Arsenal fans and the media seem to view Arsene Wenger’s side with only profound disappointment these days. They bemoan the Frenchman’s seeming unwillingness to spend money, his side’s inability to keep star players, and seeming inability to beat the league’s scrappier teams on anything like a consistent basis. They continually gripe about the fact that Arsenal haven’t won a trophy since 2005 – and let’s face it, they were incredibly lucky to win that FA Cup final (on penalties) – whilst taunts that the team is now a feeder club for free-spending Manchester City, once meant in jest, now seem dispiritingly accurate. Yet there is much to be proud of for fans who are willing to adjust their expectations and really take stock of where the club stands.
Call it stingy, call it “running the club as a business” (which it is), but Arsenal is the only team near the summit of the Premier League – well, perhaps along with the vindicated Ashley regime at Newcastle – not busily building a house of cards. The people running it seem to behave responsibly and with the club’s long-term interests at heart, focusing on the redevelopment of the training ground and construction of the new stadium – as opposed to signing players for tens of millions: something Wenger has never done, even during periods of on-field success. Arsenal might not win the league again any time soon. But there’s a good chance they’ll still be third when one of the current big boys has long since imploded.
It’s worth considering: what will happen to Man City or Chelsea when their sugar-daddies eventually lose interest in their expensive executive toys? What does the future hold for a Manchester United crippled by debt? Can Spurs realistically keep spending if they can’t reliably reach the Champions League each year? And what of Liverpool? Arsenal are often labelled ”a side in transition”, but under Wenger’s stewardship the team has never finished lower than fourth. Certainly they haven’t ever looked like finishing down in eighth.
Popular logic runs that Arsenal have been underachieving. I say they’ve been overachieving of late – and never more so than in 2011/12. Here’s why:
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2 Comments
A good take on the way club is run! A small error in your article – Arshavin only left on loan in the January transfer window. He was with Arsenal in the first half of the season.
Also, though finishing third was good considering the circumstances, the difference in the points with league champions – 19 points. This means that we finished third due to the ineptitude of the rest of the teams. To concede 49 goals is too hard to take for a team like Arsenal stature.
I agree, we certainly benefited from a lot of strange results and possibly even Redknapp being focused on the England situation. On Arshavin, I didn’t mean to imply he left at the same time the other players did – just that we did lose him. In effect we lost him long before we loaned him out. I think it says something when you get rid of your star creative attacking player and record signing even when you’ve just lost Nasri and Fabregas! God knows what happened to him and I’d be interested to hear if he regained any form back in Russia.