It is not an experiment, it is a plan. A plan to rebuild Arsenal from the foundations upwards. Having to rebuild a club is not an experiment it is a very difficult and brave plan which has not failed, it has only begun. Why exactly has this long term plan failed?

Hardly anything if at all has been spoken about the Wigan fiasco by Wenger or the players which is unusual. I remember a time last season when we were going through a difficult patch and the same silence was deafening. Perhaps it was during the whole Gallas captaincy strip time but I could be wrong.

I can imagine plenty of ‘that was not acceptable’ speeches going around from Wenger and Pat Rice after the game and back at the training ground. As we know, it wasn’t good enough but for me, this has to be addressed and then forgotten about. It has happened and the players will have to make sure that it does not happen again.

Many questions have been asked since then and it is understandable. But some of what is being said doesn’t make any sense to me and I just wanted to give my view to the arguments floating around.

Wenger’s experiment has failed

That has been a very common saying over the last couple of seasons. Especially after last weekend.

Almost as if Arsene is going to London Colney with a white scientist’s outfit, purple potion in one hand and green frogs in the other. It is not an experiment, it is a plan. A plan to rebuild Arsenal from the foundations upwards. Having to rebuild a club is not an experiment it is a very difficult and brave plan which has not failed, it has only begun. Why exactly has this long term plan failed? Has someone blown up the training ground while all the youth players and scouts have walked out?

So many fans have different views of our situation and it totally depends on which angle you are looking at it from. The media have fed many people what they want us to hear. When Arsenal have a player sent off then it is the x number of red cards in Arsene Wenger’s reign at Arsenal, this is not compared with any other manager in the league. When the media talk about Arsenal, it is the x number of years that Arsenal have not won a trophy.

If you go up close then you see a manager who had a team that went the whole season undefeated in the league and ended the season as champions. Now five years later, we have a young side who haven’t won a single trophy, that is awful from a manager who is feeding his own ego, attempting to prove that he can win trophies without spending money. This is how the picture has been painted. False.

Close your eyes, take some steps backwards then reopen your eyes and the picture becomes much different when you are not fed rubbish and you are given facts.

When the club decided to build the Emirates stadium a strategy had to be in place. The club have decided to pay off the stadium debt as quickly as possible. It looks very much as if Arsene had to generate his own funds in the transfer market. We have balanced the books or made a profit during every summer since the building of the stadium. It is no coincidence that while we have left Highbury, our spending has dropped.

Roman Abramovich’s millions of pounds poured into Chelsea whilst we were in the middle of our move. Jose Mourinho already had eyes looking in the direction of Arsene Wenger’s summer targets. Competing with Chelsea during that period would prove to be almost impossible without equalling the millions of pounds exchanged in the transfer market. Wenger had a choice, bring in 28 year olds worth £7-£10 million players to compete with the likes of Drogba and Essien. Even the best scouting system in the world would find it difficult to match the big money signings from Chelsea or Manchester United. The other choice was to bring in players that he hoped would be as good for a fraction of the price, the problem was these players would need time, it would need an awful lot of patience from everyone connected with the club. That includes the fans.

With arguably the best Arsenal team to ever play for the club coming to the end of their cycle, Wenger had to rip apart the squad and pretty much start again from scratch. Imagine if Chelsea no longer had a penny to their name and they had to rebuild their side, would Carlo Ancelotti be able to bring in the same quality of player as Lampard and Essien for under £10 million? Would he be able to keep Chelsea competitive and play Champions League football every single year? I have my doubts.

I am sure the Ajax supporters did not consider their development of players a failed experiment in the early nineties when they produced the likes of Edgar Davids, Clarence Seedorf, Patrick Kluivert and our very own Dennis Bergkamp and Marc Overmars.

The Barcelona team of 2010 are seen as the best club side in the present day. They have taken the same approach as Arsenal but have the advantage of starting their development a good few years earlier. Big names like Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernández, Andrés Iniesta, Gerard Piqué, Pedro Rodríguez, Sergio Busquets and Bojan Krkic have all come through their ranks. I am sure the Barcelona supporters grew impatient from 1998-1999 to 2004-2005 when the big money of Real Madrid dominated the league title whist Barcelona worked on picking up talented players from Spain.

As long as quality footballers are brought through into our squad then the system cannot fail. The ones who do not make it are sold on for a profit as well as those players gaining some of the best coaching in the world. Our youth system is now one of our biggest incomes, along with gate receipts, merchandise and television money.

Some Gooners seem to assume that this route means that the only way we can build a team is through the youth system, this is not the case. Wenger has now said pretty much for the first time that he is able to spend the money to compete with other clubs where as he has been restricted in the past few years. Like I have said recently which manager would not do the best that he could for himself or the club he is working for just to prove a point that he can win another way. When has Arsene Wenger ever said that he is attempting to do that

Criticism thrown at Wenger for not spending is simply untrue. He has added to the squad pretty much every season. Tomas Rosicky, Eduardo, Sagna, Nasri, Arshavin and Vermaelen are all players who are not teenagers, brought in to be members of the squad. Established players who can do the job today.

Top quality players can now be brought in to supplement the talent we have organically growing at London Colny.

In which way is this a failed experiment?

These foundations have been built and I suspect that it will be the man who replaces Wenger in future that will benefit the most. I am sure by that time, those who rubbish Arsene’s direction will be lauding that manager for picking the likes of Chuks Aneke, Connor Henderson, Emmanuel Frimpong and Benik Afobe, hugely talented kids who could one day be our very own Iniesta’s and Pedro’s. Players that many disgruntled Barcelona fans wouldn’t even have heard of in 1999.

Match preview and perhaps a Your Vision article up tomorrow.

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