Kevin Whitcher
Firstly, apologies for the radio silence for the last week. Let’s do a plug here, as that’s the reason for the lack of activity. Your author also does holistic work with German machines developed by a company called TimeWaver, which I have successfully used for a variety of issues people have needed help with – physical, emotional, financial – and often remotely. Since Friday last week, I have been in the beautiful German spa town of Bad Nauheim attending the annual TimeWaver Congress, followed by a couple of days’ training on the TimeWaver Biz – which is used to improve the health of business concerns from sole trader up to larger organisations. In brief, the machine and therapist (that’s me) combine to use a form of what I will call energy medicine to improve things for the client. If you wish to read more, details can be found through this link and if you want to discuss my assisting you with pretty much any matter, drop me an email at [email protected] and we can arrange a free consultation. As stated, this stuff works remotely, so it doesn’t matter where you are. I can do consultations via Skype / Zoom and the like. I’d love the chance to use it on Arsenal players, although football as a whole is pretty conservative when it comes to this kind of stuff. But hey, if someone from the club is reading this, feel free to get in touch. Now, onto the topic of the day…
Arsenal, in reality, have approaching £100 million spare cash which can be used for the purchase of players, agents’ fees and the 2018/19 season wages of any new arrivals. In this day and age, if you buy a superstar, that won’t leave too much in the kitty for extra players. In an attempt to return to the Champions League, the club invested heavily in Alexandre Lacazette last summer and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in January. We will not see those scale of transfers again for a while. The decision to award Mesut Ozil a contract worth somewhere north of £50 million over three and a half years was partly because to replace him with a player of equivalent quality would have cost a lot more when transfer fee was added – even if the wages were less. It also gives them the chance of getting something for him should they decide to try and sell.
So the big spending has been done. Aaron Ramsey will want similar wages to Ozil but won’t get it. At best, I can see the club offering him £200,000. It does not look like there will be any increase in the offer on the table for Jack Wilshere, although a new coach and the lack of a World Cup shop window might persuade him to sign it.
Part of the reason for securing Sven Mislintat last autumn was to plan for a likely future in which Arsenal need to get better return from their transfer dealings. There is a general consensus that signings like Xhaka and Mustafi have not had the impact desired for the amounts laid out. And with income heading south as a consequence of the club’s slide down the table, the situation we have this summer was highly predictable. Arsenal had a poor start to the last campaign, and one suspects the plan was always to give Wenger one chance to return the club to the top table and give him his cards if he failed to make it. The two year deal he was given, on the say-so of Stan Kroenke, made the latter accept that going forward he should listen to his board of directors rather than sentiment. Still, at least it gave Mislintat and Raul Sanllehi time to get their feet under the table and plan for next season.
Arsenal put a lot of faith in the Financial Fair Play system a few years ago. Ivan Gazidis regularly referred to it, but it hasn’t worked. Large clubs abuse it, and UEFA do not have the balls to ban them for it because, without said clubs, the value of their product to sponsors lessens in value. They pay it lip service, but if Manchester City and Paris St Germain line up in next season’s Champions League, you know that FFP isn’t worth toffee. In such a climate, and with an majority owner who will not invest a cent into the club itself (only its shares), Arsenal have to follow a different model, even if they do manage to return to regular Champions League involvement.
So this means securing players who are available on a free transfer (such as Lichtensteiner), those with a year left on their deals who can be bought at a knockdown rate (defender Sokratis from Dortmund), or young prospects that the club believe will increase in value (midfielder Yacine Adli). Players with a relatively modest buyout clause (keeper Bernd Leno) is another affordable option. The great unknown is what kind of benefit Arsenal’s academy will prove to the club in the post-Wenger era. Frankly, it’s a bit of a mess at present, and it will take at least three or four seasons before we can determine whether Per Mertesacker can provide established first team players on a more consistent basis than happened under the Arsene Wenger regime.
So transfer news is interesting (and at times alarming looking at the reaction to the Marouane Fellaini stories), and because there is a new coach, there is a great deal of curiosity in the air. Because not only are there new players, there is likely to be a change of approach. Fans are willing to forgive the club for not spending big because there has been some quite obvious work done to bring about changes and reverse a slide that has been allowed to continue for too long. A case of better late than never.
So, shopping smartly, (and let’s say the combined fees and year one wages for the four players above will be below £60 million), Arsenal can still secure at least two more players within the current budget, and that is before anyone is sold. The club continue to live within their means, with the aim of increasing turnover and profit so that they can buy bigger when it is justified.
There is a lot of work to be done, but things are headed in the right direction. These may not be euphoric headline signings, but there is at least some kind of plan for the short and medium term future. So maybe not exciting names, but exciting times. Your author is looking forward to the start of next season with enthusiasm for the first time in longer than I care to remember. We are going into the unknown…
