Facts can be
manipulated to provide damning evidence. Facts can also be used to tell a story
without emotion. Facts in football always have a context and mitigating
circumstances and from this point of view Arsenal Football Club should be seen,
on the one hand, as just another Football club, yet on the other to be a club standing
for something more.
The Arsenal does
have the status of one of English Football’s big clubs; that’s fact. On this
basis there should be an element of expectation and intention to compete for honours.
Let’s talk about Pre
and Post Emirates.
The proclamations
from the board, when leaving Highbury, were that Arsenal would compete at the
highest level because the move would enable the club financially. In the years
leading up to this we were doing just that. Champions League final, FA Cup win,
Premier League Championship; the definition of competing at the highest level
in many ways.
This in fact was
ratified by the fact that in those years we had world class players. That’s not
hyperbole that’s actually true.
The 2011/12 season
has seen the three trophies that matter being won by clubs with virtually
unlimited resources; resources that have placed those clubs in the elite. Pre
Emirates neither club was one of the big boys; The London Club had started down
that road sure, and nine years down the line with Billions of Euros spent the
Russian oligarch achieved his goal. City have started on their journey and have
two trophies in two years.
Post Emirates the
conditions that exist make challenging for top honours a more complex task. The
best set of players available against the best set of players available is a
skewed playing field when one club can offer as much as they want for players
both in terms of fee and wages. If a club can’t compete financially on the
playing side they need players with the correct mind set and a manager with
tactical acumen in order to go into combat. A good youth policy and effective scouting
network is also essential when you are unable to ‘shop at Harrods’.
This raises the
question regarding the mission statement of 2006; Competing at the highest
level. The reality is that Arsenal have not done so. To point at facts, it’s
clear that we haven’t.
Nor, sadly,
frustratingly, has there been recognition of the strategies that need to be put
in place for Arsenal to be able to compete with the financially emboldened rivals.
Regardless of the
reasoning, if we don’t spend the same as the other clubs with whom we are
trying to compete we need a plan B. If we don’t have a plan B then we need to
spend; speculate to accumulate.
If the club is set
on financial prudence all well and good but something has to give in order to
compete at the highest level. Yes, it a. While not suggesting that winning
things on the back of serious financial input is any less satisfying for the
fans of the club that does so, I would suggest that winning through old
fashioned values carries a deeper satisfaction.
But there’s the rub.
Old fashioned values have got us nowhere. Those values have got us nowhere
because the playing personnel at the club have not been up to the challenge.
The manager has not been able to tactically thwart teams that are better man
for man. The youth and scouting system has delivered scant return. The
acceptance of mediocrity at board level has been shocking as it is based on the
“as long as we are earning its okay” philosophy.
I guess what I can
conclude is that we need a strategy that is based on spending; and we have a
really big player from Eastern Europe waiting in the wings or a strategy that
is based on the Plan B model outlined above for which you need to get a lot of
factors correct.
If the club and fans
are prepared to accept the Arsenal as a club akin to Everton; once one of the
genuinely big players of English football who slid gradually down the pecking
order and are used to their status, then that’s fine. But that acceptance is to
show scant regard of any fighting qualities that this great club are renowned
for.
That’s how it feels;
a general air of acceptance that Arsenal are yesterday’s men. The once Invincibles,
the former top club in London, the once Bank of England Club.
We’ve always had
class but we used to be contenders instead of ‘also rans’ which we are now.
It's not to late though. Its never too late...Is it?
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so I said...