Is Leaving Arsenal A Good Idea?Arsenal’s apparent vulnerability leaves the Gunners trying to fend off suitors for their best players most summers. But what makes the North London club an easy target – and is it always a good career move to quit Arsene Wenger’s team? Graham Lister considers the evidence… As the tasteless sauce of Arsenal striker Emmanuel Adebayor's future continues to simmer above the flame of Italian and Spanish press speculation, it's time to consider a couple of questions.
Firstly, with Alexander Hleb also being courted, why do Spanish and Italian clubs seem to regard Arsenal as a vulnerable target whose cherries are always ripe for the picking?
Secondly, is the grass really that much greener beyond the Emirates?
Vulnerable Arsenal
So far, most of the mileage in the Adebayor story has been clocked up by the would-be buying clubs and the Spanish and Italian media who convey their messages. Their agenda seems to be a tried and tested one: unsettle the targets with a steady drip-feed of declarations of intent to buy them.
You can argue that it doesn't matter how many times Barcelona or Milan say they want Adebayor or Hleb, or how earnestly they say it, because unless Arsenal decide to sell there can be no transfer. But if the players' heads are turned by all the speculation, and they become unsettled, then Arsenal are left with dissatisfied and unfocused players who may as well be offloaded/cashed-in if their hearts are no longer in it at the Emirates, irrespective of what contracts they may have signed.
Adebayor, in those quotes that have been reliably attributed to the Togolese striker, has rubbished claims that he is demanding (or begging for?) a move, and insisted he wants to stay with manager Arsene Wenger's Arsenal, talking enthusiastically about the Gunners' prospects for next season and what is needed to go the extra mile to lift a trophy or two.
Hleb has been more equivocal about his future, but Wenger himself has made it clear enough to anyone in Milan or Barcelona prepared to listen that he does not want or intend to sell Adebayor.
However, in the real world we all know that doesn't mean the player(s) won't leave this summer. Things can change with sudden and dramatic rapidity in the transfer market, and there is surely too much smoke in the latest reports for there to be no fire at the heart of the speculation. At the time of writing, and with his latest attributable quotes, the odds appear to favour an Ade adieu.
That raises the more interesting question of why Arsenal seem to be particularly vulnerable to the unsettling transfer market tactics of the top clubs on the continent. Each summer, with monotonous regularity, the likes of Real Madrid, Barcelona, Milan, Inter and Juventus gather round the Arsenal squad like vultures anticipating a kill. Arsenal fans endured two or three consecutive summers of Real Madrid publicly courting Patrick Vieira. Then Barcelona made it clear they were determined to prise Thierry Henry away from North London. Now the targets for the top Spanish and Italian clubs have shifted to the likes of Cesc Fabregas, Hleb, Adebayor and even (until he put an end to it by immediately signing a new long-term contract) Gael Clichy.
The clear implication is that the big continental clubs consider themselves a bigger and more attractive proposition than the Gunners. That must infuriate many Arsenal fans, frustrate Arsene Wenger and be uncomfortable for the board at the Emirates.
Not Big Enough?
Arsenal are undoubtedly one of England's biggest clubs. Only Liverpool and Manchester United have been more successful in terms of honours won. But unlike those two North-West clubs, the Gunners have a relatively undistinguished European record and significantly have never lifted the European Cup/Champions League - by common consent the currency in which the reputations of the biggest clubs are now traded.
They may have been a tad unlucky to lose their first final in Europe's premier competition, against Barcelona in 2006, but the fact is that lose it they did. Although the Gunners are able to guarantee Champions League involvement to top players - they've qualified for eleven consecutive seasons - there may be a feeling that you won't get a coveted winners' medal in North London. That is where the likes of Real Madrid, Milan and Barcelona have a clear advantage over Arsenal..
And the fact that, despite playing such exhilarating football under Wenger, the Gunners haven't actually put a new trophy on the sideboard since 2005 also counts against them, though they have the potential to remedy that soon, and indeed came close to doing so last season.
There is an irony at the heart of top-flight European football. It's a team game, but while modern players are happy enough to win as a team, when that team - of which they are a part - fails to deliver silverware, some individuals distance themselves from the collective shortfall and talk of the need to move on to fulfil their ambitions. As long as Arsenal's campaigns have no silver linings, they are vulnerable to the Mathieu Flaminis and Hlebs using such arguments against them.
