Gunning for what?

How Arsenal’s confusing strategy has turned them into a caricature of themselves

The much maligned League Cup has had quite the week. Mad-cap score lines, Hollywood comebacks, Key Stone Cops defending as well as a good old slice of giant killing (well, as much as a ‘giant’ as Wigan are) have helped the nation fall back in love with the oft derided tournament. Arsene Wenger may rank it as a priority far below that coveted spot in the top four positions of the Premier League, but try underselling the moment to any Arsenal fan that was lucky enough to have found themselves at the Madjeski Stadium on Tuesday night. Tthe one’s that hadn’t left at half time that is. The esteemed Henry Winter put it very eloquently in the Daily Telegraph the next day;

‘As the years pass, they will always recall events of last night. This is what following a team is all about, the ambushing of the emotions, the lows and the highs, the sublime replacing the ridiculous. The game has to be about the glory, about chasing trophies rather than simply keeping the accountants happy by finishing fourth and securing entry to the Champions League.’

It would be wrong to say there are no prizes for finishing fourth, there’s plenty of money and prestige on offer for those that reach the hallowed turf of the Champions League. Maybe clubs can just start to fill up a trophy cabinet with their balance sheets or the bank statements they receive after getting their grubby mits on UEFA’s pots of gold. The game is meant to be about the glory. It’s true, not every team can win something, very few in fact ever do, but aspiring to try and win a competition when you get the chance is surely what the sport is all about.

It was around the time of the Champions League’s expansion when it started to become the trendy thing for the big clubs to play the kids in the League Cup, oddly dismissing the chance of a day in the sun, to instead focus on boosting the bank balance. But we’re trying to win the Champions League, some might cry, that’s the glory we’re gunning for! Well that’s admirable, but a very hard thing to do; why put all your eggs in that basket?

Arsenal’s amazing comeback at Reading comes on the heels of a week in which their much publicised AGM has been in the news. By all accounts it was a feisty affair, with fans unhappy at the way they see the club being run. For many, and for their owners, Arsenal is the model of how a football club should be run. Too many clubs chase the dream, but leave behind them a trail of devastation that too often results in fire sales and redundancies. There are no Arsenal fans that I am aware of that are preaching for their club to bankrupt themselves, but for a set of supporters paying for arguably the most expensive football tickets in the world they are entitled to feel aggrieved at the direction that their club is taking.

The men from the Emirates (that’s the Stadium) seem stuck in the footballing equivalent of ground hog day. Play weakened teams in the FA and League Cups to ensure qualification for the Champions League then try to win that competition using young players that are good, but not top class. As a top seed, an easy group, usually involving Olympiakos and a team from Prague is easily traversed before a knock out round defeat by a genuine top side, one that has often invested heavily in their line-up. Come February and there is little to no chance of silverware, so panic sets in, what is there to achieve? Why qualification for the Champions League again, so we can start all over. Lather, rinse, repeat – it’s been the same story for many years now.

What is Arsenal’s overall end game? What gets them out of bed in the morning if you like. They want to win things, but only two things, the FA Cup and League Cup need not apply. When there is a chance to do so, finishing fourth is far more important. It’s interesting, the club are often held up as being the paragons of financial stability and good housekeeping, but can it be suggested that the qualification for the Champions League every year is not just a desire but an imperative? What if that money was in fact what is keeping the club on the straight and narrow? It’s an interesting model.

In the bizarre world of 21^st century football where £6 million can be called a bargain, the North Londoners are seen as misers in a playboy’s world. They keep their spending low, leaving other’s to chase the extravagant dream. But while that’s true in terms of the money they pay on transfer fees, they have an incredibly bloated wage bill. It was on Sky Sports leading croissant and orange juice commercial the Sunday Supplement a couple of weeks ago that the fact that Arsenal had been forced to plug a gap in the wage budget through sales from transfer fee’s was brought up. How very Chelsea of them.

It would seem that in recent years at Arsenal, mediocrity has been too readily awarded. Big transfer fees for established names have been balked at whilst painfully average squad players that have been at the club for years like Johan Djourou, Nicklas Bendtner and Sebastien Squillaci have been sitting on long contracts with big wages. It doesn’t seem to make sense. Whether it’s the manager, the board, or the owner, or a combination of all three, the overall strategy appears wrong.

Don’t cause yourself a financial meltdown so don’t pay over the top transfer fee’s - nothing overly wrong with that strategy, but why then pay way over the odds in terms of wages to players with a track record of not being up to it at the highest level? You have chosen to focus on winning the Champions League and the Premier League, the two most prestigious tournaments available to you but you are not willing to invest in the players capable of that. As a club, Arsenal have made the conscious decision to trying to compete for the very top honours, arguing that the ‘lesser’ cups get in the way…but they are trying to achieve that with players not up to the highest level because they don’t want to spend on players from the highest level. See how it all fails to add up?

I have admiration for Arsenal and the principles they have sought to run their football club. In an age when too many sides have lived outside of their means and have run the cause of financial ruin, there is absolutely nothing wrong, in my eyes that the club seeks to cut its cloth accordingly. However, what is the club hierarchy’s ultimate end game? Somewhere along the line it seems to have got lost and confused. Maintaining a place in the top four has become an obsession, something to be pursued far above the glory of winning a trophy. It’s become a policy of the status quo and a vicious circle, perennial qualification for a competition, without signing the players needed to win that competition. If this was purely business, then it may be a sound model, but football, just like the crazy 12 goal night at Reading is about emotion and nights of glory, not bank sheets and dividends.