In a week of unsurprising news, the least surprising bit of unsurprising news was announced yesterday. Arsene Wenger has signed the new contract with the club which runs until 2017.
I don’t think there was any doubt this was going to happen once we won the cup, and the manager always said his decision would be based on whether or not he felt the club had made progress. With a trophy on the shelf and more points in the Premier League than we had since 2007-8 (despite the title challenge faltering), it’s hard to argue we haven’t done that.
Speaking to the official site, he said:
I want to stay and to continue to develop the team and the club. I think I can do that and the club shares the same view so I will of course put full commitment in to try to do it.
I genuinely think that not winning the cup would have been the end of the Arsene Wenger era and we’d now be looking at a summer of serious upheaval. The challenges of bringing in the players we need to compete would have been matched by the task of finding a new manager in a market where the obvious and best candidates are unlikely to move from their current positions.
Now, the club, and the manager in particular, can concentrate on making the most of the fantastic position they find themselves in. Not only has the cup lifted a huge weight off everyone, it’s wiped away the rainbow on bacon sheen of failure that has affected the overall perception of the club. The signing of Mesut Ozil last summer was one which many felt broke Arsenal out of its somewhat antiquated approach to transfers, and there will be those who will say it’s no coincidence that the season we spent big on a player and demonstrated real ambition that we ended up winning something.
The manager was a key player in the new stadium move, knowing full well that it would hamper him financially to an extent, but now we’ve come to the end of that period. The commercial deals are in place with a guaranteed £30m per season from Emirates, and £30m from Puma – no doubt there are bonuses built-in if we lift more silverware too. There’s money in the bank already, we know that, and if he has had to scrimp and save down the years, that’s no longer the case.
I realise that we can talk about what he has spent over the last few seasons and point to mistakes. That’s true of every manager, but I also think there’s more room for error at a certain level in the market. A £6m-£8m player may turn out to be a bargain like Mertesacker, but just as easily a flop like Santos. The ability to look beyond the low hanging fruit should make a difference.
But then this is part of his remit too, and when he talks about continuing to develop the team and the club, it doesn’t just mean on the pitch. Can we improve our scouting system? Can we improve the way we do business in the transfer market which, despite the capture of Ozil, is still questionable at times? The injury situation which cost us so badly last season has to be addressed. Part of that is looking at what might be done differently behind the scenes in terms of prevention and treatment, but just as important is building a squad that can cope with absences.
To think we can eliminate all injury is fanciful. Every team is affected over the course of the season, but building a squad with enough quality so that the absence of one or two players doesn’t derail the team is crucial, in my opinion. Of course we should do as much as possible to analyse training/fitness regimes if that’s having an impact, but being able to keep players fresh because you have trust in their replacements will be a big part of it. Players don’t have to be run into the ground.
It’s within our financial capability to do that, and it’s interesting to read the manager say that fans can expect a big summer:
Yes, they should expect that. What I can promise is that we work very hard on a market that is very, very congested with many people who have a lot of money.
But also reference the timing of the business he wants to do:
We know we have to have a successful June and July. That’s where you strengthen the team. It’s very important that we are good now in the next two months until the end of August, that we can give to the team some more quality and go into next season with the belief we got from the FA Cup.
I know we’ve heard stuff from the club before about what might happen in the summer. Ivan Gazidis talking about how ‘we can do things that would surprise you’, was probably a ploy to put some public pressure on the manager, which didn’t really work out when you consider the surprise came 90 minutes before the close of the window.
However, it’s rare that we hear the manager so up-front about the transfer market. Normally the cards are played so close to his chest they’re stapled to his nipples, but this time he’s much more open. One of the complaints about him was a stubbornness, an unwillingness to change his ways, so perhaps this is a sign that we can do things better and in a more timely fashion and he wants to do that. Only time will tell if that is the case, but let’s hope so.
In the cold light of day, and even with the FA Cup under our belts, looking at the final league table still produces a tinge of regret. Seven points. That’s all. I hope that the manager and his coaching staff have already started to assess what went wrong and how they can fix it ahead of next season.
For example, the performances in the big away games were pitiful but also unusual. I’ve never known a season where we’ve been battered like that on three occasions, yet we have to ensure that it doesn’t become ‘a thing’, a psychological barrier. First, we need to become more difficult to beat (and the way to do that is obvious enough to me), and then we need to win one or two and the ghosts of those games will be banished.
Again this ties in with what we need to do this summer and that’s add players who can make a difference in these games. In Giroud, for example, we have a striker capable of scoring against anyone until to reach the upper echelons. Finding the guy who can bridge that gap is going to be a key part of this transfer window. Not an easy one, obviously, but that’s why I think we need to look beyond the likes of Remy who, for me, isn’t any better than what we’ve got. Different, perhaps, but not better.
If the lessons of last season are learned, and if we can add the right players to this squad, then I don’t see why next season’s title challenge can’t be more successful. We have the resources to do that, we have the belief and confidence that comes with winning the cup, and although the others around us are going to spend money to improve and the competition will be greater, if we have a good summer then I’d be confident of our ability to cope with those challenges.
The cup has provided Arsene Wenger with another three years (amazing what a trophy transplant will do). I hope that when we look back on his Arsenal career it’s one that is book-ended with success. He can’t do anything about those fallow years now, but he most certainly can affect the future. The buzz of winning is almost addictive. That we got our fix after so long probably explains why a couple of weeks after Wembley it still feels so good.
And it’s now down to the manager and club to repeat that, to be ambitious and to push this club forward. We’re in fantastic shape on and off the field really, and we have the ability to improve also. Let’s not be content with the cup, we can enjoy it but also want more, so let’s hope that’s what these three years under the manager brings.
Till tomorrow.
