Another level of Déjà vu at the Arsenal

Well…………

NOTE: THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN A WEEK BEFORE THE SHAMBLES WE SAW AT THE EMIRATES YESTERDAY. 

Hands up if you have been made to look dim-witted by the Arsenal hierarchy in the last few years with the way they have gone about their transfer dealings; or you might as well pretend as if you have always comprehended their tact all along.  With millions of loyal fans globally, the board is fully aware of the leeway it possesses as long as it keeps sticking Wenger out as shield against angry fans and stakeholders. They know the Arsenal Supporters Trust (AST) will listen to anything Wenger says and they would not question him openly. The few members that feel like doing so are conveniently kept quiet by the majority.

Football First

Football always comes first for me before any other thing. Reason I laughed really hard when I heard we sold our captain to the enemy for “footballing reasons”. Now we have gone from bringing in a few decent players every summer to deliberately weakening the squad by selling our best players before the start of the season in more recent times.  This season, no big player has left because all the big players have left. Santi Cazorla’s influence is just growing in the team, Laurent Koscielny is getting there and Jack Wilshere is still work in progress. When they get to that level where they will single-handedly propel the team to a considerable height, trust Wenger to do what he knows how to do best- sell them.  This shows we are not putting football first as a football club and it reveals where our intrinsic priorities now lie.

For the umpteenth time this summer, we have failed to proactively address the pressing issues we struggled with last season. Some arsenal fans (with supposed PhDs in financial management) will give you detailed financial analyses on our self sustaining policy and why we cannot compete with the likes of Manchester City and Chelsea in the transfer market while ignoring the basics. This means turning a blind eye to the essence of a football club which is to put football first.  What we seem to have done post-invincibles considering the stadium project is to marginalize team development and focus more on profit maximization. Something I have always disagreed with as we could have achieved more with the resources we have wasted so far.  Back to a more serious issue,   if you look at our current first team, I believe we need a minimum of four players to come in straight away; a defensive midfielder, centre back, striker and a goal keeper.

Pressing Needs

Since we lost Patrick Viera in 2005, Wenger has failed to find a suitable replacement for the French man.  Viera embodied everything you desire in a defensive midfielder; steel, attitude, guile and most importantly, leadership traits. He gave our defence the cover we now badly miss and also posed a significant threat going forward. Wenger sold him and never replaced him, however, he did promote a prodigy in Cesc Fabregas and since then, we have won nothing.

It does not take a genius to realize that we need a proper defensive midfielder for defensive stability. Arteta plays that role and to be fair to the Spaniard, he can only give his best but he is not what we need to make a difference in that role at the top level, trophy winning level.  He is a central midfielder and not a defensive midfielder and Wenger knows this. Why he is not desperate to solve this problem can only be explained by the AKBs (Arsene Knows Brigade).

 Per Metersacker has had his fair share of criticism since he joined us and we are all aware of Vermaelen’s dreadful performance last season. However, we can all agree that if anything happens to Laurent Koscielny, we are going to be in some deep trouble. He is clearly our best central defender and Vermaelen’s fitness is not reliable at the moment. Thus, a back-up central defender is crucially needed. We will be competing in four tournaments this season and it is only logical to know that you will require proper back up to mitigate a defensive crisis. Again when you consider this issue with the fitness history of our players, we will need the AKBs to explain to us why Arsene has failed to address the problem.

In goal, the invincibles did not happen by luck; that was a proper team with key players in key positions. Jens Lehmann was an integral part of that squad and again since he left, we have won nothing.  No disrespect to Wojciech Szczęsnyand Lukasz Fabianski but I am not sure a lot of Arsenal fans are very confident that we have got that area covered. I am not and it is reasonable to expect Wenger to have gone out to get an experience pair of hands for Szczęsny to understudy as we know he still has a lot to learn.  As I write, nothing has been done, absolutely nothing.

Up front, when your team is playing badly and it is looking likely that you might lose or drop points, well a proper forward can turn things around in seconds. Robin Van Persie’s performance two seasons explains this in a better way.  Podolski is a player I really like but the best Wenger can do for him now is to chuck him on the left wing and substitute him every single game like his legs are made of glass. On Giroud, what captures my imagination is how excited he is on the prospect of Arsenal signing Luis Suarez. You can interprete that in different ways but we will all head in one direction- we badly need to strengthen.

Summer of Shambles

With that being said, I think it is reasonable at this point to suggest that Wenger will do little to address the evident lack of quality and depth in the squad. He has done it before and boy I am sure Monsieur will do I again. We are in bloody August and the only changes made to the squad have been players leaving the club. If you watched almost 90% of our games last season, you would have placed a bet that Wenger would have had a long list of potential targets drawn up before May. Alas, Monsieur is busy doing raving about the present squad’s potential and how he feels they might be strong enough to win the league, absolutely ridiculous.

I have used all sorts of words to describe Wenger as I have been massively disappointed in him in the last few years. However, I sincerely believe every rational human being will struggle to explain in simple terms what Wenger is doing this summer and what he had planned. This man has taken crazy to a different height and no one can explain it. I am sorry but if as a gooner you still wonder why people disrespect Wenger then you have not been looking hard enough into how he has been handling his business as a manager on and off the pitch ( he is still our most successful manager I have not forgotten that).  The senior players in the squad crave signings, the AKBs want signings and the British journalists who pretend to hate us are just disappointed that we make the league less competitive by our incessant failure to strengthen the team.

All these boil down to one man- Wenger. He is the most important figure at the club and no one questions his authority- as far as we know.  When Sir Alex Ferguson was going to try his luck on Robin Van Persie, he didn’t think of speaking to anyone else, he went straight to the key man- Arsene.  RVP did not greet him happily at Old Trafford by mistake. When asked who called the shot on Alex Song, Wenger quickly replied “I did”. Ivan Gazidis has said it times without number how highly they respect Wenger’s recommendations at board level and we are also aware of the unflinching support he gets from majority of the fans. He is king, he is god. How many ex-Arsenal players have come out to criticize him?

He has the influence to convince the board to do what he wants and he knows what the team needs. Wenger has over 30 years of football management experience, he is not a stupid man; he has won titles in the past and guided us to two major European finals.  He clearly understands what it means to have a decent squad that can win things. How he has then managed to go from May to August, 2013 without signing anyone is beyond me. I am sorry Monsieur Yaya Sanogo but you have been signed at a really difficult period for the fans so it will be mutually beneficial if we pretend you were not there.  We will expect to see a Nicholas Anelka from you and that will be just unfair.

Signing Luis Suarez would be massive but that would just be addressing an issue in one area of the squad. Following the “ambitious quotes” from Ivan Gazidis and Stanley Koenke, our objective is not just the top four but to be the best and compete for titles. Except they are clearly lying (which I know they are) there is no reason they cannot instruct Wenger, an employee of the club to address other areas as well.  If we can brandish £40,001 at Liverpool, definitely there must be some loose change littering around coupled with the extra funds accrued from clearing out dead wood to acquire more decent players.

The club has come out to declare there is money to be spent and it is time to get real competitive. Fans and foes are tired of waiting for Wenger to act and this time it will definitely get really messy if he fails to strengthen. The onus is on Arsene (as it has always been) to make this happen, although I feel he has left it embarrassingly too late again. Red Army still, one Arsenal…..