Morning all! We are emerging from the depths of interlull and can just about smell the whiff of premiership football. A third of the way into the season and this pointless break is probably a good time for all Arsenal fans to come above water and take in some air because boy have we had one hell of a rollercoaster ride. A season that started with the kick in the balls that was the Old Trafford game, a mad dash in the transfer window and losses at Blackburn and Sp*rs left all heads spinning and media pundits sharpening their knives. Since that point we have shown some fight. A string of good results matched by good performances has left us eagerly awaiting the Norwich game rather than fearing another embarrassing Monday morning at the office! If you dare, you may say that we have turned the corner!
In the aftermath of the game against United, there was only one man to whom my anger was directed...Wenger. How could he have let Fabregas and Nasri go so late in the summer and not replace them with quality signings? How could he put what amounts to 11 reserve team players out against the reigning champions? and most of all, why has he not spent the large cash reserves available to bolster the squad? There were many blogs calling for Wenger to be sacked and although I wasn't of that view, it was becoming ever harder to defend him. Looking at the response of the team since that disastrous opening month you would have to give credit where it is due. I am not saying that Wenger is without his faults but not many managers in world football would have been able to turn it around. I honestly believe that if we finish in the top 4, this will rate as one of Wenger's greatest achievements given the departures in the summer and the team available.
This brings me to the title of the article. Football has a way of stirring emotions like no other sport. It can put a spring in your step all week after a good result (think Chelsea 5-3) or can ruin your whole weekend (i.e Sp*rs). The thing about emotion is that although it's what keeps us addicted to the game, it hardly leads to the best judgements, and no more is this true than for all the people who were calling for Wenger to leave. Without even going into his track record over the last 15 years just ask yourself one question...Given Arsenal's finances and philosophy who could come in and do better? Names such as Mourinho and Guardiola have been thrown around as the best candidates and although they are extremely capable managers, and even if we could convince them to leave their clubs, they would not fit the bill for Arsenal. Mourinho has never managed a club which did not have a large amount of resources compared to other clubs in its league. From Porto to Chelsea to Inter to Real, Jose has always been at a club which has been able to financially bully the other clubs in its surroundings and as a result pick up the best players and spend the most on wages. Furthermore, he only ever seems to build one team at a club, never staying long enough to build a legacy for that club. Arsenal are most definitely not in this category and for that reason only I would say Mourihno is not suited. Guardiola has had great success in such a short time, but again he has a vast amount of resources available to him and has inherited what is possibly the greatest footballing side ever to have played the game and in Messi one of the all time football icons. Going from that to what is a team that we would have to categorise as a work in progress at Arsenal will be a massive challenge and one he has no experience in. So before we all scream for Wenger's head in the heat of the moment it is important that we appreciate the man we have in charge of our football club because I can guarantee that 18 of the other 19 clubs in our league would welcome him with open arms!
To be clear I am by no means suggesting that he hasn't made mistakes, one of his biggest flaws is that he has kept faith in sub-standard players for too long (Senderos, Diaby, Denilson etc...). People may argue other faults but at the end of the day all of this is just opinion. To really analyse the worth of the man you would have to look at the facts. The science of analysing sports and performance has progressed significantly in recent years and one of the main concluding points when assessing the results of football teams is that it is not the amount spent on transfers which is most linked with winning but the amount spent on wages. This is not to say that spending large transfer fees doesn't make a difference, it does, buying Jonny Nobody for a pound is not the same as buying Ronaldo for 80 million. But the biggest component of success is wages. As a rule, the club that spends the most on wages will win the league. This is a very important point and one which is underpinned by evidence not only in football but in other team sports as well and as such gives us a great base by which to assess Wenger's performance.
First of all, being fellow Arsenal fans you probably already know that as a club we spend a miserly amount on transfers compared to the clubs around us in the league. Putting this into context, Arsenal are the only club since 2002 who have spent less than they have made on transfers! Arsenal have net proceeds of £21 million, while Chelsea and Manchester City have spent well over £400 million. In the same period, Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester United have all spent around £100 million. (source: Swissramble). Over this same period we have won the double (FA cup and Premiership 01/02), FA Cup again in 2003 and 2005 and have got to the champions league final in 2006. This is before we even mention the 2004 unbeaten season. Despite our low transfer spend we as fans have been consistently treated to watching world class players such as Bergkamp, Vieira, Pires, Henry and Fabregas. Even the current team can claim to have players of world class calibre such as RVP and Sagna with a sprinkling of those such as Wilshere and Szezesny who will undoubtedly one day join them in the same breath. Not too shabby!
Moving on to wages, the graph below shows that in 2010 Arsenal had the lowest wage bill out of the leading premiership clubs. Following the departures of Cesc, Nasri and Clichy this wage bill should be even lower. The gap between us and the other four clubs in the analysis will be even higher in 2011 and going forward so finishing in the top four is actually outperforming for Arsenal, a depressing but important point to note! Another point that the graph partly shows is that since Wenger's reign we have had roughly the same wage bill as Liverpool. Over that same period we have been by far the more consistent and successful club, this is due to the shrewd management of Wenger. Billy Beene, the iconic baseball manager who changed the way teams were managed by excelling in picking up cheap players and making them successful said that out of all the managers in world football he admires Wenger the most.
In the aftermath of the game against United, there was only one man to whom my anger was directed...Wenger. How could he have let Fabregas and Nasri go so late in the summer and not replace them with quality signings? How could he put what amounts to 11 reserve team players out against the reigning champions? and most of all, why has he not spent the large cash reserves available to bolster the squad? There were many blogs calling for Wenger to be sacked and although I wasn't of that view, it was becoming ever harder to defend him. Looking at the response of the team since that disastrous opening month you would have to give credit where it is due. I am not saying that Wenger is without his faults but not many managers in world football would have been able to turn it around. I honestly believe that if we finish in the top 4, this will rate as one of Wenger's greatest achievements given the departures in the summer and the team available.
