Arsenal: ‘Cheaper’ and title ambitions don’t go hand-in-hand

Per a report in the Daily Telegraph, Arsenal are looking for ‘cheaper’ alternatives to succeed Arsene Wenger. That doesn’t exactly go hand-in-hand with their self-professed title ambitions.

Arsenal have always claimed that their aim is to challenge for the Premier League and Champions League titles. To most right-minded people, that is an audacious, naive, and downright irresponsible claim, one that has little founding in the truth and one that even they must struggle to believe in.

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But the over-optimism of the statement does not make the fact that the club’s aim each and every year is to challenge for the Premier League and Champions League titles any less true. That is the unquestioned and irrefutable goal of this football club, however foolish that may sound.

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Or at least that is the contorted, twisted, self-scripted public claims of the club. Considering their behaviour, it would be very easy to make an argument that their priorities lie elsewhere. They do not, in fact, want to fill trophy cabinet, like almost any other professional football club, but instead are quite happy to continue lining the wallet of Stan Kroenke.

Their work in the transfer market is the clearest indication that their publicly stated aims belie their private plans. In the two transfer windows of this season — the summer transfer window and the more recent January transfer window –, Arsenal have actually made a profit in regards to net spend. Now, their wage bill has also increased, offering a new deal to Mesut Ozil in January and signing Henrikh Mkhitaryan and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to bumper contracts also. But it is an utter lie to suggest that a club can compete for the title without investing in the squad.

And now we have another indication of the club’s happiness to settle for mediocrity, as long as mediocrity does not hurt the bank balance: Per a report in The Daily Telegraph, Arsenal are looking for ‘cheaper’ alternatives to succeed Arsene Wenger at the end of the season.

Now, cheaper does not necessarily mean worse, and I have actually been a proponent of the club taking a risk on a younger manager or coach to revolutionise the culture of the whole organisation. But it does make the probability of finding a top-quality successor smaller, simply by virtue of ruling out several possible candidates merely because of price, irrespective of their ability.

It also doesn’t exactly go hand-in-hand with what the club is continually professing is their aim: To challenge for Premier League and Champions League titles. And that, I guess, is not that surprising anymore. Unfortunately, Arsenal, for all of their lip-service, are simply not a club that acts as if it is challenging for the top-tier trophies.

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That is very sad indeed. I hope I am wrong, but I fear that with Kroenke in charge, it will be cheaper, not challenge, that is the mantra.