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