Not that success is a guarantee of stability or satisfied stars. The current Cristiano Ronaldo saga is a case in point. He has won two consecutive Premier League titles and the Champions League with Manchester United, and swept the board for the last two seasons as far as English football's individual awards are concerned. There is now a view among his apologists that he's been there and done that and wants a new challenge. Apparently Ronaldo wants to be hailed as the Fifa World Player of the Year, and sees a 'dream' move to Real Madrid as the only way of achieving that ambition because no England-based player has won that accolade.
So Arsenal can't assume that winning things will keep the predator clubs from their door. And of course they are seen as predators themselves when Wenger and his scouts continue to unearth raw, unknown talent and polish it into the sort of gems for which Europe's elite are eager to bid big money.
Money, Money
Which brings us to the issue of money. Perhaps it is in this regard that Arsenal are perceived to be most vulnerable. They are a relatively conservative club, though not one afraid to embrace change, as the bold decision to depart Highbury and build a new stadium 500 yards away at Ashburton Grove amply demonstrated. The Gunners are fiscally prudent, and the financing of the Emirates Stadium project involved incurring debt; but they have structured things in a typically prudent way, so although they are not the richest of the Premier League's Big Four, they are the most financially sound at the moment, following the foreign takeovers at the other three and the debts that those clubs are saddled with as a result.
This, though - together with Wenger's disinclination for splashing out on big-name stars, and the club's much discussed but ill-understood salary structure - has created the widespread perception that Arsenal are tight-fisted. It is a perception that works against them in a competitive market place, not only with some of the players they try to sign, but also among the players already on their books.
In the Premier League, only Chelsea (£132.8million) and Manchester United (£92.3million) spent more than Arsenal's £89.7million on wages in 2006-07, the last season for which analysts Deloitte's figures are available, so the club are not exactly cheapskates. Making European comparisons, Deloite recently revealed that the French, Italian and Spanish leagues spent about the same proportion of turnover on wages (63 per cent in 2006-07) as their counterparts in the English Premier League. The notable exception was Germany, where only 45 per cent of income went on salaries.
Yet these figures don't paint the full picture of how Arsenal compare vis-a-vis their domestic and especially continental rivals in terms of paying the top performers. The Gunners may well be right up there based on the size of their overall wage bill, but of keenest interest to individual players is how that wage bill is distributed. The charge often levelled at Arsenal is that they don't pay their top players 'enough.' This argument received plenty of airing when the tapped-up Ashley Cole was feeling hard-done by about Arsenal's 'insulting' offer of £55,000 a week a couple of seasons ago. It was headlines again when Flamini decided to weigh anchor and sail off to Milan. And no doubt it is the underlying plot in the current story that is likely to see Adebayor and/or Hleb end up in Barcelona (or Milan).
Few people, outside the club and the players themselves, know exactly what the wage structure is at Arsenal and how much better or worse it is than those at rival clubs. But the perception is that the Gunners try to keep the differential between the lowest and highest earners in the squad as narrow as possible for the sake of team spirit and, crucially, economic viability. It seems to mean some players will periodically get disgruntled with their lot and start entertaining notions of how much better off they could be elsewhere, giving encouragement to rival clubs to start whispering in their ears - or getting the media to do so with a loud hailer.
The Sunny Side Of The Street?
Footballers like to tell us that it's not about the money but the glory. The reality is it's about both. But although cash can be a powerful motivator, most top flight players are extremely wealthy these days whatever club they are at, so at the end of the proverbial career, it's probably the medals that count – or more accurately, counting the medals.
So leaving aside the unknown factor of how much richer anyone got by leaving Arsenal, what can be said about how much more successful those who left the club became?
You can divide the players who've left Arsenal during Wenger's reign into distinct groups:
- Those who retired as Gunners (eg, Dennis Bergkamp, Tony Adams, Lee Dixon)
- Those who moved on towards the end of their careers with their best years behind them (Steve Bould, Ian Wright, Ray Parlour, Paul Merson, Martin Keown, Lauren, Nigel Winterburn, Robert Pires, David Seaman, Davor Suker, Kanu, Oleg Luzhny, Jens Lehmann, Freddie Ljungberg, Sylvain Wiltord, Sol Campbell...)
- Those who moved because they could not get into the Arsenal first team on a consistent basis, and found (or struggled to find) their level elsewhere (David Bentley, Jermaine Pennant, Matthew Upson, Lassana Diarra, Fabrice Muamba, Moritz Volz, Luis Boa Morte, Francis Jeffers, Pascal Cygan, Richard Wright, Stuart Taylor, Sebastian Larsson, Jeremie Aliadiere - plus a host of youngsters who never made the Arsenal first team or played just once or twice in the Carling Cup, such as Steve Sidwell, Graham Stack, John Halls, Anthony Stokes, etc).
