While it’s never usually too hard to dismantle the logic behind many of the transfer rumours that fly around at this time of year, there seemed something particularly dejecting in doing so upon one of Arsenal’s latest ‘mooted’ moves.
“Wenger in £70million Bundesliga raid,” was the headline that rattled out over the weekend, with the Sunday Mirror suggesting that the Gunners were set to make summer moves for the Borussia Dortmund pair of Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowski and Bayer Leverkusen midfielder Lars Bender.
But despite the already shaky credentials of the mooted transfer figure – indeed, you could well suggest that Gotze on his own would cost over half of the projected £70million warchest – it wasn’t necessarily in the financial merits of the piece that you found where the faults might lie.
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Because for all the money that Arsene Wenger may or may not be able to spend this summer, even if the Frenchman was able to find £100million from within the Emirates’ coffers, would the Bundesliga trio even consider coming to the red half of North London in the first place?
Of course, before even superficially analyzing these sort of transfers rumours, there’s often a habit of making rather bold assumptions that the current club of the player in question would be willing to sell and given Dortmund’s rise in prominence during recent seasons, such assumptions certainly feel incredibly naïve.
But to play Devil’s advocate, should Die Schwarzgelben fancy cashing in on two of their star assets this summer, regardless of whether Arsenal could afford either a Mario Gotze or a Robert Lewandowski, would the vaulted pair really fancy swapping the Westfalenstadion for the Emirates?
The concept of a big spending summer at Arsenal is one that’s often been floated about over the past couple of years, but it’s ultimately one that’s remained that – conceptual. The process for a summer of change at the Emirates has more often than not ended with a big-name player leaving the club, as opposed to joining it.
For as sincere as the Gunners may or may not be in their claims that the money has ‘always been there to spend,’ such a statement has quickly become something of a parody given the relatively meagre net spends the club have indulged in over the last few years.
While the constraints that Wenger has had to work under are generally assumed to be somewhat more binding than what Arsenal are likely to admit, the continuous claims to the contrary have produced a frustrating backdrop to their transfer proceedings. And should they really be serious on making a raid for talent of the calibre of Mario Gotze, it’s within the club’s collective reluctance to do so in previous seasons, which may ultimately put such transfer targets out of reach.
Because these are the sorts of raids that are needed to stay at the top of the tree, not claw your way back from afar and should the Arsenal hierarchy put money on the table for any of the aforementioned Bundesliga trio, the chances are that the club’s recent regression over the last couple of years may hugely dent their chances of landing them.
Of course, suggesting that a Robert Lewandowski is more likely to pick a Manchester United or a Juventus over a move to the Emirates may seem like pointing out the obvious, but it wasn’t too long ago that Arsenal were also able to offer a title charge and Champions League football as standard as well. Although on the same page, it seems somewhat obvious that adding to and improving your squad is part and parcel of attaining the sort of status that allows you to attract the best players on the continent to your club. The latter being something that the Gunners’ board appears to have failed to grasp.
The fiscal distortion between themselves and the likes of Chelsea and the two Manchester clubs has played no small part in ensuring that Arsenal have been jolted down the que in the race for players such as Mario Gotze, but it’s also been their own misguided logic that’s catalysed their current woes.
Some suggest that staying at the top is a lot harder than getting there in the first place, but perhaps Arsenal’s current situation suggests to the contrary.
Regardless of how much truth exists within the mooted ‘£70million Bundesliga raid,’ if the club showed this sort of ambition a little earlier on up the track, they might have been doing so from a little closer to the top of the table, as opposed to spending to try and regain touch.
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