Spend Some Flamining Money
Let me start by saying I am not a Wenger apologist nor am I calling for anyone’s head at Arsenal. I am what I like to call a positive realist and those who know me would probably agree, or at least with the positive part.
The reason I think I am a realist is because I don’t think everything at the club is all sunshine and rainbows, nor do I “excuse” the club for their “ineptitude” or “acceptance of mediocrity”.
I don’t point it out either and that for some is as bad as excusing it. The reason I don’t excuse or accept it is simply because I do not know the truth. The vast majority, and I’m talking 99%+, of Arsenal supporters do not know for sure exactly what they attack or protect the club for.
For example, Juan Mata, did we miss out because Wenger is tight or was it an astronomical signing on fee that we couldn’t afford at the time? What actual proof is their either way? What physical evidence?
Higuain, did we miss out because Wenger is a ditherer or because we believed we had an actual shot of securing a superior player? We don’t know.
Getting angry over your perception of a situation is exactly what caused my negative period. Look through my old blogs, the early stuff, you’ll see plenty of criticism against the club and manager, most of it based on nothing.
The only criticism I have levied against the club/manager that had “proof” was my blog about paying The Ox a big salary too early. And even then, that was written in a “if reports are true” kind of way.
If people want to get angry and say “if it’s true the club did this then….” that’s fine but don’t burst an artery working yourself up over unsubstantiated reports just because that is what everyone on twitter is talking about.
The thing most people are annoyed about this summer is transfers and yesterday’s announcement of Flamini’s re-signing only caused to divide the house further.
I still plan to give my opinion on the summer as a whole when September 3rd rolls around as I have said I will do all summer but here’s a little view on Flamini.
Our little General
Signing Mathieu is a good thing regardless of who else we buy. The talent of a player is not determined by the players bought in the same window but by their own ability and how they fit in to the existing squad of players.
If we do not make significant purchases before the window closes then on the whole we have had an extremely poor summer (which I will elucidate further on when the window has closed). However that should not reflect poorly on Flamini or Sanogo who have been signed on their own merit and not the merit of players we may or may not buy before Monday’s deadline.
Some have said to me that there would be less anger if we had made other signings first. I agree with that but also think it is misguided anger. Just because Wenger said it takes three agreements doesn’t mean it’s wrong (I know many refuse to be swayed by anything the man says regardless of how true it is). You need the selling clubs agreement, the player and the price.
Free agents are easier to sign because there is only one agreement, the contract. Imagine if Wenger said “I want to sign Flamini again but I want to wait until I have paid for some players” but those players don’t sign in time for the NLD and we lose because we don’t have a DM.
People would lose their shit. The world would drown in a wave of contradictory bullshit as Gooners the world over screamed in the clubs direction for not signing Flamini sooner.
“He was available on a free FFS you clueless, incompetent wankers!”.
Oh shit, Arsenal fans didn’t like what they got after saying they didn’t want what they needed
Contradiction is one of my biggest pet hates. It’s up there with needless stupidity and the two are combined far too often when it comes to Arsenal.
I’ve seen hundreds of tweets flow through my TL on twitter for the past 6 weeks about depth and the need to sign more players for the squad as well as players for the starting eleven. When I challenged some of these tweets by posing the question “Would you rather we tried until the last minute to sign better players or do you just want numbers?” the overwhelming majority of responses, to my surprise, was “We are thin, we need a bigger squad”.
I like to clarify before I judge so I asked these people if they cared who the players were and most said “I don’t care what their name is, we just need numbers”.
Most of those people complained like hell on twitter yesterday when we signed Flamini. They complained because he didn’t cost anything and because he wasn’t the player they wanted the club to sign.
Contradictory bollocks.
Contradiction
I had someone tell me that “One free signing is okay but when they’re all free it isn’t good”. I asked them if price correlated with ability and that by that logic if we signed Ronaldo and Messi on free transfers tomorrow that one of them would be a bad signing. Their reply was to compare Sanogo and Flamini to Ronaldo and Messi. Weak.
