as his prudence has protected us. The other is that tactically he is naive and has gone from innovator and trendsetter to dinosaur in terms of his ideas and approach. Their position isn't contingent on anything because they see what his supporters see as success - the 4th place trophy - as a self- limiting threshold that has restricted the horizons of a club that promised to dominate Europe at one point and was certainly superior to United for a number of seasons. The selling of a conveyor belt of top talent (I won't list them for every Arsenal fan knows who they are) has inevitably downgraded the ambitions and ability to compete of a club whose consistency has been interpreted in the more strident parts of the media as a sort of comfortable mediocrity. Tottenham, perpetually in Arsenal's shadow are however the thrusting new aspirant to the Big 4 notwithstanding the fact that they will inevitably have to sell Bale and finance the building of a new (identikit to our one) stadium in the most undesirable part of London. Their pain is before them even though their modern zenith has almost been reached. Wenger's zenith was to produce arguably the finest club team in Europe on a shoestring and pilot the club to an unbeaten season that may never be equalled. It's funny how objectivity deserts people in the media sometimes when there are banner headlines and trivial radio discussion forums to construct.
One of the problems with the media is that convenient cliches replace reality on an ongoing basis. Let's illustrate two.
Arsenal have got a poor back four - actually they had the second best defence in the League last season and over the last ten games arguably the best.
Wenger won't spend any money - well look at the wage bill and you can see that he does spend quite considerable sums which come back to bite us on the bum as we are left with a lot of very average performers unwilling to sacrifice bloated contracts for the chance to actually play. Arshavin's recent comments about how miserable he was conveniently forgot to mention that he turned down opportunities to play all over the place because he could sit in London and draw £90k a week for pitching up at Shenley for about 12 hours. Undoubtedly the socialist wage structure has cost us dear in limiting our ability to retain superstars and lumbering us with a lot of underwhelming performers.
In the middle of the Gooner nation are a lot of citizens who are very ambivalent towards Wenger. Few will forget or disregard the enormous achievements that he has accomplished at the club. At the height of our success about ten years or so ago we had an incomparable side playing possibly the finest football an English club side has ever produced. On the other hand, as we are continually reminded, we have gone eight years without silverware and after success like we enjoyed that feels like an eternity. Imagine then how it feels to fail even to challenge for the league title in over half a century, like our near neighbours!
The rally at the end of last season, the second in a row to deprive Tottenham of local bragging rights and £30 million in cash, undoubtedly restored a little bit of Wenger credibility. The oily Spinmeister, Ivan Gazidis seized on this rise in optimism and indicated to supporters that brighter times were just around the corner - next season to be precise. Without claiming it specifically, a magical cash stash of £70 million has appeared in Arsene's transfer kitty and he has since tried very hard to strip away a lot of the deadwood that remained in the dressing room. While I would still relish seeing the back of Fabianski, Santos, Park, Chamakh and Gervinho it has been a credible start but that list shows you how many substandard players we have accumulated.
And please sell Bendtner eventually for some cash and get him off the wage bill. A waste of rations as my old boss, a Gooner, used to describe those whose input had been lacking in some way!
This £70 million figure is fascinating. In reality it might be less but I suspect it could possibly be considerably more. Whatever the amount – which has obviously been taken from considered analysis by Arsenal watchers following the rash of new sponsorships (but for obvious reasons never confirmed by anyone close to the club) how has it been spent so far?
Well the answer is of course that it hasn't and therein lies the problem. I tell a lie in that it some of it may well have been used to pay off Denilson or to subsidise the wages of players on loan who are too expensively paid to be afforded by a large number of clubs in Europe. But lots of wages have also been saved. But as I write we are in interminable negotiations with Higuain, which have gone on in labyrinthine fashion for so long no-one can remember where we are. Part of the problem lies in the inaccuracy of the transfer media who recycle each other's fantasisings until a bridgehead of resentment and disaffection builds up based on the musing of someone from the Daily Star, Goal.com or a Spanish propaganda sheet. I like the look of Higuain very much. His record doesn’t need a You Tube video to sell it. I also like Fellaini and have obsessed about us buying him since he played so well in defensive midfield for Everton against us in April. I don’t want to produce a wish list of players as this almost defeats the object of what this article wants to say but for me a good, experienced back- up keeper like Schwarzer would do as would a top- class utility defender especially if Vermaelen has injury issues.
But apart from the Higuain saga, we have had the surely fallacious story of the Suarez bid, and extravagant links with Rooney and more feasibly Cesc Fabregas. Is this Wenger the wily old fox laying false trails to wrongfoot the opposition, is it the brainchild of Ivan trying to show that we are big potatoes again without having to actually prove it or has there been a rearrangement of the economic tectonic plates around Ashburton Grove which mean that we really are thinking on an unprecedented scale of acquisition? I have very well- connected friends who nod and wink to me that something spectacular is about to happen and that we should chill and let events take their course but the reservoir of faith in our buying ambition and capability has run very low over recent times. I just plead that given the disappointments that have been BENtley and BENdtner that we think carefully about an investment in the powerfully built BENtheke! And leave Ben Arfa well alone!
But the Arsenal hierarchy must realise that the new fund of goodwill that sprang up at the end of last season has been drawn down rapidly because we still seem unable to close deals quickly. There is still a feeling that Wenger nitpicks over reasons not to sign ready made but expensive superstars and we fear a repeat of the Mata debacle two years ago where we lost the chance to sign a genuine top talent through what appeared to be a combination of procrastination and dithering. Arsenal fans just can't go through that again!
Football is such big business now with such a lot of media projection and hype that many of the new Arsenal fans concerned by the apparent stasis in the club have no really positive memories of success and are assailed by a generally sceptical media whose default position is somewhere between the neutrals and those who believe Wenger is past his sell-by date. Current concerns and frustrations are largely the fault of Gazidis who promised a spectacular piece of good news in forty eight hours... four weeks ago. A real sign of ambition and commitment would do much to reassure supporters that all will be well and we are returning to the top table of potentially big- spenders, on the basis of a model of self-sufficiency that would make us all a bit prouder than just receiving the largesse of an oligarch. But one London club's oligarch has overseen the biggest trophy glut in his team's history while Arsenal have failed to win anything. Although there are many who would love the Arsenal model to prove successful enough to claim trophies in a way we could be genuinely proud of, modern society does not imbue many of its new football consumers with patience as a prerequisite, particularly when their team charges the highest season ticket prices in football and pays its manager over £7 million a year.
I referred to a big IF when I began this article. In fact there are two alternative ifs. One, if we can ramp up our investment into the side to higher levels with top quality talent there is a reason to have optimism that the squad can realistically compete for all trophies it plays for. The alternative if is the one that is starting to come into focus. If the club hierarchy can't get Wenger to let of the handbrake he seems to apply to his transfer policy and if we continue to worry more about saving half a million on a deal rather than bedding a player into the team in good time for the Champions League qualifier there will be no coming back for Wenger and Gazidis. Their credibility will dissolve like a Tottenham title challenge. Gazidis, particularly has talked the talk... almost too well for his own good. If he and Wenger can't now walk the walk they will find life very difficult indeed next season. I pray that they heed this message.
