Written by Derek Dryden on Sunday, 02 September 2012 17:45

Mean Lean's Response

There is the saying that a team can only beat what is in front of them and the way I see it, the manager can only work within the constraints of his club. This is an ongoing debate that unfortunately will continue until we win a trophy, that said, I suspect that even that will not put off some from jumping around blog's with the sole objective of denigrating the man in charge.

Regular readers of Arsenal Vision will know my feelings of the Arsenal FC trophy situation. The club has always stuck to its beliefs, stuck to a rigid wage structure way before the day when Arsene Wenger walked into the club. While transfer fees and player wages have soared, Arsenal have resisted the temptation to push the boat out to compete with 'market value'

A market value that has been distorted by clubs who might as well throw the balance sheets in their shredders without even having a glance at the details.

Some choose to insist that it is the manager who has full control of this department, some believe that the club are begging him to compete with Manchester City's transfer fees but the crazy old French man is treating the money as his own and refuses to spend the hundreds of millions sitting in the safe, the ink fading on the notes, the pound coins gathering dust.

While everyone is entitled to their opinion, my opinion is that opinion is ludicrous. Arsene Wenger like George Graham before him has to work within a financial structure and he can only do the best that he can. He won trophies in the past because finances were not as destorted as they are today. We could keep hold and build upon teams. This is not the case today.

Arsene's flat wage policy has come back to bite us on the Arsenal as the richer just keep getting richer, therefore they are able to pay their top players absorbent weekly wages. This might not have been such an issue back when the flattish wage structure was being implemented as the Chelsea's and Manchester City's of the league did not yet exist or at least not to this extent. So we were paying our players as good as the next team.

This is being addressed today as Ivan Gazidis has publicly spoken about but this is something that will take time as players come in and out of the club, it cannot be done immediately as players will not accept wage declines just because the club have decided to do so.

Going back to the manager and his work since we left the famous Highbury, I think his work in the transfer market when he has so obviously been restricted financially, has been massively underestimated by people who have let a lack of trophies blind them from the task he had when the Emirates project was in motion.

The manager can be criticised for not getting us over the line at certain points when his teams have come close to trophies, he can be criticised for not fixing certain issues that needed to be addressed at various times or/and seasons. Every manager can rightly be criticised for isolated incidents but his work over the bigger picture has been exceptional in my opinion.

If it was so easy to take a self financing club who had moved to a new stadium to then continue winning top trophies against richer clubs then you have to ask why the need for the board to stick with our current manager. Why not bring in (do you remember the laughable suggestion) Owen Coyle or whoever was flavour of the month at the time?

Winning would generate more money for the board, so why not click on 'get winning manager' to complete the job that Arsene was trying to do?

I suspect that given the framework, he is one of the best managers for the job. If the job description was 'Unlimited funds, style of play not necessary but trophies wanted short term' then I would give the job to Jose Mourinho. Arsenal's job description is somewhat different.

I understand and join the chorus of frustration at seeing our best players leave the club for higher wag...ambition. I am fed up with the constant catch 22 of building a nearly team only to see its best parts ripped out and replaced with unpolished gems. The club have been running on a treadmill but during this massive transition I believe that the treadmill would have been set a damn sight higher and we would be a lot further back.

I hope that in the next few years with new commercial deals, FFP *chuckles* and the new Sky television windfall, we can lift Arsene Wenger to a level playing field or near to Manchester United because our manager deserves to prove how good he really is.

Exclaimer: I appreciate this is a very divided subject so if you are to comment on the piece, please can we (for once) be a little civil and mature. If you can't then please opt to scream into your pillow instead.

Thanks in advance.

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Comments (4)

• 04-Sep-2012 13:28 | | Tony
  

  Word for word ML, agree completely

• 04-Sep-2012 14:29 | | Anonymous  - .
  

  There are many fickle Arsenal fans out there, many glory hunters, many with short memory. Any gooner who thinks Wenger has lost it, needs their head checked. Wenger has done exceptionally well ever since he joined Arsenal, those who constantly bash him dont want the best for the club

• 04-Sep-2012 17:06 | | The Terrible 1  - About Media hypocrisy
  

  One player scored 3 goals and had virtually all the 7 scoring chances of his team. Let's drink to media hypocrisy and celebrate the famous ManUre fighting spirit but not for sure let's not look at the fact ...that the team new motto is to be united, Van United indeed, (that team would have been Wolves without him), plz u don't say. Selling Tevez, Cristiano Ronaldo is great piece of business I agree, but it was selling nonetheless... We didn't sell on the cheap, SAF didn't sell on the cheap in both case it's good business, I guess AW should be the only one to be crucified to have made profits worth more than 150 million Pounds over the last 7 years from the sales of which were made vital by the situation on the loan repayment of the stadium. No offense to SAF, but people should be careful of the cliches of the media. Wenger is building Arsenal on the same mode that SAF built ManUre ie the great youth project of 1991 which the momentum still carries his current teams. SAF did that without the gigantic restrictions of building a modern stadium at MODERN COSTS on FOOTBALL PROFITS. In fact none of the powerhouses in Europe have even faced such a financial adversity. The Spanish league, i mean Barcelona & Real have both 100 000 stadia + 45% of the TV rights of la Liga each. AC Milan and Inter share a 90 000 stadium. $ $..tty & chel$ki are in bed with sugar Daddies. JUVE has a 80 000 stadium and has support all over Italy but decided to use its cash on fixing games. Bayern has an average of 16 german national team players in its squad, a new stadium virtually given to them thanks to the World Cup 2006.The only clubs in Europe who have built themselves though without BUILDING A STADIUM but with their own FOOTBALL PROFITS are Arsenal, Borussia Dortmund and Schalke 04 and they have been forced to sell their best players as much as we were (KAGAWA, SAHIN, GOTZE, NEUER), but they are not the BRAND that Arsenal is so no media really care about mentionning that coz Arsenal Brand sell a lot of papers and make people torture their mouse. If you saw SAF defending AW last year after our abyssmal start, you know He amongst all people, knows why the Arsenal has to cope with selling some of its best players. Has he mocked AW so far? No coz he knows. I leave when I want... LOL

• 06-Sep-2012 00:34 | | Gooner  - @The terrible 1
  

  I agree completely. Its so true. The media is complete joke. Gotze is still at Dortmund though lol

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