After the arrival of Sven Mislintat came the growing possibility that Arsene Wenger’s departure may not be far away.
It’s clear that the Frenchman is sadly losing his grip on life at the very top of English football, or that at least what once was a love supreme is now growing stale.
That feeling appeared to be justified by what happened in January: not only did Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang arrive, but Mesut Ozil signed a new contract. Such things didn’t seem like they would have happened without assurances about the potential arrival of a new manager, and the overhaul of the club’s management structure.
We’ll see if any of that is forthcoming, but for the moment fans remain in a state of limbo: it is wrong to disrespect such a grand old figure as Wenger. But as a fan of Arsenal, watching their stagnation and eventual decline must be heartbreaking – and the manager does indeed appear to be one of the problems.
He’s not the only problem, though.
Clearly tolerating the current situation means the board are complicit in whatever is ultimately going wrong at the club. Stan Kroenke appears happy to preside over a business interest which – with Premier League TV money, a big stadium and European football – makes a fairly large profit for him, no matter what their results are.
There may also be a mentality problem at exec level, too.
Talk that Thomas Tuchel may be taking over from Wenger makes you start to wonder if Arsenal are attempting to become the English Dortmund. You have to take these reports with a pinch of salt, of course. Especially since the Frenchman’s job is always speculated upon in the media, and a cynic might point out season tickets are up for renewal. But the Dortmund link doesn’t seem unfounded given recent arrivals.
If Arsenal are indeed thinking that way, why are they modelling themselves on a club who see themselves as the smaller underdogs? Fair enough if they think Dortmund’s former players and former manager can make a step up to a higher level. But if that’s not what’s happening here, it’s a problem.
About five years ago, we were becoming used to hearing the words ‘war chest’ bandied about in the summer transfer windows when Arsenal were involved. By now, though, the phrase is a bit more scarce. But the reason isn’t that the Gunners are suddenly poor, or that they’ve lost money. The reason is that money is no longer what it used to be.
Headlines like this from 2013, for example – proclaiming a £70m ‘war chest’ – show how outdated it is. £70m would by only one top player these days. That certainly doesn’t count as a chest.
The problem, as so many predicted, is that the Gunners didn’t spend when £70m was indeed a lot of money at the upper end of the footballing aristocracy.
Arsenal saved their cash. For want of a better analogy, they put it under the mattress. They didn’t invest it in players. But whilst the cash didn’t increase in value, perhaps players would have. Borussia Dortmund bought Ousmane Dembele from Rennes for around €15m.
They sold him to Barcelona a year later for around ten times that price. There are countless other examples of inflated transfer fees, and had the Gunners used the money they had to buy back in 2013, they might have had assets worth ten times what they paid for by now. Take Manchester City as an example: they spent £55m on Kevin de Bruyne. A lot of money, sure, but this season has proven that he’s worth much much more than that now.
Most importantly, he’s helped them win a title.
Arsenal are paying the price now for not spending when they had the chance. Now they have a squad which isn’t as good as the others and will take some serious spend in order to fix. You get the feeling, though, that there’s a growing underdog mentality about one of the richest clubs in the country.