Arsene Wenger's nil by mouth approach as Arsenal head towards major resection this summer has dominated the discourse as signs point to a club heading towards dysfunctionality and descent into gradual oblivion.
Paul Scholes writes that Utd's energies are now devoted to fending off Chelsea not Arsenal, Paul Hayward opines Wenger's experiment is stuffed which only a £80m enema will relieve, Dominic Fifield blames the club's refusal to go over £90,000 per week in salary for the mass desertion, Phil McNulty believes Wenger faces his greatest challenge since he was blamed for the demise of English football. The Arsenal board has also not shown the requisite alacrity in dealing with these vexing developments, a failing pointed out by both Nina Bracewell, former member and Alisher Usmanov, the other major stockholder.
Actually I'm sick that this great club is being taken apart by people paid to write this stuff. Where are the plaudits for a club that takes the greater global financial crisis in context and is sensibly tightening its belt while the rest lurch to the next overpaid transfer for a never ending happy hour? Have the naysayers who constantly harped about how Wenger would never suffer to see an English tinge in his squad recalibrated their criticism now that he's rebuilding the squad around Jack Wilshere?
Where is the criticism of City, Chelsea, and even Utd for their spending? Was Liverpool upbraided for skewing the transfer market spending £20m for Jordan Henderson? Right now the media celebrates Andre Villas-Boas elevation to a club that has built no legacy other than a smorgasbord of departed coaches, badly behaved players, boring football, and mounting debt. Where is the outrage there?
Arsenal should probably join the ranks of those continually dodging any footballing philosophy for the deadening banality of the long ball and leaden feet. Their relinquishing this aberration in style to a more English norm will be greeted with relief by those who drive these sort of narratives. For some reason these media tropes continually remind of Donald Rumsfeld's answer after the WMD's failed to be located post Iraq war.
" We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."
The clue here is a club showing the rest of the league how attractive and attacking football can be played in a financially responsible manner. There will be a crop of new players joining Arsenal as Wenger reconnoiters this very fluid situation and comes up his replacements and the requisite transfer money. Please to be patient is an apt Indian colloquialism.
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