Arsenal have opened Pandora’s Box « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade
Arsenal have opened Pandora’s Box
Don McMahon
Following the departure of Cesc Fabregas for a derisory sum of around 30M Euro after add-ons, with Barca’s mocking confirmation that they robbed us, and with the sale of Samir Nasri to City for 25M sterling, there were innumerable cries of outrage and dismay from the British media,punditry and fan-base. The litany went something like this: Arsenal are eviscerated, losing their two best, world-class midfielders and will struggle to avoid relegation , obtain a CL place or compete for any trophies for the foreseeable future, as these two superstars are irreplaceable, etc.,etc.
While all of the above may be arguable and debatable in the short run, a far more serious consequence of Arsenal’s dealings with their key players and in particular the rapacious Big 4 clubs has shown its ugly head. Possessed of a bottomless treasury which permits them to troll the World Footballing waters like some indulgent, slothful, filthy rich ¨sports fishermen¨ trying to catch the trophy they’ve always desired, these Oilygarchs and Sugar-daddies of the upper echelons can now confirm that AFC are a selling Club, given the right pressure, agents collaboration and player histrionics. Cesc held on to hope for 7 years but eventually succumbed to a 3 year campaign to tap him up led by the entire Catalan nation, press and players alike. This told the aforementioned vultures two crucial things about AFC:
a) We care about and respect our players enough that we would avoid forcing them to ¨suffer¨ at Arsenal when they are no longer happy here, unlike those clubs which hoard their acquisitions like a miser hoards his riches and refuse to permit the want-away player to leave unless absolutely unavoidable.
b) The Arsenal team and all its talents are fair game for unethical, unprofessional and unprincipled tapping up, underhanded manipulation and illegal approaches orchestrated by agents, opposition players and the press. All of these black ops dealings are, while not openly sanctioned by FIFA, EUFA or the various national Associations, blissfully ignored and clandestinely encouraged by the above bodies failure to punish them. As long as its Arsenal, they look the other way…were it Barca or United there would be all hell to pay.
c) A long-term contract (Cesc’s was up in 2015) means nothing to agents, vulture Clubs or the players themselves. If they can whine, wiggle and worm their way out of it for a bigger or better payoff (be it trophies, glory, money, faster cars, better paella or whatever) then all is fair in love and war.
I warn anyone who has the gall to maintain that AFC ¨stole¨ Cesc and other youth players from La Masia to tread carefully since these recruitments were perfectly legal, done openly and with parental and player consent and only after the parent Club failed to offer these kids any opportunity for advancement, unlike the above-mentioned serpentine dealings of the axis of evil Clubs.
The second major paradigm shift that these summer transfers brought about was the Nasri saga. Here was a player who refused numerous contract offers, spurred on in his intransigence by his agent David Dein, despite promising to resign one year ago, if the offer was right. Wenger did his best but Nasri’s head was already turned and who could blame him? However the consequences of this event are far more profound than many fickle, shallow fanboys realize:
1) The message is now clear and undeniable. Arsenal players can be easily manipulated into ¨holding out¨ for a potential payoff at one of any big money Clubs provided they are on the 2nd to last year of their contract. RVP is supposedly in this boat right now and is walking the path blazed by Nasri and Cesc. While Cesc’s case was a one off event and not likely to happen again it is a cautionary tale that could easily be repeated under similar circumstances.
2)Wenger’s decision to sell Nasri indicates very firmly that we will sell under the above circumstances rather than lose the player on a Bosman at the end of his contract. The old adage that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush applies here….it is simply good business and if any Club is renown for that, it is certainly the Arsenal.
So where does that leave us? In actual fact, there is nothing new in all of this; AFC and Wenger have long known the above rules and regulations of managing transfers, either in or out. They have become adepts at playing the waiting game, resigning players on long-term contracts and snapping up unknowns on the very cheap, all of which is lauded, even in the Anti-Arsenal press of our day. Where the new playing field becomes very evident is the prejudice Arsenal face in trying to keep their stars, all of whom are aware of the Nasri-Cesc strategy and seem prepared to use these tools in the bargaining that AFC undertake with them. Who can blame them? Arsenal’s relatively firm wage structure and comprehensive club obligations for their Gunners have encouraged players like Nasri and Flamini, Adebayor, Hleb and Cesc to resort to more subtle and byzantine tactics to get their way. That is the price of modern football and the direct consequence of rich Clubs being permitted to tap up, laugh at moderation like Arsenal’s and spend to excess in order to buy ¨success¨. It is every man for themselves at the moment and the final consequence of this ¨Yankee trader free-for-all¨ is that Club cohesiveness, dressing-room unity and morale and commitment has sunk beneath the waves of filthy lucre, the victim of unmitigated greed, scandalous machinations, Machiavellian indifference of the authorities and the selling Clubs’ inability to fight on a slanted playing field.
Nothing will change until the selling Club’s and the authorities form an alliance against the Axis of Evil and their agent minions.
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