The logic and reasoning one chooses to use is the same regardless of the players involved. It could have been Cabaye and Tiote and if anyone thinks that either of those players is better for Arsenal than Flamini then they clearly didn’t watch Flamini in 2007/08. Wenger believes that he is the same player who left and seriously, who are we to argue? He saw the guy in training everyday.
I’m sure people would have been happy if Flamini cost £15m. Sol Campbell didn’t cost a penny and he was one of our best ever players under Wenger.
Some will say the comparison is unfair but what Sol did is exactly what Flamini is going to do but from the other side of the mirror. Both came to make up numbers. Sol became first choice and thus made other players the backup players. Flamini is mostly here to back up Arteta. It would be preferable to buy better players and allow what we have to become the backup but in the absence of better players, and lets face it, it’s hard to find someone significantly better for our set up than Arteta, you go for similar quality to become the back up.
I’m glad we got Flamini on a free because that’s £17-20m saved on Cabaye that we will hopefully use to sign someone else.
The window isn’t over yet and there is a lot we probably could have done better, although without knowing exactly what happened for sure I am just saying this as a personal interpretation but one thing is for sure and that is, re-signing Flamini was a good thing regardless of who we sign or don’t sign next.
Thanks for reading! Please comment on this post, subscribe by email, share with friends and follow me on twitter (@thedanielcowan). Please check out the official NLIR Facebook page http://facebook.com/northlondonisredblog for news, views, freebies and more.
Advertise your business here! Click here for details .
Share with others:
Another excellent post Daniel. I kinda started reading your posts maybe 1 or 2 weeks ago, a big thanks to @positivegunner.
And yes, your blogs like his tweets are also mainly giving positive thoughts to the gooners who read it rather than drowning in the negativity of twitter.
Keep up the good work Daniel[once I called you Danny and you told me to call you Daniel, which I duly obliged again 😀 ) and am expecting more blogs like this from you.
Did anybody actually think the board was gonna let wenger buy anyone all the s**t they chat, all they are bothered about since the yank came in is profit , who can see wenger wilshire carzorla being there this time next year (when we are mid table looking up ) hope i’m tho ,shout out to the board GET SOME F***KING TALENT IN YOU TWATS
Hope i’m wrong tho
I agree with you entirely on the analysis. I also wish that we could sign a few more players that will improve the squad. If we get Di Maria, Ozil and Benzema, that would be fantastic.
No need signing new players since u agree wit him.
Flamini of 07/08 is not the Flamini of now , if he was he would be at AC right now as their first choice DM , this whole article is basically defending Wenger and his unwillingness to buy proven talent .. Cabaye is a better bet because he is playing in the prem now so Flamini on a free isn’t money saved its money wasted in wages yet again .. I don’t even want cabaye I want fellaini ! We could have had fellaini easily at the start of the window , spurs have utterly destroyed us this window an they will probably do it on the pitch aswel .. If you can for one second agree with what Wenger has done this window then you should stop writing your blogs.
….Fellaini, I would have creamed my pants had we signed him up. We would have been a force with that signing alone. DAMN!
Great post though, first time reading and the positivity is a refreshing spin on all the brainwashing media going around these days.
You know that most of the vocal Arsenal fans who post comments are a little better than children who are yet to understand abstract thinking so they could not conceptualised the team as an organic whole that needed all the parts to fit well and function rthymically at same level. Wenger wants a team that has almost same technical ability and level of functioning not the Madrid type where you have £80, £86m etc types and others to make up the number. In terms of monentary input and results, team stability and survival, Wenger is the best manager in the world and I commend his bravery, principle and stability in the face of myriads of insults and criticism most of which are without facts, intellectually unsound and mostly from group of imbeciles who called themselves fans. I make bold to say that none of the new acquisitions by either Tothenham, City, Livepool and even Chelsea can bench any of our first choice player playing in a similar position. Nevertheless, to address the problem of depth, I would wish Wenger bring in before the closure of this transfer window, a Central defender, another defensive midfielder, another striker either better or same level with Giroud. A keeper is not a priority but good if available. Good luck to Arsenal and I pray the team would never fall into the hand of crazy referees . Let all fans who lay siege at the Emirates bury their heads in shame because they have made our team more comfortable at away grounds. I prefer the team losing their patronage and performing well than their money and the negative atmosphere their presence brings into the Emirate. God bless Arsenal Club, God bless Wenger the only sane manager who is not carried away by big money.