This brings me to the title of the article. Football has a way of stirring emotions like no other sport. It can put a spring in your step all week after a good result (think Chelsea 5-3) or can ruin your whole weekend (i.e Sp*rs). The thing about emotion is that although it's what keeps us addicted to the game, it hardly leads to the best judgements, and no more is this true than for all the people who were calling for Wenger to leave. Without even going into his track record over the last 15 years just ask yourself one question...Given Arsenal's finances and philosophy who could come in and do better? Names such as Mourinho and Guardiola have been thrown around as the best candidates and although they are extremely capable managers, and even if we could convince them to leave their clubs, they would not fit the bill for Arsenal. Mourinho has never managed a club which did not have a large amount of resources compared to other clubs in its league. From Porto to Chelsea to Inter to Real, Jose has always been at a club which has been able to financially bully the other clubs in its surroundings and as a result pick up the best players and spend the most on wages. Furthermore, he only ever seems to build one team at a club, never staying long enough to build a legacy for that club. Arsenal are most definitely not in this category and for that reason only I would say Mourihno is not suited. Guardiola has had great success in such a short time, but again he has a vast amount of resources available to him and has inherited what is possibly the greatest footballing side ever to have played the game and in Messi one of the all time football icons. Going from that to what is a team that we would have to categorise as a work in progress at Arsenal will be a massive challenge and one he has no experience in. So before we all scream for Wenger's head in the heat of the moment it is important that we appreciate the man we have in charge of our football club because I can guarantee that 18 of the other 19 clubs in our league would welcome him with open arms!
To be clear I am by no means suggesting that he hasn't made mistakes, one of his biggest flaws is that he has kept faith in sub-standard players for too long (Senderos, Diaby, Denilson etc...). People may argue other faults but at the end of the day all of this is just opinion. To really analyse the worth of the man you would have to look at the facts. The science of analysing sports and performance has progressed significantly in recent years and one of the main concluding points when assessing the results of football teams is that it is not the amount spent on transfers which is most linked with winning but the amount spent on wages. This is not to say that spending large transfer fees doesn't make a difference, it does, buying Jonny Nobody for a pound is not the same as buying Ronaldo for 80 million. But the biggest component of success is wages. As a rule, the club that spends the most on wages will win the league. This is a very important point and one which is underpinned by evidence not only in football but in other team sports as well and as such gives us a great base by which to assess Wenger's performance.
First of all, being fellow Arsenal fans you probably already know that as a club we spend a miserly amount on transfers compared to the clubs around us in the league. Putting this into context, Arsenal are the only club since 2002 who have spent less than they have made on transfers! Arsenal have net proceeds of £21 million, while Chelsea and Manchester City have spent well over £400 million. In the same period, Liverpool, Tottenham and Manchester United have all spent around £100 million. (source: Swissramble). Over this same period we have won the double (FA cup and Premiership 01/02), FA Cup again in 2003 and 2005 and have got to the champions league final in 2006. This is before we even mention the 2004 unbeaten season. Despite our low transfer spend we as fans have been consistently treated to watching world class players such as Bergkamp, Vieira, Pires, Henry and Fabregas. Even the current team can claim to have players of world class calibre such as RVP and Sagna with a sprinkling of those such as Wilshere and Szezesny who will undoubtedly one day join them in the same breath. Not too shabby!
Moving on to wages, the graph below shows that in 2010 Arsenal had the lowest wage bill out of the leading premiership clubs. Following the departures of Cesc, Nasri and Clichy this wage bill should be even lower. The gap between us and the other four clubs in the analysis will be even higher in 2011 and going forward so finishing in the top four is actually outperforming for Arsenal, a depressing but important point to note! Another point that the graph partly shows is that since Wenger's reign we have had roughly the same wage bill as Liverpool. Over that same period we have been by far the more consistent and successful club, this is due to the shrewd management of Wenger. Billy Beene, the iconic baseball manager who changed the way teams were managed by excelling in picking up cheap players and making them successful said that out of all the managers in world football he admires Wenger the most.
Source: Swissramble
All of this is well and good and shows that to date Wenger has done an outstanding job. But what does it mean for the future? Is he still the best man to be at the helm? Arsenal are sitting on a transfer budget of c.60 million but this is not solely for transfer fees as it also has to include an increase in wages and this is where the issue lies. Arsenal have an extremely rigid wage structure which means that our top players are not on equal par with that of other clubs but our more junior players are compensated well compared to other clubs. A slightly odd structure which is supposed to reward potential in players but in practice ends up rewarding underperformance as players such as Bendtner and Vela cannot be sold because no one wants to pay their high wages, however players like RVP are on a (relatively) low £70,000 a week. In the past we have paid enough to retain the services of players such as Henry and people forget that we were the club that broke the £100k a week barrier for Sol Campbell (though we did save money on his free transfer!). However, since David Dein famously remarked that 'Roman Abramovich had parked his tanks on our lawn and is firing £50 notes at us', we have been left behind. It seems that for Arsenal to remain competitive our wage bill has to rise and our wage structure has to change but until as a club we can actually afford to substantially increase our wage bill there is only one man who can run such a lean ship so successfully and we should thank our lucky stars that he is with us. So to all those wanting Wenger to leave, be careful what you wish for, you don't know what you've got till it's gone.
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