Arsenal: Arsene Wenger has wrong end of ‘ideal’ stick

Arsene Wenger has, rather peculiarly, described Arsenal’s contract situation with Mesut Ozil and Alexis Sanchez as ‘ideal’. He has got the complete wrong end of the stick, and here’s why.

Alexis Sanchez and Mesut Ozil have just one year to run on their respective deals. After signing four and five-year contracts when they first joined Arsenal, there was a clear long-term goal to their acquisitions. However, complacency has since seeped in and now the club are extremely vulnerable to either or both leaving this summer.

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Given the threat of leaving next summer for nothing, both Ozil and Sanchez can drive an extremely hard bargain. If they want more money they can get it; if they want more assurances of the club’s ambition, they can get it; if they want to leave, the worst they have to do is wait a year.

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This is far from an ideal situation. Or at least, most people wouldn’t describe this as an ‘ideal situation’. Arsene Wenger would, though. When asked about whether he had concerns regarding Sanchez’s and Ozil’s contract issues, Wenger was adamant that, for him and the club, there are no real worries:

"“It’s an ideal situation. Everybody has to perform. When you’re a football player, you perform until the last day of your contract. What does it change when you have two years or one year left to go? When you go onto the pitch, you want to play and do well. Do you really think that [players] sit in the dressing room before a game and think, ‘Oh, I only have one year to go, I will not play well today’? Where does that come from?”"

Now, this could clearly be PR speak that has been manufactured to show a confident facade, when really, he is panicking behind closed doors. But his reasoning for suggesting that it is ‘ideal’ — that Ozil and Sanchez are competitive players and will still want to play and work hard for the team — is misguided and misplaced.

The worries that fans have regarding the mismanagement of their contracts do not rest on short-term concerns; it is because of the likelihood of losing them for the long-term that drives the fear and the frustration. Wenger’s reasoning simply focuses on whether they will play next season; the fans rebuttals focus on whether they will play for the next three seasons.

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Wenger has got the complete wrong end of the stick. He is arguing against one point but misunderstanding the reasoning for it. It is this complacency and short-term thinking that got Arsenal into this mess. It will most certainly not get them out of it.