Arsenal: Two magical words spell the future of this club
By Josh Sippie
There is one thing that Arsenal need right now to kick start the changes they want to see, one magical thing—clear out.
The one thing you never want your club to need is the exact thing that Arsenal have to accomplish before they can move forward with this whole “get relevant again” thing. They need a clear out. It’s what Unai Emery started but, to be fair, proved impossible. And it’s now what the next guy in charge needs to prioritize.
Reports around the media indicate that too many players at the club right now “don’t care” and it’s something that Freddie Ljungberg has struggled with as well, which has led to some tough training sessions.
I could hazard a guess who the players that don’t care are, but suffice to say, I don’t feel the need to. Basically, anyone who is even in question needs to be sold or removed in any possible way. I don’t even care how.
It’s amazing, when the club gets in a state like this, how easy it is to see who does and doesn’t care. Alexis Sanchez was the trendsetter and so many have followed in his footsteps, unfortunately.
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I can’t overstate how important this is. Unai Emery started it with Henrikh Mkhitaryan being loaned out to Roma, but if we really want to get serious, the next two to go have to be Mesut Ozil and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Without exception. Whether they care or not, I won’t get into now (they don’t), but they are some of those players that, when you see them on the pitch, you just don’t really want to see much more of them.
Which is crazy to think about, since Aubameyang is in the Golden Boot race, but it is what it is.
I would even wager that Arsenal should be hinging their new appointment on the prerequisite that whoever does take the job prioritizes a clear-out above anything else. And I mean anything else. Because as long as the wage structure is bloated by players that don’t care, we won’t get any better than we currently are, no matter how talented anyone else is. That’s the tragic state that the club is in right now.
That said, whoever can finally manage to accomplish this most sacred of tasks will be an instant favorite in my book. And they also understand that the way forward doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. Just start over.