Why Wenger Should Stay

I grow weary of telling people I refuse to be identified or categorised as person by a set of initials but in order to fend off any “you’re just stuck up Wenger’s bum you AKB scum” type comments I will say it once more – I am not WOB or AKB. I am Arsenal FC.

As someone who spends most of their life on the fence I am exposed to the rants of both camps and the noises from either side has become deafeningly cacophonous.

I am not opposed to change, I just think change has to be for the right reasons and for the better. Ardent “WOBs” would say this makes me AKB. Ardent “AKBs” would say my opinions are as bad as the WOB’s for no-one could replace Wenger. Well, someone can replace Wenger and will do so, when is a completely difference question and the one the AKB maybe should be arguing.

Being off the pace in the title race and the outside bet to win the Premier League this season after leading for so long has, understandably, led to much disappointment. Arsenal’s healthy bank balance and transparent need for a striker has tipped a few people off the fence into the Wenger Out field.

For what it is worth, I believe Arsène deserves a little more time. Many will argue he has had plenty of time and whilst I respect the sentiment behind the argument I don’t think it is entirely fair when you consider what Wenger has given us.

I’m not talking about his great achievements between 1996 and 2005. No, I think Wenger deserves more time because of what he has given us since we won the FA Cup in 2005.

William Blake once wrote: “The most sublime act is to set another before you.” – I believe Wenger has set the club before himself and has sacrificed a hell of a lot for this club and deserves a chance to leave on a high. Arsenal had a Q&A last year and what I personally took from it was a sense of confirmation of Arsène’s sacrifice for Arsenal over the past 8 years.

Q: Since you’ve (Gazidis) been at the club, I think we’ve descended into a second rate team. I don’t think we can attract top class players like we did when we signed Sol Campbell and Dennis Bergkamp. What evidence can you give us that we can sign that class of player?

“The landscape has changed significantly in the last decade and again in the last few years, but we have a vision not to put our football club into the pockets of a wealthy owner. The key for us is to be able to generate enough resources to be able to compete. We think we can extend our revenues to around the £300m mark in the next couple of years, which is about what Bayern Munich make and they have a similar philosophy to us, they rely on their own resources. Nobody would suggest that Bayern Munich aren’t able to compete for the top talent in the transfer market.

If we make the right decisions, there is no reason why we can’t compete at the same level as them. We will continue to trust the judgement of the manager on our talent and the decisions he makes. It’s impossible to predict the future, we wouldn’t have predicted 5 years ago that Abu Dhabi would pump the money in that they have, we haven’t seen yet quite how FFP will work out. But with that £300m turnover, we will be able to compete with other top clubs and the way that other top clubs do.”

Q: Arsene Wenger says, in his words, that he’s only interested in super quality players. Yet we’ve seen some far from super quality players arrive. You’ve spoken about the money available to him. Is Arsene Wenger committed to spending it and spending it on more expensive, better quality players?

“Arsene is committed to top class that he believes in. That’s not always necessarily the most expensive. Santi Cazorla wasn’t that expensive but he is top class. Now I’m not sending a message that all deals will be like Cazorla so everything will be alright. But any deal starts with the talent with the manager believes in. We believe in his judgement, if we didn’t, we’d have the wrong man. We think he has done an outstanding job in this environment.

We have always made the money we generate available to him to spend, it’s a very simple philosophy. That hasn’t been enough to compete with a club like Manchester United and Chelsea and Manchester City. Where Arsene has done an outstanding job is to stay in the mix of the top teams, not where we want to be, but in the mix, on a relatively limited budget. He is not scared to spend money but he has to believe he is getting a top class player. The parameters in which he has to operate is to spend what the club can afford and my job is to make that as big as possible and Arsene’s job is to think about which talent he wants to spend that on in the best way possible.

It’s absolutely a joint mission between myself, Arsene and Stan Kroenke to put Arsenal at the top of world football. We haven’t gone forwards, but we haven’t gone backwards either. Now we have to go forwards. You’re asking me to guarantee that money will all be spent. But it also depends on what talent is available. If we only find one player that we like, we won’t spend twice as much on him just so we can say we spent all of the money. That doesn’t make any sense to me. The key will be to buy the players Arsene Wenger believes in.”

Q: What are the specific roles of yourself, Dick Law and Stan Kroenke and what would you say are your successes on the playing side?

“I have been asked what it is I do before but much less politely than that, so thank you! We have an owner that hasn’t put any debt on the club, who hasn’t taken any management fees, he doesn’t treat the club as his own personal fiefdom or as his plaything. He’s respectful of the club’s freedom. We’re lucky to have an owner with a vast experience in sports and sports ownership, with significant contacts and he’s supported the club very tangibly. A lot of our commercial successes are down to his knowledge.

