Manchester City signed five players from Arsenal between 2009 and 2014, and Arsene Wenger has snidely described them as ‘good clients’.
The Citizens became a financial monster back in 2008 after being bought by some of the world’s richest people, and our club decided that they would fight the newfound riches of the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City by investing in our future.
We built a new stadium in North London whilst keeping with the same manager, and we were forced to be stringent with our budget, and also could not turn down profit from selling players.
Manchester City were the main side to come calling for our stars, and they paid over the odds a number of times to prize away a few players, and who are we to complain now?
It was hard times watching our club selling to strengthen a rival, with the likes of Emmanuel Adebayor, Samir Nasri, Gael Clichy, Kolo Toure and Gael Clichy all making the switch, but looking at those deals now, it most definitely helped us to get back into the strong position we now find ourselves in.
Arsene Wenger has now joked about his previous transfers with this weekend’s opponents.
“City were good clients,” he said.
“We are (in a stronger position now) because today I feel we can give financial satisfaction and support ambitions and values that can make the players happy at this club.“Before, perhaps the financial gap was too big a difference to keep our players. We could not compete, we had to sell players.
“It has reduced but it is still there.”
Can we look back at our previous situation and be thankful the Etihad club was so generous at purchasing our players? Do we think that City got more out of Nasri and Adebayor than we did?
Pat J
The Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure deals were all win, no lose for Arsenal. Adebayor began his slide into psychosis after his big money move from Arsenal to Man City and has never looked as good for any of the other clubs he dressed for as he did in North London. Kolo Toure was a transitional player for City, taking them from a yoyo cub that was in and out of the Premier League to solid top flight club, but he was well past it and never looked the player he was for Arsenal for city.
Samir Nasri is a mixed bag. He looked on the verge of becoming a special player at Arsenal and scored 15 goals from his midfield place for the gunners in his last full season with the Gunners. He was never that good for city, though he was a mainstay of their line up for three seasons. The problem with playing for a team like City, with unlimited resources and a management team determined to make themselves, not the players or manager the story, is there is always another fresh face, always another young starlet emerging. Raheem Sterling supplanted Nasri, Leroy Sane looks to have supplanted Sterling. This is the Real Madrid model; keep one or two superstar players and rotate really good emerging stars until you find the next Ronaldo. If he’d stayed at Arsenal Nasri would be a legend, not playing on loand in Sevilla, but he took the money and he had a good career. Good for him, good for Arsenal. It is tantalizing to wonder what he could have been in a stable, nurturing environment.
On the other hand Arsenal have developed a host of excellent midfield players so it can be argued that they have not really missed Nasri.
Gael Clichy is probably Arsenal’s worst loss to Man City in terms of his leaving impacting Arsenal negatively and helping city positively.Part of it is financial. Arsenal made only got £7 million for him and he stepped right into City’s starting XI and owned the slot for two and a half years.
Clichy emerged as Arseanl’s first-choice left back in 2007/2008 and for the next five seasons owned that spot. He was at the peak of his powers and went on to have the same stature at City for the next two years. City won their first title with him defending and attacking City’s left flank. His third season City won the title again, but he played only aobut half the club’s games at left back and for three seasons he was in and out. With Guardiola he’s back in, having played 14 of 16 of City’s games.
you cite nasri as an example for what could have been… I honestly wonder the same about Adeboy. he was truly a beast for us, players make wrong moves in their careers in which they struggle to come back from. But despite all his controversy i still have a soft spot for him!
The author of this article said “arsenal invested in their future” please who are those “future” and what achievement has they brought to the club since 2008 that man city became mega rich and arsenal invested in them. Nobody likes Adebayo,but we have to acknowledge the fact that he was the last Arsenal player to score a winning goal against Man United in a premier league.