In the long run, financial fair play will work out well for us. In the short-term, it is going to make life very uncomfortable for everyone connected to Arsenal.
From the outside looking in, Arsenal are still very much a team in transition. I know there are probably a number of people screaming at me right now simply for saying this, because as far as they’re concerned, this period of transition has gone on for far too long. But maybe, just maybe, we should start to look at the last five years as something completely different.
The last half-decade has seen us throw down an anchor and weather some pretty torrid times.
Moving to a new stadium is always a very precarious scenario. How many teams have we seen relegated (or at the very least, lose an incredible amount of form) in the first couple of seasons at a new ground. Throughout the transition from Highbury to the Emirates, we have remained competitive – every season we have remained in the Champions League.
This has also been a time of paying off a massive mortgage on our new home, and watching the sales of flats in our old ground move very slowly due to a worldwide financial crisis. We’ve managed our debt, even paying some of it off ahead of schedule; at the same time, we have remained competitive in the Premier League.
There are teams out there, Barca, Madrid, Man City and Chelski just to name a few, who have been spending truly unsustainable amounts of money. It is almost completely impossible to compete with these teams for a player. If we offer £10 million, they can offer £20 million, if we offer £50,000-a-week, ultimately, they can offer £200,000-a-week. Yet somehow we’ve still managed to stay competitive on the pitch.
So, financial fair play is on its way. As far as we’re concerned it’s not going to be a problem. In fact, FIFA are using us as the benchmark, the example of a ‘well run club’ to hold up for the entire world to see. In the short-term it will see the super-rich clubs investing vast amounts of money. The implication for us is that these clubs will now all look to destabilise Arsenal, offering substantial financial rewards to our players to jump ship, as they wont be able to do the same in a couple of years time. Also, the more of our current team that is shipped out now, the longer it will take us to exert our dominance once the regulations are put in place, and other clubs know this.
This new financial climate is going to bring about a new age in the modern game, when it doesn’t matter who’s got the biggest car, but rather who can drive the fastest.
There are supporters and pundits (and ex players – yes I’m talking about you, Ray ‘The Romford Pele’ Parlour) who want us to spend loads of money now. They see a couple of high-profile signatures as the only remedy to our particular ailment. There are even the fair-weather supporters (mostly naive if you ask me) who call for Wenger to be sacked. The future of football is approaching, and how we’re going to do in this new era is going to have much to do with how we hold our nerve as the sun sets on the time of the billionaire fantasy football league.
If this was a game of chicken, then those calling for Wenger’s head and one-hundred million spent on new signings, well, they’re the ones who blinked first, crashing out of the game. All we need to do is hold our nerve, have a little faith, tie our best players down onto long-term contracts and keep our manager, and backroom staff, at the club.
We need to weather this storm, because when it’s over and we all come out to take in the view, it’s going to be beautiful.
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Very Good article .
The people calling for huge name signings have no clue and cannot see the future of football .
Wenger is creating a brand of football by investing in young players and bringing them through .It will work one day for him and he will create a side that will dominate english football the way Barca have done . All that with good finances and a sustainable model .
hear hear.
WHO? mike holmes, WHO? MIKE HOLMES.
we can only hope geez, billions have been buying rules since adam was a boy.
As long as the big clubs still have that money it doesnt matter if we save because Madrid and Barca and Chelsea will always have investors from dubai or some where that will loan them the money to have a big transfer budget. This plan you are talking about will take too long for any support to just say “Oh we are rebuilding” Plus the big clubs are getting most of their players from their youth systems like Barca and Madrid.The only person that has came from
arsenal’s youth that i know of is Jack Whilshere and he is great but the point is that Barca has basically their starting eleven from their youth and then they have the money to buy players from their youth squads back to their team (fabregas). Madrid and Milan are practically the same way. So i dont think we need to spend money now, i agree with you on that but i think that we need to spend money on our youth system so that we can have a great 7 or 8 players that we can say we didn’t really have to buy. THEN we could spend money later like you said and it could be a great team because everyone else would had spent all their money.
“In the short-term it will see the super-rich clubs investing vast amounts of money. The implication for us is that these clubs will now all look to destabilise Arsenal, offering substantial financial rewards to our players to jump ship, as they wont be able to do the same in a couple of years time.”
At least someone else can see what is happening too, i thought i was the only one.
An other thing is, how is it that no one else can see the destabilising of our team last season caused by the Cesc saga, which i hope is not allowed to continue into the new season.
Cesc must go NOW. At all cost. His presence there is now a destabilising feature and must not be tolerated any more, and he also cost us a win against Barca, my god how blind we have become.
Unless Cesc has now realised that Barca will not be good for him, and re-pledges his commitment to AFC, apologises to the fans, and start to BE Arsenal, but really i CANNOT see that happening at all.
This is a breadth of fresh air in the midst of very negative blogs authored by AAA’s. It is a pity that many supporters cannot see the hand writing on the wall. Barcelona has been winning everything winnable but they are heavily ladened with debt right now. They have not build a new stadium like us. Their debt is a consequence of unwise spending on so called big name players. The financial returns from the trophies they have won cannot finance their spending habit. Presently, they no longer do colour photo copies in their office because it is too expensive. They have sacked some staff members that should be essential to their operations because they cannot afford to keep them. In June last year, they could not pay their players because the money was not there. They had to borrow to pay. If they were living within their income, they should not buy players at all this window. In reality, they do not need Fabragas because they could make do with Alcantara who is a promising youngster, but old habits die hard. A day of reckoning will come when they will have to sell massively to pay debts.
As for Arsenal, our debt is because of the new stadium that we built and we are well on course to pay it. When the financial fair play comes into effect and clubs have to live within their income, many clubs will not be able to buy players at all unless they sell. Arsenal will still be able to buy the players that they need in addition to those coming through from the academy. I do not mind us waiting a couple of seasons or more for our financial policy to begin to bring trophy returns. I am one who is ready to keep faith and see our policy produce trophies for us. Those who cannot wait may jump ship now, but they will be back with their tails tucked between their legs when the policy they so despised start to produce results.
When your best players want out, when top players aren’t interested in coming to the club, when you refuse to pay an extra one million for a player and the deals fall through, when you go about a youth policy so extreme that no other club in the world would even dream of going that far, that’s not a policy, that’s just stupid.
Nothing new that we don’t know of. But I don’t agree that others are trying to destabilize Arsenal. Cesc story – we all knew the reason behind it. The situation of Clichy and Nasri is entirely down to our own failings in tying them down to long term contracts at the right time.
If they wanted to do s then they would have bid for Wilshere and Ramsay
The only true belief for a football club is winning trophies at all costs year in and year out. All this other diversion about financial stability, etc., belongs to the financial markets were billionaires exchange cash for sport team toys. As fans, all we wnat is to watch good football and win. Let the suit-types in the boardroom and financial markets worry about the financial numbers. Wash away the coolaid Wenger has been feeding you to justify his mediocrity of the football pitch.