It winds me right up that after two and a half months, Arsenal still haven’t achieved anything in improving their weaknesses and there’s an obvious solution staring them in the face at Blackburn. I’m not saying that Samba will be a guarenteed success and that Arsenal will be invincible if they sign him but, in my opinion, he would improve Arsenal. And now Tottenham have supposedly made a bid for him. If they are to over-take us in the near future it will be because of things like this. Wenger sitting with his thumb up his arse while Arsenal’s rivals buy players and, as a result, get better than them

I have great admiration for what Arsene Wenger has done at Arsenal, he has worked wonders and has been one of the best managers the country has ever seen.

I am also not one of the pessimists that throws his toys out of the pram every time something goes wrong at Arsenal and have a go at them all the time.

But I can’t help but, for once, go into a new Premier League season with a pessimistic mood about my beloved club. I went to the Emirates Cup at the weekend and watched Arsenal be guilty of the same old mistakes, poor defending from centre halves that are clearly not good enough for the club and dismal defending at set pieces. This has been the problem for ages now and anyone who knows about football can see what’s wrong with Arsenal, and what they need to do to improve.

Yet still, after two and a half months of post and pre-season we still haven’t sorted those problems out by signing a centre half. We don’t even have the excuse of a World Cup or European Championships disrupting our summer plans. Wenger has had nothing to do over those two and a half months other than work on how Arsenal can get better this season. The problem was clear as crystal at the end of last season, so then he should have been strongly thinking about who to get to improve the team and preparing plans for who to bid for. And then in this period from late May to early August he should have been working his socks of to get us a centre half, and actually achieving getting one.

He’s too picky with who he signs, he should just go and buy Samba or Jagielka or Cahilll or whoever he thinks we should buy. It’s not a big brain buster is it? And it wouldn’t be a big risk, it would be a bigger risk not to buy anyone.

It winds me right up that after two and a half months, Arsenal still haven’t achieved anything in improving their weaknesses and there’s an obvious solution staring them in the face at Blackburn. I’m not saying that Samba will be a guarenteed success and that Arsenal will be invincible if they sign him but, in my opinion, he would improve Arsenal. And now Tottenham have supposedly made a bid for him. If they are to over-take us in the near future it will be because of things like this. Wenger sitting with his thumb up his arse while Arsenal’s rivals buy players and, as a result, get better than them because of his refusal to spend money on players. He has got to wake up to the real world and realise that you have to pay more money for really good players than you had to a few years ago. They keep going on about how we are in such a stable financial position and there is money there to spend. Plus we bring in money from players sales every year- Toure and Adebayor for £40 million for example- and yet this money seems to only be spent on new players in little patches.

Liverpool have improved, Man City have improved, Tottenham will improve if they sign Samba and yet Arsenal haven’t improved. At least not where they need to anyway. Another solution to solving the set pieces problem would be to apply different tactical methods as Szczesny hinted at last week. Yet over the weekend we see that this hasn’t been achieved either. It’s an absolute joke. We’ve had so long to sort the problems out and everyone knows what’s wrong. So why doesn’t Wenger do something about?

He can talk his talk in press conferences about how it’s not easy to buy players and our rivals have more resources but you don’t need £200 million to sort our problems out. And if they do need money, why not flog the deadwood that cost us points all the time like Squillaci, Djourou, Eboue, Traore, Chamakh, Mannone and Vela.

He hasn’t even sorted the futures of Fabregas and Nasri out yet, he’s had ages to do that and still refuses to offer money to keep Nasri here, like other clubs would do. He should just give Nasri what he wants, it would, again, be a bigger risk not to. If we didn’t we’d then have to sign a replacement and lose out on his precious money next year when Nasri goes for free, after a potentially half- hearted season. And he’d probably go to one of our rivals.

It’s not just Nasri where this has been an issue that has resulted in a cost to Arsenal’s quest for success. We’ve lost Flamini and Gallas in very similar ways in recent years and all because of Wenger’s stubborn principles regarding wages.

We are also over- reliant on Van Persie and even this hasn’t been sorted out.

I’d love to know what our squad would read like if we had a manager with shallower pockets who is actually willing to spend money on our team to improve it rather than persisting with players that wouldn’t get into the mid- table teams line-ups.

I’m sick of him holding the club back and I’m seriously starting to question whether he should be managing the team.