- Then there is the most interesting group - those who when they left the club were thought to be moving onwards and upwards. This group includes Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars, Nicolas Anelka, Patrick Vieira, Thierry Henry, Edu, Giovanni van Bronckhorst, Jose Antonio Reyes, Ashley Cole, Mathieu Flamini and possibly soon, Emmanuel Adebayor and Alexander Hleb.
What A Difference A Move Made
From the above list, how many can be said to have gone on to bigger and better things post-Arsenal? You could make a case that Sol Campbell and Kanu are enjoying an Indian Summer at Portsmouth, but another FA Cup win and a Uefa Cup campaign hardly eclipse what they achieved at Highbury.
Vieira has won the Scudetto in each of his three seasons in Italy's Serie A, though the first two of those, with Juventus and then Inter, were somewhat devalued by the Calciopoli scandal, through no fault of Vieira's, and anyway he'd already won three domestic titles with the Gunners, and has not been the driving force in Italy that he was in Wenger's team.
Petit flopped badly at Barca; Overmars fared better but not spectacularly so, and could not inspire the Catalans to any trophy success after they'd paid the Gunners £25million for him.
Bentley has flourished at Ewood Park, but with respect, Blackburn are not Arsenal, and he is now angling to leave Rovers because he craves Champions League football.
Cole at Chelsea is not the player he was at Arsenal, and the gap he left was immediately and convincingly filled by Gael Clichy. Pires has sparkled for Villarreal since overcoming another knee ligament injury, confirming that Wenger should have offered him the two-year deal he wanted in summer 2006; but that has to be tempered by the fact that Pires will be 35 in October, and Wenger is always looking to youth and the future.
Anelka? Yes, he won the Champions League with Real Madrid in 2000 (but only after falling out with then-coach Vicente del Bosque and being suspended by the club for 45 days for refusing to train) and a Turkish title with Fenerbahce; but looking at his overall success with seven clubs in nine seasons since leaving Arsenal, it is debatable whether he would have been better off staying longer under Wenger's guidance.
The Options
It remains to be seen whether Flamini will excel at Milan, though he goes to the San Siro with the momentum of an outstanding last season at Arsenal behind him.
And what of Hleb and Adebayor, if they leave? Hleb's footwork and creativity in the Gunners' midfield, alongside his pals Flamini and Fabregas, was often excellent, although his goals return remained a big disappointment. Pires, whom he essentially replaced, would average 14 goals a season from the left wing; Hleb's average is four. If he moves to Barcelona, say, how will he be used? In a way that suits him best - or like Henry was last season, which certainly didn't play to the French striker’s strengths?
As for Adebayor, among many Arsenal fans there is a view that although he improved dramatically last season and scored an impressive 30 goals, including some real crackers, the 60 he missed were almost as significant. The point seems to be that Adebayor is far from the finished article and that if Milan or Barca are prepared to spend £22-25 million to buy him, Arsenal should take their money - especially if the player wants to leave. Adebayor has more improving to do (20 per cent more, according to Wenger), so will he do that at Camp Nou or San Siro where the burden of expectation on him will be immense as the new big money striker?
Making your name in a particular team - in this case Arsenal - is the thing that attracts interest from so-called bigger clubs. But once the player is out of that environment, and away from the mentoring of a trusted coach (Wenger), there are no guarantees that development will continue at the same rate, or that the goods will be delivered in similar style or volume. Along with the money, that is a consideration the 'restless' players need to take on board as they ponder the pros and cons of leaving the Emirates.
If both players eventually insist they want to leave, Arsenal's options are to dig their heels in and keep them to their contracts; offer them big pay increases to keep them happy; or sell them for the best prices they can realise. The first option is not really viable, as keeping disillusioned players at a club can infect morale within the whole squad.
Nor is the second option sensible, because it is financially unsustainable in the long term, and could disaffect other players who will demand similar treatment.
So if push comes to shove, selling them on may be the best bet for Arsenal.
The grass may not always be greener, but players sometimes have to learn that the hard way. Nor is any player indispensable. Arsene Wenger's team look close to achieving honours, and given the Frenchman's record for finding and bringing the best out of talent, that scenario is not likely to change even if Adebayor and Hleb go this summer - especially if their sale generates funds to help bring in high calibre new recruits. The pertinent question may not be what will happen to Arsenal if they go, but what will happen to the players if they do?
Source:
http://www.goal.com/en/Articolo.aspx?ContenutoId=747107
