Monday, July 23rd, 2012 « Untold Arsenal: Arsenal News. Supporting the Lord Wenger; coach of the decade

If you think you know your Arsenal, it is time to think again. Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football.

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Arsenal’s RVP strategy will soon be written up as a classic manoeuvre; no matter what the player does Arsenal win.

By Tony Attwood

There are a number of things that can happen to RVP.  These are divided into three groups

Group 1: He stays with Arsenal and

a) repeats his brilliance of last season

b) stays uninjured but can’t repeat that one season of glory

c) gets injured a lot

Group 2: He leaves Arsenal for a lot of money (say £25m which is a lot for an injury prone 29 year old) and

a) repeats his brilliance of last season for another club

b) stays uninjured but can’t repeat that one season of glory

c) gets injured a lot

Group 3: He leaves Arsenal for not so much cash (say £10m which is not a lot for an injury prone 29 year old) and

a) repeats his brilliance of last season for another club

b) stays uninjured but can’t repeat that one season of glory

c) gets injured a lot

So which ones are the best news for Arsenal?  Which ones are bad news for Arsenal?

Good news for Arsenal

Group 1: He stays with Arsenal and

a) repeats his brilliance of last season – obviously great – and if he does that on his current contract we have had no extra signing on fee.  He might go at the end of the contract but being this brilliant three years running is unlikely – even Henry and Bergkamp had lesser years.

b) stays uninjured but can’t repeat that one season of glory – but assuming that just takes him back to his earlier seasons, then there’s still some good stuff to come from him.

Group 2: He leaves Arsenal for a lot of money (say £25m which is a lot for an injury prone 29 year old) and

b) stays uninjured but can’t repeat that one season of glory – this won’t be so good for the new club because they’ll also have to sort out how to get him into the team, and with him in modest form, but with the knowledge of where he was for one season, they won’t quite know what  to do.  Is he a number 9?  Maybe, but then if he stops scoring, then what?   A number 10, maybe, but if he has the taste for number 9, then what?  A problem when you have just paid this much

c) gets injured a lot.  Bad news for the new club – a waste of money, and a player in their 25 who isn’t doing the job.

Group 3: He leaves Arsenal for not so much cash (say £10m) and

b) stays uninjured but can’t repeat that one season of glory – still a problem for the new club because they will have met his wage demands.  Money is pouring out for a player approaching 30, and whose best days are behind him.

c) gets injured a lot.  OK they didn’t pay the transfer fee but they paid the cash for his salary and he’s demanding a five year contract.

Thus we had nine options and it turns out six are good for Arsenal.  Let’s look at the three that are bad for Arsenal.

Bad for Arsenal

Group 1: He stays with Arsenal and gets injured a lot.  We need backup – but fortunately we have just bought two good players.  Much depends on the salary – if he is staying on a new contract this might not be such good news.  On the current contract, well, we’ve had it before.  So not so good, but still, not too bad.  Besides we have injury insurance for long term injuries and Arsenal don’t do insane contracts, which is why RVP wants to leave.

Group 2: He leaves Arsenal and repeats his brilliance of last season for another club.   A bit of a bugger, but it happens, and if we get £25 million and buy a much younger player along with the other two forwards we have, that’s not a bad deal.  Besides, whoever buys him knows they aren’t going to get a third year of brilliance from him, but they will be tied to a long and highly wasteful contract, which leaves them paying him for 5 years.  So we have done our bit to wreck the economy of one of our rivals.  Good move.

Group 3: He leaves Arsenal for not so much cash  and really turns it on for another club.  Yup that will be very annoying emotionally, not least because we’ll have to listen to the AAA ram it down our throats, but even so, it will certainly only last one year.

Conclusion

When we look at it, not only are 6 of the 9 options good for us, but actually two of the three bad options turn out to be not that bad.  The only really bad option is the very last one – to watch him do very well with another club.  It will be sickening, I agree.  But even then there’s a get out clause, because RVP is looking for a five year deal at mega salary levels, and even the ultimate master Bergkamp was not as good at 33 as he was at 30.  So much as I would hate this final option I would think on to the rest of that contract, piling money into RVP’s bank account, but seeing a decline would be painful for anyone taking in the overall picture.

When we look at it all this way it is amazing that some people are still agonising over the issue.  Of course Talk Sprot will be saying what a disaster-cockup-tragedy it is for Arsenal, and the AAA’s new house newspaper, the Guardian, is pumping out the deja vu stuff (being an intellectual paper they do foreign phrases, and probably even get the accents in the right place).  In fact so good are Talk Sprot and the Guardian at this that they not only convinced the AAA blogs (not too hard) they also convinced Mr Usmanov, although I fear Mr U has realised that on this one he has made a bit of a prat of himself with his letter.   He knows a thing or two about making the best of a situation, and even he must be squirming a bit now that people are thinking the matter through.

Getting RVP to make outrageous demands turns out to be a great move for Arsenal in 6 out of 9 scenarios, and a fairly decent situation in two of the remaining three.  Even the one really glum-making outcome is not as bad as it appears on the surface, because at least it ties the buyer into a declining RVP for a number of years.

OK it is true that none of my options is that he goes and reproduces last season’s form for the next five years.  That is not there because it is not possible.  No one can deliver that sort of form at the end of his third decade for three years in a road.  No one – not Henry, not Bergkamp, not Adams, not no one.

So, virtually every outcome is fine.  Given a choice out of all nine, I think I now fancy the sale for £25m and using it to buy in another top forward in his early 20s.  Of course most of all I would have liked him to sign again on a realistic salary, but that was never an option.

And come to think about it, this is what Mr Wenger undoubtedly knew too, has been plotting all along.  1-0 to the management I suspect.

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