Arsenal Singapore

Arsenal a selling club? By Lance Lim

There’s certainly been a lack of Arsenal news lately, with nothing much but the saga of Hleb and Adebayor along with Wenger’s comments that we’re a selling club. The first two issues have been tiring, I’m not really interested in whether they leave or not anymore. Hleb and Ade are hardly irreplaceable. However, Wenger’s comments about us being a selling club intrigues me the most.

We’ve always known that we had a debt to repay for the construction of the stadium, but I don’t think anyone knew that it was to the extent that we had to sell players every year to repay the loan! I’m not very sure how much we have to pay every year, but according to Wenger it’s somewhere around £24million. Imagine having to sacrifice the funds capable of getting us a Fernando Torres every season. If the figure is really that high then I don’t know how we manage it, to any other club it’d be crippling.

Arsene says we’re a selling club. Some Gooners believe his comments were taken out of context, but let’s think of it for a while. Say it wasn’t taken out of context. Wenger says that “The club's strategy is to favour the policy of youngsters ahead of stars and to count on the collective quality of our game.” This means that we probably shouldn’t expect many big name signings over the next 10 years, just more unknowns for Wenger to work his magic over.

And if we’re a selling club, is that such a bad thing? If you think about it, we sell players every season, even before we had this new stadium. Overmars, Petit, Vieira, Pires, Henry- these were just some of the high profile sales we’ve made. Has their departure irreparably damaged the quality and the play of our team? Of course not. All those sales were excellent pieces of business, majority of the time the player’s career goes downhill after we let them go. Wenger knows when the right time is to let players go, I don’t think we should be too worried if we have to sell players every season, so long as he’s in charge. Furthermore, Wenger hasn’t been wrong yet.

Pursuing this policy of nurturing our own youngsters is logical. If the loan is as big as the boss says, then a huge chunk of potential transfer funds would be taken away every year. You can do lots of things with £24million. I understand what Wenger is trying to say, the transfer market is now far too competitive for us. Super-rich clubs are now offering obscene amounts of money for sometimes average players, and the price is pushed even higher for a world-class one. Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool- even the Sp*rs and Manchester City can afford to blow huge amounts on players. When was the last time Arsenal did a big money transfer? Put simply, we’re too easily priced out by other clubs when we move for a player.

That’s why Wenger says we should pursue our youth policy and not rely too much on stars. Our academy has just started producing some very promising players, and I think that, ideally, majority of our future squad would be made up of academy products, with a couple of really, really good stars thrown into the mix. With players being so mercenary nowadays, all we can hope for is that our academy lads love the club more than any money in the world, so we’ll find it easier to keep them here.

All that said, I don’t think we should be too perturbed by Arsene’s comments. So long as he’s in charge, he’ll do the right thing. I mean, all those trophies even after the departure of our stars don’t count for nothing right? He hasn’t failed us yet, and I don’t think he will any time soon. Keep the faith people, Arsene knows.