London: At Kiev’s Olympic stadium last Sunday, Arsene Wenger looked queasy. Working for French television, he was explaining how a team he said “betrayed” good football, Spain, had won Euro 2012 so sublimely.
This past week has not been great for Wenger and his judgment. He said in March Arsenal “will not lose anybody to Manchester City, or to anybody else, because we want to keep our players” yet Robin van Persie has rather ridiculed that. On Wednesday van Persie released an extraordinary declaration that he won’t extend his contract and disagrees “in many aspects” with how Wenger and the chief executive, Ivan Gazidis, envision Arsenal progressing.
A summer where Arsenal, seven years without a trophy, were supposed to build has become another where the priority is to stop more bricks falling off the edifice. In 2005, Patrick Vieira; 2006, Jose Antonio Reyes; 2007, Thierry Henry; 2008, Mathieu Flamini; 2009, Emmanuel Adebayor; 2010, William Gallas.
In 2011, Cesc Fabregas and Samir Nasri joined the list of players, prized by Wenger, to engineer summer exits from Arsenal. And in 2012? A year ago this week The Sunday Times wrote: “Van Persie, poised to replace Fabregas as captain ... next summer he could be in the position Nasri is now with a year left on his contract, wondering about Arsenal’s direction. That could also apply to Theo Walcott.” We were hardly soothsayers.
One Arsenal shareholder said last week: “Last summer was calamitous not because of Nasri and Fabregas - it was already too late to keep them - but because Robin and Theo Walcott were not signed up to longer deals. Next year, will it be Alex Song?”
Song’s deal expires in 2014 and the fear is in 12 months he’ll be in van Persie’s position. Walcott, like Van Persie, is a free agent in 2013. He, too, is pursued by big suitors and has a decision to make when he returns from holiday next week.
Van Persie’s statement was not his cleverest but it was issued for genuine reasons. Arsenal are truly in his heart and he wants to be honest with supporters. A close friend attests that with him — unlike Nasri — it’s not about money.
Family is his prime motivation, then winning things, which Arsenal offered only in the first of his eight seasons with the club.If he wanted riches he could stay. Arsenal wanted to hand him their most lucrative player contract; one, including a huge signing-on bonus, that may have touched £ 150,000 a week. City will pay £ 225,000 a week but he is more drawn by football challenges elsewhere.
Moving to Barcelona or Real Madrid is his dream, though neither team, yet, are bidding. Inside football, there is talk of Manchester United interest; if that materialised van Persie could be enticed.
Right now, principal competition to City comes from Juventus and Paris Saint Germain. Wenger might talk of making van Persie see out his contract but that threat proved empty with Nasri last year.
How Walcott’s situation is drifting encapsulates Arsenal’s unique approach to retaining players. Contract talks were mooted by his representatives back in December but by February just one informal meeting had taken place.
Proper negotiations were postponed until the season ended, then until after Euro 2012. Now discussions are unlikely until August. In the meantime Chelsea have registered interest and, after Walcott’s good Euros, Tottenham and, yes City.
Like van Persie, he is not money-driven but given other England wingers — James Milner, Stuart Downing, Ashley Young, Adam Johnson, even Shaun Wright-Phillips — earn more at other clubs, Arsenal have left themselves vulnerable again.
Gazidis has a rather curious take on letting player contracts run down. At a Q&A session with Arsenal Supporters Trust (AST) he presented the fact that it happens so often at Arsenal as almost a positive. “If we never had players coming to the end of their contracts then we’re saying yes to too many demands,” he argued.
Gazidis champions the “self-sustaining” model of the majority owner, Stan Kroenke — lacerated in an open letter to Arsenal’s board from Alisher Usmanov, a 30 per cent shareholder. Both Kroenke and Usmanov are billionaires yet neither puts any money into their club — not that this has stopped Kroenke leaving open the possibility of taking dividends from the business or raising season-ticket prices to the highest in world football.
Usmanov’s letter argues that Kroenke makes it inevitable Wenger will have to keep selling top players. AST proposes a sale of new shares to raise fresh funds until Arsenal can renegotiate major commercial deals in 2014. Kroenke opposes a scheme that would force him either to put money into Arsenal or dilute his shareholding.
“AST will continue to urge Arsenal to consider how extra cash can be injected into the business. A small rights issue is sustainable and it seems only fair that owners as well as supporters invest into the club,” said the trust’s spokesman, Tim Payton.
With Arsenal’s wage bill now merely fifth highest in the Premier League and falling ever further behind rivals’, football’s financial landscape is challenging. But not everything, despite what Gazidis implies, can be blamed on shaikhs and greedy players. Wenger’s judgment, once such a marvel, has never looked less reliable.
He has spent recently, since May 2010 paying pounds 90m in transfer fees for a motley group of footballers including Park Chu-young, Sebastien Squillaci, Andre Santos, Gervinho, Per Mertesacker and the are-you-serious? Carl Jenkinson. Only the capture of Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain offers recent evidence that Wenger’s talent-spotting knack remains alive. For half the price of Gervinho, Newcastle plucked Yohan Cabaye and Hatem Ben Arfa from France: even in his “home” market Wenger gets beaten nowadays.
Van Persie is plainly not impressed by this summer’s buys, Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud. It’s five seasons since Arsenal finished even within 10 points of the Premier League winners. Of Europe’s 20 highest-earning clubs, only Hamburg (18th) have waited longer for a trophy than Arsenal (5th). The story is not van Persie’s going — but that he stayed so long.