But atleast the club haven’t increased the already ridiculously priced cost of tickets for the upcoming season. Oh wait, they have. Well, I suppose the success of the team last season has justified this. Oh wait…

Mean Lean’s Response

Thank you for your article TL Gooner,

I have agreed with many of your previous posts. This time, I have to respectfully disagree with you for the most part. Here are a few reasons as to why.

You say that we have been dismal at defending set pieces and nothing has changed, when in fact since we returned from our Asia trip and started working on that area, we have yet to concede from any set pieces. This is not to say that we have solved the problem or are perfect as yet but it is unfair to say that nothing has been done.

Arsene Wenger, Andrey Arshavin and Wojciech Szczesny have all spoken publicly about how we have been working in that area. The problems that have been more on show is the inability to break down the opposition in a few of our games, but having said that we have missed Cesc, Nasri, (or their potential creative replacements) Walcott and Wilshere in those games.

On the center half issue, bringing in one center back is not a magic bullet that will all of a sudden stop the opposition from scoring from set pieces. One or even two central defenders will not be able to pick up six or seven attacking players from corner kicks for example.

Our organisation and approach needed to be better and from the little that I have seen of our set pieces it looks as if our players are now standing off their markers and then running to meet the flighted ball instead of a standing jump. If you look back at many of our goals conceded last season, the opposition player was able to get a running jump over our players and we were beaten too easily. We shall see how it pans out.

Personally I believe that Laurent Koscielny and Thomas Vermaelen will be a top pairing, I really do. Johan Djourou was our best central defender until his shoulder injury at Old Trafford and his form has since fallen apart. Our problems appear when we get either get injuries and have to come down to fourth choice.

Arsene Wenger and Ivan Gazidis have publicly stated that they want a defender and that they are working towards buying one. I totally understand the urge to want our transfer business wrapped up as quickly as possible but I guess you have to think that Wenger would have all his squad together if it was his choice.

That is the point often overlooked, it is not just down to Wenger to complete a transfer. There are many factors that dictate a transfer. Players holidays, contract endings, selling club holding out for bidding wars, agents flashing their clients around to as many suitors as possible, players overpriced at the beginning of the window etc etc.

Even clubs who traditionally spend far more than ourselves have not been overly busy as yet. Chelsea have just made their first proper purchase of the window yesterday, Tottenham are yet to show their hands. It is not an Arsenal thing, it is a transfer window thing and we have to wait until the window closes before we really judge what has or hasn’t been happening behind the scenes.

‘He is too picky with who he signs, he should just buy Samba or Cahill….’

Surely as a professional manager, his job is to be picky and sign the right players who can fit into our team. Last season he signed Squillaci, if that came around again and a player exactly like Squillaci was available at the start of the window should he not be picky and just sign said player? Of course not.

Our scouts watch targets for months, often years to try and avoid making mistakes. It is impossible to get it right all the time but when you look at how the likes of Sagna, Vermaelen, Arshavin and Nasri settled in recent years then you have to say we do a good job of scouting for the most part.

If you just go and buy random players for the sake of wanting new players then you turn into Liverpool under Benitez and sell your players a year later for massive losses almost every season.

You say Tottenham will improve if they sign Samba but that is your point about Arsenal. They haven’t signed anyone as yet while we have already bought three (four if the Campbell deal comes off) new players. The way you are looking at our situation is different to how you see other clubs.

I do not see how ‘giving Nasri what he wants’ would be possible. If Manchester City offer Nasri £175,000 per week, should we just do the same? Then once we do that and then Van Persie, Vermaelen, Sagna, Walcott and the other established first teamers start banging on Gazidis’ door, should we hand over what they want also?

We have a wage structure in place and it is pretty much impossible to work a football club without one unless you are Manchester City which then creates its own problems. You have players like Tevez on £100k more than some of his team mates.

Another point to make is that the club have always had a strict wage structure, way before Arsene Wenger so it is very unfair to lay that blame on him. In fact our wage structure has loosened far more under Wenger than it was previously under George Graham.

Basically I believe that many of us are nervous and getting a bit hysterical because we haven’t signed all our targets yet.

If I was a betting man then I would predict that we will see another central defender shortly and when/if Bendtner leaves, we will see another forward. We will keep one of Cesc or Nasri. If either player leaves then we will buy Mata.
I could be completely wrong and we could buy nobody else but I shall wait until the window slams shut before I fully assess what we have or haven’t got.