John Evans
The forthcoming appointment of Mikel Arteta as first team coach confirms 100% for me that nothing will change any time soon at AFC. Arsene leaving the building was a chance to kick on and really show that we are a club to be taken seriously again. To do that we needed to bring in a coach with a track record of success, somebody who would not be satisfied to simply plod along somewhere between 4th and 6th each season. I wrote an article recently in which I mentioned my own feeling that the current board would not want to make such a hire. I predicted that the new coach would be under the age of 50 and someone who would feel fortunate to be manager of AFC. Enter Mikel Arteta.
As true fans of AFC we have wanted change at the top for years. Anyone that knows anything about the game has seen that things have gone beyond stale at Arsenal. Arsene being told to go has given us renewed hope that the club we all follow so keenly might begin to show the ambition we all crave so badly. The sad reality though is the simple re-realisation that AFC stopped being a football club many years ago and has been nothing other than a business for a minimum of the last decade.
Stan Kroenke is not interested one jot in whether or not AFC are competitive at the top of the EPL or competing for the Champions League. The only reason Arsene was asked to pack his bags was the empty seats in the stadium on match days which doesn’t impress the clubs commercial partners and makes re-signing them on for more money harder when current contracts expire. That my friends is what modern day football is all about especially in this country where any advertising hoarding is simply sold to the highest bidder regardless of what destructive product they are trying to tempt viewers into wasting their hard earned money on.
Max Allegri or Carlo Ancelotti would have come in at AFC and demanded in the region of £8-10m a year to become first team coach. This would have been comparable to what Arsene was earning when he left the club recently. I would imagine for that amount of salary per season they can now get not only Mikel Arteta but also Sven and Raul thrown in for good measure as well. Arsene goes to get the bums back on the seats which keeps the commercial partners happy and is replaced by three new employees to do what Arsene did on his own for the last decade. Three men for the price of one and the nice little fans come running back to their expensive seats.
The other difference between Allegri/Ancelotti and Arteta is that Allegri or Ancelotti will have expected/demanded a genuine chance of being successful. This takes money. A transfer war chest of circa £50m would have not been enough to entice either of those managers to the table. Will Mikel Arteta be storming into see Ivan anytime soon demanding an extra £100m to spend on new players? I very much doubt it. He will feel lucky to have the job in the first place which is exactly what Ivan and Stan want him to feel as it gives them control over each and every decision that needs making. SK will keep total control of AFC and not have to spend a penny more than what he would have done if Arsene had kept his job. The appointment of Arteta will confirm this as clear as day.
Why as fans do we think SK was so happy to keep faith with Arsene for all those years when anybody with an ounce of footballing knowledge could clearly see his time was up? The simple reason was that Arsene was perfectly happy to toe the club line so that he could keep his ego and own pay packet intact. Had Arsene been interested even remotely in winning why would he have signed up to the whole new stadium/limited resources idea all those years ago? He wouldn’t. Any manager worth their salt would have said nice idea and like the long term goal but sorry it is not for me as I want to be as successful in my own career as I possibly can be.
Some modern day fans/bloggers seem to want to put out the message that Arsene was made a scapegoat for things going wrong as he was always the one in the firing line as far as the press/media were concerned. They blame Ivan for hiding behind the firing line and letting Arsene take all the flak. For me this misses the point completely. Arsene was paid around £9m a year to be the one that took the flak as far as the media/fans were concerned. He was never anything more than a well paid front man in the latter years of his reign. He was perfectly happy and willing to play that role with literally no chance of any significant on field success. If he wasn’t he would have left the club of his own accord many years ago. If the club hadn’t asked him to leave he literally would never have left. That is not the action of a winner nor is it the action of a man with any pride in my opinion.
Ask yourself this question. What other club who proposes an aim to be somewhere near the top of European football would hire a new manager today who has not managed any football team in the world ever before? Some may claim Zidane at Real Madrid but he managed their B team which is the same as managing a team in the Championship over here. Guardiola did the same before he became first team coach of Barcelona. In reality I doubt this kind of hire has ever been made towards the top end of world football. Literally zero experience which instantly means his demands will be very low. Box ticked. You’re hired.
My transfer predictions for the summer after Arteta is named is for Ramsey to be sold on for somewhere in the region of £40m and for Arsenal to reinvest roughly the same amount of money in a goalkeeper, central defender and midfielder. I would estimate £15-20m on each of the goalkeeper and central defender and maybe someone on a free for midfield. I would be surprised if our NET spend is over £10m and we will have moved on some salaries from the balance sheet - the likes of Cazorla, Mertersacker, Ospina etc.
AFC finished the season with 63 points. City won the league with a record high of 100. To be competitive in terms of really having a chance to win the EPL in a normal season a team needs a total of around 85 points come May. This means as a club we need to improve on Arsene’s last season in charge by around 30% to have any chance of being competitive again. For this interested viewer I simply can’t see that happening with the choices we are about to make as a club.
As mentioned in my previous article I can see us improving maybe 10-15% with any new hire as long as they can coach properly and do basic tactics, which one would hope Arteta can achieve. The problem is that will only get us to around 70-72 points next season which in all likelihood will struggle to even make the top four let alone be competitive again. It therefore seems pretty set in stone that we have gone from being a team that always qualified for the Champions League to one now that would view that ‘achievement’ as just that. An over achievement or put another way, a great season. Any gooner expecting us to greatly improve simply due to Arsene leaving is possibly as deluded as the man that has just picked up his coat.
It might be worth mentioning that we haven’t won the league since Patrick Vieira left the club who himself was also in the running to be our next coach. The person who will get the top job ahead of Vieira is the man we haven’t managed to finish in the top four without since he left the Arsenal midfield just a couple of years back himself. We really have dropped that far since 2005. A successful business manages to lower the customers’ expectations without them walking away or taking their business elsewhere. You do have to give credit where credit is due Stan sure is a very successful businessman. In that there can be no doubt.
As true Arsenal fans we prayed for Arsene to fall on his sword for the last five seasons or so. In him leaving it has raised our hopes for the first time in a decade. The truth is that hope only really has a genuine chance of being realised if someone else departs the club for good. Arsene lasted 22 years, at present Stan has been involved with Arsenal for around half that time and counting. Keep hoping or spend your time, effort and money on something else? I guess the number of empty red seats next season will tell us all the answer.
