Over the last decade, Arsenal FC have been on a gradual decline. If you ask who to blame; Kroenke, the toxic fans and atmosphere and our bad transfer policy comes to mind. The truth is a little bit of everything aforementioned are parts of the problem. And we are not going to fix this in one year.
But if we can’t change management soon, since it’s something we can’t control, at least we can change something we can.
1. Fan’s attitude towards our own club (come on, if we want this club to win, we better start acting like it!)
2. Our transfer policies
Remember when we left Highbury and we couldn’t afford the superstars, Arsenal developed a transfer policy when we bought young players with potential, used them until they became superstars and sold them off. Players like Fabregas and Nasri went this path. And it worked! Arsenal was flying! We were in the top four every single year! But something was missing. We struggled against top teams (Cringe Bayern Munich!) and couldn’t win trophies (9 years drought). Evra even called us babies!
So Arsenal changed strategies finally and bought Ozil and like magic our drought snapped. Along the years we have changed from Wenger’s later years transfers and splashed the cash on some stars (Pepe 72m, Auba 68m, Ben White?) and Arsenal are in a worse state than before.
What should be done in my opinion is to have a balance between buying youth and experience. A lot of teams copied Arsenal’s transfer policy in the turn of the century, it’s time we copied theirs too. We don’t have the funds of Chelsea and Man City. A good club to model is Leicester City. The Blues have won the PL more recently than us, are FA cup champs and have narrowly missed on CL twice now. Leicester buys relatively unknown players, make them PL mainstays and sell them for top dollar!
Maguire 80m
Chilwell 60m
Kante 32m
Mahrez 60m
Maddison 60-70m to whoever wants him.
Compare that to us. Why do we always buy so high and sell for peanuts. Willock, despite all his heroics at Newcastle is worth only 20m! Even Solanke was sold at such a price? If it were Foden that went on such form, he will be worth 60-70m already! And Villa want to take Smith Rowe for 30M. Arsenal should buy players, improve them and if they want out sell for big money so that we can re invest. Dortmond are masters at that. 18m Haaland will be sold for over a 100m.
We can even steal Leicester City targets. We will be better if we had Soyuncu, Maddison and Ndidi. Let’s face it, Arsenal is still a big prospect with a large fellowship. Players still want to play for the red and white.
What do you think, peep me in the comments.
Kobin.