The Hove Gooner
A lot of negativity has been poured out in recent months and years at Arsene Wenger and the board of AFC and this interested onlooker feels it about time some sense of realism was also thrown into the melting pot so to speak.
When Arsene arrived on these shores all the way back in the mid nineties AFC were a club struggling to find any sense of positive identity. If you went further afield than Dover not many a foreign football fan would have even been overly aware of who we were as a club. The name Arsenal would not have been such a household name as it is now that is for sure.
We were based at Highbury and regularly played in front of under capacity attendances. There was no waiting list for season tickets and you could get in for less than £250 a season in some parts of the ground. We were widely renowned for incredibly negative tactics and fairly so as we regularly sat back on 1-0 leads and tired to hang on for dear life against very average sides to say the least. It was dour times and the club were going nowhere fast.
Anyone that can remember as far back as the Bruce Rioch season will remember the wild celebrations that took place on the last day of that season. We managed to turn around a home deficit against relegation fodder Bolton Wanderers into a late 2-1 win which enabled us to compete in next seasons UEFA Cup (now the Europa League).
This was the level we were at ladies and gentlemen. The glory days of the early George Graham era were but a distant memory by the mid-nineties and we were a club in at best stagnation and at worst decline.
When you fast forward to the current day you have a club that is known and recognised world-wide in an instant. A club that has been competing at the top of the European game season in season out for the past 16 years and regularly plays its home games in front of sell-out 60,000+ attendances where the average punter pays in excess of £1000 per season for the privilege of a seat. There is still a sizeable waiting list for season tickets and the amount of math day revenue from corporate ticket and food sales is astronomical.
We have won titles and we have won cups but the legacy of Arsene Wenger is so much more than that. Arsene alone has transformed the way the club are recognised throughout the world. We are known for playing superb technical football the like of which manages to attract a certain type of supporter and player to our club. Would Ozil have signed recently if we were still playing the same way as we were in the mid nineties? Would we have so many overseas fans pay hundreds of pounds per game to make the trip over to the Emirates on match days?
AFC as a club currently stand in a very firm and solid way both on and off the pitch. We are secure for not only years but decades to come with what we have achieved off the field over the last decade. Make no mistake about it the move to the Emirates has been the best achievement of Arsene’s reign. It will go down in history as being far more important than the Invincible season of 2004. We are now setup to move forward at an exceptionally high level without having to rely on handouts from wealthy owners who could walk away from the club at anytime in the future and leave us relying on finding some other sugar daddy to take over ASAP.
As a club we are now in the position where we can not only afford to make a signing in the ilk of Ozil but where we can also attract a player of his quality due to the way we are renowned to play the game we all love to watch. I expect another marquee signing to be made in January and guess what folks we can afford that too.
Looking at the current day squad of players there is no reason whatsoever why we can’t compete for the major trophies this season. If we need to we can make major moves in the January transfer window without the need to look to sell at the same time to balance the books and going forward this can be the new norm.
In every position we have a minimum of two players who can perform the job required well and with one or two additions in January who else has a stronger playing squad than us? A large number of our players are young (under 25) and a large percentage of them are now British which might help in terms of future loyalty and as for the deadwood well there isn’t much fat left on the bone as far as that is concerned.
Everyone can come back bemoaning a lack of recent trophies but ask yourself this. Would you rather be in Liverpool’s position as a club today or ours? They have won a trophy more recently than us but as a club and looking towards the future whose position would you prefer to be in? Surely the obvious answer to this simple question should make people realise that the route we have opted to take as a club in recent years has been the right path to tread not only for the near future but also the long term safety and financial capability of the club we all support.
In my eyes it has been a simple case of a little bit of short term pain for longer term gain and we are now out of the worst part of that transition and into the better times which should just keep getting better and better from now on.
One final point that I wanted to finish on was the abuse for Ivan Gazidis. The simple fact is this guy has been brought on board to have a positive impact on all commercial matters to do with the club. Many people ask ‘what do you do?’ Look at the balance books of the last few seasons, look at the amount of commercial revenue now coming into the club and look at the future deals some of which haven’t even been made public yet and then ask what does he do? The guy has done a fantastic job in increasing revenue both on match days and commercially. This is a big part of why we can make signings like Ozil come off nowadays. Give credit where it is due and stop overhyping events such as one off defeats where everything that can go wrong does go wrong. That is football and that is why we all come back for more, the un-predictability of it all.
