Harry Redknapp’s recent hypocritical ramblings about the spending power of Manchester City. While Tottenham are not the largest wage payers in the league they have a higher net spend on transfers than anyone else apart from the two blue billionaire owners in Manchester and West London. This is thanks to ENIC an investment company established by the British billionaire Joe Lewis, who have

Good afternoon Gooners here, there and everywhere.

I hope you are well even considering the mess in Wales over the weekend. I have a few thoughts that I am sure most of you have already spoken about or perhaps read elsewhere but for my sanity or what is left of it, I need to puke it up and disguise it as a blog post of some sort. Really and truly this should be a separate article on its own rather than a blog post but it is far too cold to walk all the way over to the articles section so you will just have to make do.

We Gooners have become all too accustomed to playing Champions League football since Arsene Wenger took control of the reins at Arsenal during the 1996/97 season. Regardless of how we got there we have sort of taken it as the norm just as we see it as the norm to play on a fantastic lush, green pitch. We are Arsenal and this is hos and what we do.

At the end of season’s we have either celebrated or had to deal with disappointment by not sustaining a challenge for the title. Some collapses have seen us drop down two or so places but we have still more often than not finished within the comfort of the Champions League positions. Our only other complaints have been that we have needed to qualify to get in the Champions League proper at the start of the new season.

In January 2012 we face the biggest threat to our proud record of having played in Europe’s biggest competition for the last 14 years, something only a couple clubs have managed to achieve.

In years gone by we needn’t worry very much about this as there were only a handful of clubs who were good enough to finish above us. At first it was only Manchester United and then along came Roman and his remarkably deep pockets. Chelsea proved that Champions League places can be bought, it costs a fair whack but it is achievable. Manchester City are now an enhanced Chelsea with never ending pockets. Ignore Harry Redknapp’s recent hypocritical ramblings about the spending power of Manchester City. While Tottenham are not the largest wage payers in the league they have a higher net spend on transfers than anyone else apart from the two blue billionaire owners in Manchester and West London. This is thanks to ENIC an investment company established by the British billionaire Joe Lewis, who have continued to hand out pocket money to the club to invest in new players.

It may seem totally justifiable right now as they look in very good shape to at least finish in the top four places, although football can change very quickly and there is a long way to go yet with some serious away matches to play for our dear neighbours. But when you look closer at the current media darlings, is one season and perhaps two if they continue to pick up results, a good return on their investment? I am not so sure that it is but the wasted millions will mean very little to Harry Redknapp and the Tottenham supporters today, purely because it isn’t their money.

At Arsenal FC we run our club differently and we do not join the stampede to gamble away large sums of money, we are a prudent club and that has always been the case. It is a pet peeve of mine that Arsene Wenger is seen as a man who is tucking away millions in his personal safe, swatting away requests from the Arsenal hierarchy to spend big. An Arsenal supporter worth his salt will know that we have always had a reputation for being well run and often stingy financially.

A quick listen to Arsenal players of the George Graham era talking about contract negotiations will tell you all you need to know about how the club pride themselves on watching every penny.

Arsene Wenger has his faults and has made mistakes in his Arsenal career as do every single manager in the world but blaming him totally for how the whole club has been and is continued to be run is narrow minded at best.

I distinctly remember George Graham incurring criticism for not strengthening winning squads with new recruits and he was blamed for not producing back to back title winning teams for this reason. The cash in the game has more than changed today compared to pre Sky television days but our record signing was Ian Wright from Crystal Palace for £2.5m in 1991 and then a few years later Stefan Schwarz for roughly £3.5m, that was the most that we had spent on a player in our entire history.

Many clubs up and down the country spent more than us back then and funnily enough it was a fantastic crop of youth players that formed the nucleus of Graham’s successful team’s but luckily for George, he didn’t have to field young Paul Merson, David Rocastle, Michael Thomas and company against teams that were constructed by billionaires.

Fast forward to 2012 and if we do not improve recent results then we could be staring at short term uncertainty. In my opinion, missing out on playing against Europe’s best is the least of our worries. What concerns me about the potential of a Champions League-less season is the revenue from that competition will more than likely be replaced by sales. We have the wage bill of a CL club and when it is time to pay the bills then that money will have to be found.

We have key first team players still to decide their futures with the club, not being in the top four could make that decision for them. Last season’s squad is still being rebuilt and Arsene has done a very good job of that so far but with players like Almunia, Bendtner, Squillaci, Denilson and a few others you would be forgiven for thinking that there futures probably lie elsewhere regardless of what your views of those players are.

It is easy to look at the last few weeks and scoff at my suggestion that the squad has done well considering the terrible start of the season but a look closer at the squad and you can see plenty of potential for the new season as long as we keep those players together. When I say potential, I do not mean long term youth potential, although I am justified to stick that label above the head of someone like Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain. I talk of the potential long term partnership of Thomas Vermaelen and Laurent Koscielny. Having a fit Bacary Sagna back in the team every week. Before his leg break, he has had a pretty injury free career at Arsenal.

Jack Wilshere has yet to play a minute of Premier League football this season and he is a player who I am reasonably sure will continue to improve once he returns to fitness. We also have Per Mertesacker, Mikel Arteta and Andre Santos who will have gained a year of Arsenal experience and if any of them manage to progress like Laurent Koscielny then we will be a lot better for it.

As well as the usual summer strengthening I think we have more than enough to mount a challenge for the title if we are luckier with injury. You now have permission to laugh at that last statement. The injury part that is, not the title challenge.

Since our players have bedded in until our recent collection of injuries, I have been very impressed by the character and quality of this team. We need to supplement van Persie’s goals and the likes of Walcott, Gervinho and Ramsey can all help by improving on the training pitch but a strong foundation is in place for Arsene’s new squad but I worry that we could take a step backwards if this second half of the season does not go our way.

If the worst comes to the worst and we finish outside of those places then you can be sure that we will not do a Liverpool and hand Arsene a vast amount of money to gamble our way back into the Champions League places.

It seems very likely that the club want to pay off the stadium debt and that fits in with the talented youth we have. I am sure in years to come we will all look back at this time and understand the work that has been put in to leave this club in good condition. That might not always be ideal for the short term but longer term we could have a very healthy future.

I suspect that many Gooners do not know the way the club is run from the inside but I would guess that we are the type of club to only spend once we have sold and perhaps would only wait until we have secured Champions League qualification before giving Arsene the green light to go for his targets, so I would not imagine us having the cash to offer big contracts to Song, Walcott and van Persie as well as purchasing the players we need to improve our squad.

We shouldn’t be waving any white flags just yet, it is only January and there are plenty of games to go. While the team that played at Swansea is possibly not good enough we have plenty of players coming back to make us more than good enough to go on another winning run and push us up the table where we need to be.

The next three months could be decisive so I hope we get the happy ending that we want, how about starting that happy ending with victory next Sunday against Manchester United?