There are times when Arsene Wenger
seems bewildered by modern football. It's not tactics or relating to players
that's the problem -- the Arsenal manager gets all that. Wenger, 66, just
cannot seem to fathom how the transfer market has broken away from any notion
of common sense.
The
Frenchman is not the only person in the game who shakes his head ruefully when
talking about fees and wages. Most insiders can see the absurdity of paying
more than £100 million for Paul Pogba but accept it is a natural consequence of
the spiralling television deals that fund the Premier League. Wenger, though,
cannot seem to make the intellectual leap.
It
means that summer transfer windows are where we see the Arsenal manager at his
worst. He shies away from reinforcing the team because the targets are
overpriced, thereby going into the season short-handed with problems left
unaddressed.
Wenger
wants value for the money he spends, but if Arsenal get drawn into another
unedifying deadline-day scramble for recruits it is likely to prove more
expensive. His reluctance to pay the going rate has been his undoing in the
transfer market over the past decade.
The
club walked away from a move for Shkodran Mustafi, the German defender, when
Valencia demanded a fee in the region of £50 million. Even if that deal gets
resurrected -- and it is unlikely -- it will still leave Wenger with limited
choices up front.
The
latest experiment is to use Alexis Sanchez as a striker. This scenario is the
perfect vignette to illustrate Wenger's flawed thinking in the transfer market
and the ramifications of the mistakes during windows past.
Wenger
compared Sanchez to Luis Suarez. Three years ago, Arsenal had a very real
chance of signing the Barcelona striker. Suarez was unhappy at Liverpool, had a
£40 million buyout clause in his contract and was desperate for Champions
League football. Suarez has a nasty streak on the pitch that Arsenal lack and
was maturing into one of the world's best players. He was very eager to move
south. An offer of £60 million or above would have probably prised Suarez from
Anfield. Instead, the London club triggered the buyout by adding an extra £1 to
the £40 million, a tactic that served only to infuriate the Merseyside club.
A
year later Sanchez moved to the Emirates from Barcelona. They were happy to let
him go because they were trading up -- Suarez arrived at the Nou Camp. As good
as the Chilean is, he is not in the same category as the former Liverpool man.
Wenger had to settle for second best because he tried to get one of the most
exciting talents in the game on the cheap. He will be paying for that mistake
for the rest of his career. Suarez is the sort of player who could have
galvanised Arsenal into title winners.
Sanchez
is not a front-line forward. He looks as if he does not believe he can play the
role. Against Leicester he drifted wide too often and did not make his presence
felt in the opposition penalty area. The 27-year-old is much more effective
cutting inside from the wings. This is another case of Wenger mixing-and-matching
and coming up with a team less than the sum of its parts.
After
the draw with Leicester, Wenger spoke about spending on players and put it in
the context of his responsibility to the club's 600 employees. This also gives
a hint to the Arsenal manager's mindset: it harks back to a decade and a half
ago when the financial landscape of the Premier League was very different.
Then, as Leeds United proved, it was possible to put the entire existence of a
club in danger through wild overspending. Now, with the huge television deal
(Arsenal will earn in the region of £140 million in domestic TV money alone
this season), the Premier League salary cap and financial fair play
restrictions it is almost impossible for a top-flight club to teeter towards
the fiscal abyss the way they could during Wenger's first few years in England.
In
so many areas of the game Wenger is one of the cleverest, most forward-looking
coaches. But when it comes to money he still seems to think like it is 2002.
Back
then, Arsenal had won Wenger's penultimate title. Two years later he won his
last one, leading "the Invincibles" to an unbeaten league season. The
sense of invincibility is long gone. What has not changed is the manager's
aversion to spending.
The
mood around the Emirates is angry. The away fans at the King Power stadium let
their manager know their displeasure in clear terms. That will upset Wenger but
not change his mind.
If
the summer sees the Arsenal manager at his worst, the winter shows him at his
best. Even in such a competitive Premier League he will take his side into the
top four. For many fans of the Gunners this will not be enough.
Wenger
is unlikely to act differently now. Arsenal will never spend as freely as the
majority of their peers while he is in charge. The downslide is they will
probably never win the title again with Wenger at the helm.
0 comments:
Post a Comment