John Evans
Anyone expecting miracles at AFC now that Arsene has finally been given his marching orders would have received a very loud wakeup call on the opening weekend of the new season.
It has seemed like decades that we have been hanging on in groundhog day type scenarios waiting beyond patiently for Arsene to politely do the honourable thing and leave the building. The fact the guy didn’t ever have the decency to leave of his own accord kind of sums the latter part of his reign up but that’s another story.
The sad reality for me as a true AFC fan is that Arsene was simply allowed to stay on for far too long. The last few years of his reign were masked over with a few FA Cup wins. The first two of which were down to very kind draws and even the third came after us playing two non-league sides on the way to the semi-finals.
The truth was laid to bare that Arsene could not possibly lift his side to a big trophy success anymore the season Leicester won the title. At any truly ‘Big’ club the manager would have been given his marching orders for that no doubt. But as we simply are no longer ran like a big club should be we let him linger on for another couple of seasons after that abject failure.
We are now going to have to pay the price for that. Unai has come in to take over a squad that has failed to finish in the lucrative top four for the past two seasons in a row. Make no mistake, finishing in the top four is now considerably harder than it ever has been in the past.
We as a club have allowed other rival teams far too much ground prior to Unai taking over for him to find a top four finish anything other than a mountain to climb.
Any true analysis of the facts concerning transfer spending and current squad value shows this to be the case.
Liverpool this summer have spent around £150m NET. They required a holding midfielder and a new goalkeeper and went out and spent a combined £110m on Keita and Allisson. We needed the same positions to be filled and spent a combined £45m on Leno who wasn’t deemed good enough to start ahead of Cech on the opening day of the season and Torreira.
People would point to the fact that Liverpool are in the Champions League so can possibly spend more on new players. I don’t agree at all. What did we do when we qualified for the Champions League 20 years in a row? Did we spend anything like those funds to try and push on from 4th (where Liverpool have finished in the league for the past two seasons) and be competitive at the very top of the tree? No we did not. The answer lies not in the fact that Liverpool are in the Champions League but more in the simple fact that they are showing more ambition as a club to truly compete than we ever did when we had the chance.
It isn’t just Liverpool either. Another good example is by looking not too far down the road to Tottenham. Last January they decided to try and give Trippier some more competition at right back. They went out and bought Aurier from PSG for around £25m. Aurier has not managed to get himself in front of Trippier as first choice right back and looking at what Trippier achieved at the World Cup he may never achieve that goal. The point is Spurs as a club were more than willing to go out and spend £25m on a squad player. Spurs also at the same time decided to get some more competition for places at centre half, they spent the best part of £36m on Davison Sanchez. When he was purchased he certainly wasn’t guaranteed a starting place as Spurs already had Vertonghen and Alderwerield in those births.
This summer we took the same decision in the same positions, we needed to offer some more competition to Bellerin’s place at right back and we managed to sign Lichsteiner who is 34 years of age on a free transfer. We then ‘splashed the cash’ so to speak with the £16m signing of Sokratis the 30 year old Greek centre half from Dortmund. The difference not only being the fact that Sokratis was some £20m cheaper than Davison Sanchez but the fact that many people seem to be of the opinion that due to us spending ‘so much money’ on Sokratis that he automatically becomes a first choice centre half at the club.
If you take a step back from all this and put it into context Arsenal have spent £20m less on a centre half than Spurs and see him as an automatic starter whereas the centre half that Spurs bought for £20m more has to fight it out for his place.
Why should this be the case for any other reason than one linked solely to ambition? Spurs do not create more revenue than us. They have a far smaller wage bill than us also.
Some people make the excuse that ‘we spent a lot of money in January’ on the likes of Auba and Miki. In reality we did not spend any money across the summer of 2017/18 or January 2018, we made a marginal profit spread across both of those transfer windows. The people that choose to highlight the signings also fail to highlight the sales of the likes of Walcott, Giroud, Cocquelin and the release of Sanchez this January. The summer before we also cashed in on a number of players including around £35m in one hit for The Ox.
Anyone that still hasn’t realised we are without doubt now the sixth biggest club right now and falling lower should take a look at this table.
It shows the current estimated value of each and every Premier League clubs squad at present. Forget City who lead the way at over £964m. The real concern for us Gooners should be the clear and alarming differences between us and the other four teams ahead of us in the top six.
Liverpool £809m
Chelsea £787m
Man United £769m
Spurs £751m
Arsenal £506m
This means our current first team squad has a combined value that is £245m less than Spurs. Yet the last time I checked our wage bill was around 50% higher than theirs. How the f*** does that happen?
It happens through an inability for AFC to sell players on for high enough fees and also more alarmingly it happens through AFC having a total inability to tie valuable squad members down to new contracts in time.
You take the above facts and figures and then add in to the equation our owner’s total lack of interest in putting in any of his own funds to help purchase a better quality of player and you then begin to realise just how bigger job Unai now has on his hands just to try and return us to the top four.