My job is off the field, to represent the club and supporting the manager and his footballing conditions. Dick Law works with me and Arsene in negotiation of player deals, he has vast experience in that, he speaks 5 different languages and flies all around the world to negotiate deals. Arsene is in charge of the talent and myself and Dick Law give him support.”

Q: I’m surprised that there has been no reference to Red & White Holdings tonight, everybody’s been very quiet about it. If they’re talking about putting money in, why don’t we take it?

“We’ve supported financial restrictions and they would prohibit the sort of cash injection you suggest. So it wouldn’t do us much good. Not sure an explosion of spending on salaries and transfer fees is healthy for the game overall. Arsenal Football Club will always do well, but it’s bigger than just Arsenal, it’s about the whole of football too. It saddens me to see great clubs having to compete for outside investment, we want to broaden good ownership in the game. If that doesn’t happen, Arsenal will still go on and do well.”

Q: What does the club do if the financial restrictions aren’t applied?

“We’re in favour of it, but it doesn’t mean it’s part of our strategy. We don’t control it so we can’t rely on it. What would we do differently? Nothing. We’d do the same things in both worlds, just like Bayern are doing. They have revenues of around £300m and we’re nearly there. We’ve every chance of competing in an unregulated world like they do.”

Q: The underlying atmosphere of these questions tonight has been that the transfer deals and the performances haven’t been good enough, which is why the questions have been phrased as they have. Have we already missed a trick this summer by not getting deals done quickly and catching Mourinho, Pellegrini and Moyes with their pants down?

“No, I don’t think we’ve missed a trick. We need the agreements of clubs and players to do deals. We deal in a relatively small group of players at the top level of the game. We’re working very hard but in every case, I know the reasons why the deals for players we’re talking to haven’t happened yet.”

Wenger has also been on record as saying the club needed to make a certain amount of money each season before transfer spend. That coupled with some of Ivan’s responses says to me that the club haven’t quite reached the level they feel they need to be at to start making big purchases.

This summer was always pointed to as the one Arsenal would have the necessary funds to spend big if required but a lot of that depended on many things.

Mostly it depended on reaching the Champions League every year so the debt could be easily financed and that has been difficult when players have deserted the club and those around us spend frivolously.

Along the way we have seen cup competitions sacrificed for Champions League qualification and top players replaced with multiple inferior players to spread the load and all of this has led to anger and disappointment, mainly directed at the manager.

Wenger has willingly sacrificed his own reputation amongst the Arsenal faithful to get us, safely, to the point where we have “Bayern Munich revenues” and can compete for top level players. Wenger has willingly sacrificed a lot more money than people complain he currently gets paid as he has repeatedly spurned the advances of richer clubs to stay loyal to Arsenal.

Could we have won one of the finals we got to in the past 8 years? Of course we could but in 2006 we went down to 10 men. Did Wenger force Lehmann to do that? Can you say “but he buys the players” when you are talking about an Invincible? Did he give offside goals? Can you account for that when you set up your tactics?

In 2007, it had only, technically, been one year of no trophies for Arsenal but they had reached a final so playing a youthful looking team didn’t seem like a bad idea – only retrospectively do people complain but I don’t remember anyone complaining about the line-up before kick-off. It was one of those games where, despite having more chances, we lost by a late goal.

In 2011 we lost a game we really should have won. Was it down to tactics? Some will say yes but how do you set up to account for calamitous mistakes?

The past 8 years could have been sweetened by a cup win, and possibly should have, but the minimum target was achieved. We got Champions League football every year without spending a lot of money and remained an attractive and relatively successful brand heading towards our new commercial deals.

Last summer proved we can spend big, and Wenger will spend big, if we want to. Özil’s transfer is probably worth closer to £70m than the £42.5m fee we paid for him.

Is Arsène Wenger the man for the next 5-10 years? No, I don’t think he is – but I do think he could be the man for the next 2-3 years. He’s sacrificed a lot of this club – he knew what he was signing up to with our financial restrictions and knew a significant proportion of the support would turn on him but he did it willingly and deserves a chance to spend the money he has helped create.

If a new manager joined this summer he would be inheriting a team requiring only a few tweaks, tweaks that Wenger is more than capable of making. If a new manager joins in two years time he will be inheriting a team of established, but still young, British players, a healthy U21s/reserves set-up, world-class stars (and ones he will buy this summer) and potentially a base of recent trophies to build upon. The new manager would still need to make some additions to replace ageing stars and deepen the defence.

It’s incredibly difficult to do what Wenger has done over the past 8 years – fans favourite to replace him, Jurgen Klopp, is a prime example – and for that reason I think he deserves a chance to spend the money that was foretold to be available in 2014 and his work helped make reality.

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