Your advice is good but we really need a wider squad with world class players inorder to compete for any trophy.we have tried this for eight yrs and failed so we really need class from outside the club.
So many supporters have their thinking warped because of the popular opinion that is around. For instance, it might be true that the price of a player is commensurate to their abilities but it can only be true to some extent. Torres costed Chelsea far more than Drogba did, but the later delivered far more than the former. Suarez costed Liverpool far less than Andy Carrol but Suarez has proven to have been worth much more. The price of a player does not always reflect his worth. The fact that Flamini came on a free does not mean that he has no footballing value.
Secondly, the DM position is arguably the most underrated in football. It is however one of the most important as proven by Makalele at Real Madrid whose departure affected the team so much. Flamini did the job very well for us the first time around. He seems to carry a truck engine in a car.
Thirdly, Flamini is a very versatile player who can cover a number of positions. This bodes very well for us given our injury records. To cap every thing up, he does not need to adapt to the premiership because he already knows it well.
Flamiini may end up being the shewdest signing of this summer. Think about a game where the opponents are tending to dominate the midfield. If we deploy Flamini and Ramsey together, we have a good change of closing the opposition down and recovering possession better.
For me, the fact that he came on the free is kudos the Wenger and the management. I will not the bothered if we get the right calibre of players we need without spending a dime on transfer.
Tanx 4 d post,i dont totally agree wit u,there is notin bad wit signing players on free transfer but we need players.AW is always talking abt getting quality players,i want to ask,all dose players(fellaini,higuian,gustavo etc) he lost out on buying are they not quality players?u mite argue d fact abt d prices bt AW nd d so called ceo came out early in d summer nd told us dat d club hv millions of pounds to spend nd dat d club is in a gud financial state nd now dey are complaining abt prices.why did dey raise our hopes unneccesarily?d bottom line is dat d club need players,if dey cant afford d top class players den average ones as back ups in times of injuries nd burn outs.
They are quality players but you have to look at each case individually. Fellaini, did we need him? Maybe. Is he experienced at playing the role we need (DM)? No, but that is where he wants to play. Is he significantly better than what we have in the position he has mostly played for Everton (AM/B2B)? No he is not. Based on that is he worth £23m of our money? Probably not. Gustavo. Did we need him? Yes. Did we bid for him? Yes. Did we offer him a contract? Yes. Did we guarantee him a starting place? No and why should we when big clubs don’t guarantee places. Did he decide to go to Wolfsburg for more money, an easier transition, guaranteed game time and a better shot at the Brazil team for his home world cup? It looks like it. Higuain, did we bid for him? Yes. Was the bid accepted? Yes. Did Madrid change the price at the last minute? Yes. Did Arsenal decide that for a few million pounds more that Suarez was a better target? Yes. Was it the right thing to do? Technically yes because Suarez is the better player but no because they were badly informed and that is probably the biggest mistake this summer, not making sure the Suarez info was correct.
If you look at it objectively, which is hard because of the emotion surrounding the club at the moment, then you can see that there are good reasons for not signing many of the names linked with us this summer. Let’s wait until Tuesday so we can see who the club sign and judge them from there.
Dont agree wit u totaly.
@Daniel, brilliant as usual. Well thought out, realistic article. So refeshingly different from the tide of negativity that is twitter.
And for my compatriot Amos Oguntuashe, I doff my hat to you. A true gooner, unlike the kids who trawl the internet and spew all sorts.
Good and concise,i think d piece balanced both realy wel,though we all want new and marquee signing but some arsenal fans ridiculous,they wud always criticse whatever d club does,if arsenal is liverpool what most fans would have done,and i believe its thanks to wenger dat we’re still where we’re,especially when d stadium was built.
Nice, sensible article.