As stated in my last article, I’m starting to get a bit peeved at the club’s stance on transfers. It looks to me that the players/agents are telling the club how it’s gonna be, i.e. “I want so many thousand per week or I’m off” or I’ve been here three years now and I can’t live here as its too noisy, and the club say “ok”.

What they should remind the players of is that…

a) You are under contract to us, we pay your wages, we say when you can go, we will pay you what is stated in your contract and we will give you an increase when we see fit. If they are not happy with that then send them to the reserves or don’t pay them, hitting them where it hurts, in the pocket. And by them not playing as much no club is gonna buy somebody who’s hardly played. By doing this, Arsenal also remind them that “you are where you are in part because of the club”.

b) Criticizing your boss and team-mates in public is a no-no and this should be dealt with internally, not in the press. If you slagged your boss and colleagues off in public you would be out the door before you can say sorry so what makes players any different?

I understand what the boss is trying to do by letting a player leave if he’s not happy as it affects team morale, but he should make them suffer a bit and usually the player changes his mind, because if he lets one player leave so easily, then God forbid, what’s stopping players like Toure, Fabregas, Bendtner, Theo, Denilson and the like walking up to the manager one day after training and saying gimme £200k or I’m off as they will think the boss is an easy touch…

All the great managers including Wenger have done it in the past with top players, Fergie’s done it with the likes of Van Nistelrooy and Beckham, Wenger did it with Wiltord and Kanu, Cloughie did it, Paisley, Shankly, the list goes on.

Otherwise the club might as well print “for sale” on the shirts and we will never become in my view what we are supposed to be and that’s the best club in the world.