Truth be told, it is not easy to have been an Arsenal fun in the last few years. Precisely since 2008. 2008 was a very good season which finished badly. We just lost Thierry Henry and were all thinking this is the end. The guy who would always get 25+ goals and 20+ assists for us almost every season, the captain, the living legend just left the ship! Eduardo came in so underwhelming off course. Adebayor was not even looking like a player at the time, Robin was so unreliable always injured. The team was really young. We all thought the season was going to unfold something not so pretty things to see as far as gunners're concerned. We defied the odds. Hleb stepped up really well in the opening games scoring and assisting. Then Van Persie took over before getting out for the rest of the season. We then saw a scoring Adebayor but above all a termendous player in Cesc Fabregas who formed a good partnership with Flamini. Sagna who came over from Auxerre was another underwhelming signing especially with Eboue not that bad up to that point. Luckily for us Sagna as well as Eduardo turned out to be solid buys. Not winning the league that season almost fell like a crime. We all knew how we lost it but it still fell so disapointing!
More criminal was the fact that it all started there! The exodus of players that haven't quite done it for the club. The loss of a group that is about to mature into something good every year was what followed year after year. That's been our reality!
Beyond this season we have to do our utmost to stop that trend. I have no problem moving players that do not wish to be part of the club but we can't kid ourselves. If it's happening over and over again there must be a problem. The thing we need to do something a bit different as Einstein said : "you can't do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result". We seem to be doing the same thing and getting the same result in the last 4 years. I believe the problem is not about 7 years without a trophy it's 4 years of the same things giving the same results, results that are not satisfactory.
Things we have to look at are our squad size and our wage structure. The two are linked and they are not effective at all. You cannot have a squad of 35 players who all earn between £50K and £90K. Some players should be getting way over £100K and others should be no where near the £30K in our squad. Average players deemed not good enough should be easily moved if they are on wages that match their talent. I am not a big fun of huge squad depth but I believe in good squad depth. Good squad depth mean 18 to 20 excellent players that can compete at the highest level. During our successful seasons we used to be able to use quite a few players compared to now. Off course we have been having no luck at all in the injury front but still the squad is too large and we have too many players who are a level or two under.
What I believe we need most in the four last days of the transfer window is to move as many players that are not required as we can. We have to clean the squad of its lesser players. We need to better reward our better players and attract salary wise the top performers. I love the manager and I am with the self sustainable model but we need some twistings and fine tuning if we really want to change our results and our image. I believe we don't have to explode our wage bill either. If we trim the squad well enough we can give good salary without enlarging the wage bill.
Here is hoping for good next four days that can be the turning point from the bad last four years.
COYG!
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