Arsenal’s problems are multifold and can only be fixed by a change in ownership . . . by Bryan G
Keeping Arsene Wenger in place is unambitious and reeks of weak leadership at the highest levels of Arsenal F.C. I’ve been a huge admirer of Wenger since the early weeks of his tenure at the helm of the greatest football club on this planet, and I’m eternally grateful for the initial years of beautiful football he delivered. But the time for him to move on passed some years ago, and the fact he hasn’t been forced to do so is 100% on the owner(s) and board. It speaks volumes to their lack of ambition.
The other piece I fault the board/owners on is our transactions in the transfer market. It’s been guileless. We bought a bunch of mid-priced players and we got middling results. We can’t be surprised at that. How many players have we bought in the last 4-5 years for £10-20M? Lucas Perez, El Neny, Chambers, Welbeck, Paulista, Podolski, Debuchy, Monreal, Mertesecker, Arteta, Gervinho . . . That’s well over £100M. Add in the ridiculous money we paid for Mustafi and Xhaka and we’re closing in on £200M. And this doesn’t even take into account the wage bill for these underachievers.
I can’t imagine we’d be in any worse shape if we’d taken that £200M and the associated wages and bought just two really top-level players (two from Lewandowski, Bale, Aguero, Suarez, Griezman and the like) and paired them with some home-grown talent.
On the home-grown talent front we’ve also performed miserably. Do we even care about our academy anymore? There’s not one regular in the Arsenal first team that came up through the ranks. Wilshere, Iwobi, Maitland-Niles and Nketiah are on the fringes, but are currently the closest thing we have to home-grown talent. Possibly we could claim Hector Bellerin is home-grown given we got him at around 16 years-old from Barca. Anyway, I say we get rid of all of those middling players, buy a couple of stand-outs to pair with young home-grown talent and get this club back on track.
For the record, I think the only signings we’ve gotten value for money from are Sanchez (~£35M) and Giroud (~£12M).
I contend that for less money than we’ve spent in the last five years, we could have the following line-up and three league titles in a row under our belt.
Czech, Bellerin, Koscielny, Vermaelen, Kolasinac, Matic, Wilshere, Ramsey, Sanchez, Griezmann, Lewandowksi (or Aguero).
Bryan