Arsenal and Ivan Perisic: Please, please learn your lesson

Arsenal have repeatedly signed players that are too old. And now they are being linked to 30-year-old Ivan Perisic. Please, learn your lesson.

Sokratis. Stephan Lichtsteiner. Henrikh Mkhitaryan. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. What do all these players have in common? Let me tell you. They were all signed by Arsenal in the past 18 months and they were all 28 or older.

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Now, in some cases, the signings worked out. Sokratis, on a short-term basis, was not a bad acquisition, although a younger centre-half would have been a smarter investment. Aubameyang was and is a world-class centre-forward. When talking about such quality, age goes out of the window somewhat.

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But if you were to take a quick glance across the Arsenal squad and the players that are heavily used in the rotations at different positions, you would see a deceptively old team. Laurent Koscielny, Nacho Monreal, Sokratis, Laurent Koscielny, Mesut Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Aubameyang will be the wrong side of 30 by the time next season starts. Of the 13 players that played more than 1,000 Premier League minutes, eight are 28 or older. That is not ideal, and not just from a footballing perspective.

Obviously, younger, fresher players help build a more athletic, energetic team that can deal with the physicalities of a full Premier League season. But this ageing element to the squad is even more troubling when it comes to the transfer market. Selling players that are 28 or older is extremely difficult. Selling players that are approaching or are the wrong side of 30 is nigh-on impossible.

And so, amidst this rather unbalanced and calamitous squad management, Arsenal reportedly want to add another 30-year-old to the mix, this time Inter Milan winger Ivan Perisic, who was a very real consideration of the club in the January market until those pesky finances got in the way.

I am a little sceptical of the reports, I must admit, but there is still a lesson to be learned here: do not sign old players, especially when you already have a lot of older players. Obviously, this not a blanket rule that must be abided by at all times. But in the modern game, where finances dictate everything and being smart in the market is essential to competent squad building, signing a 30-year-old for a reported £30 million makes no sense whatsoever.

The equation is altered a little when discussing a player like Aubameyang who is a uniquely brilliant striker, one of the top five or ten in the world. Players like that do not come around all that often. But Perisic is a decent winger who is easily replaceable. How much better than Ryan Fraser is he, for instance? And Fraser, at 25, has sell-on value. Perisic does not.

Arsenal have made this mistake before. They have allowed their squad to slip into this ageing mire. Now it’s time to learn their lesson and claw their way out of the mess, not continue to dig deeper.