Arsenal still haunted by ghost of David Dein 14 years on

David Dein is without a doubt the most profound casualty of the Stan Kroenke era. Nearly a decade and a half after his departure, Dein’s leadership, vision and dedication to making Arsenal better have yet to be replaced. No one person’s presence at Arsenal is more deeply missed. Not Thierry Henry, not Cesc Fabregas and not even Arsene Wenger.

First of all, it was David Dein who brought in Arsene Wenger at a time when Wenger was a completely unknown quantity in England. Wenger, of course, became the greatest manager in Arsenal history and guided the club through its golden era.

In the wake of Dein’s departure, Wenger had the duties of sporting executive added to his coaching responsibilities. The results, both for Wenger and his successors, have been calamitous. Wenger presided over a rudderless, dumpster fire of a transfer policy that saw every one of Arsenal’s crown jewels sold off for peanuts and replaced by vastly inferior talents. Sadly, replacing Wenger in the front office has done little to change the image of Arsenal as pretenders and mugs in the transfer market.

That’s because selling players wasn’t the only problem. There was also the farcical manner in which Wenger’s front office regime allowed player after player to run their contract down to the final year before offering them a low-ball contract the player was never going to sign.

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Arsenal still haunted by ghost of David Dein as technical director Edu shows same errors in transfer market as the past 14 years

This of course crippled Arsenal’s negotiating position and forced the club to sell off world class footballers for pennies on the dollar. The after-effect of these blunders was compounded by utterly delusional forays into the transfer market for a slew of bang average footballers. The bad taste of lazy, uninspired punts on the likes of Joel Campbell, Yaya Sanogo and Mikael Silvestre still lingers. Does anyone remember Amaury Bischoff? It’s literally impossible to imagine any of them suiting up for Arsenal if David Dein had been at the helm.

The moment Dein departed, Arsenal began playing a completely reactive game in the transfer market. At this point, it’s important to remember that while Wenger was very worthy of the praise he received as manager, the club’s success wasn’t just down to his brilliance; it was Dein who pushed through the deal for Emmanuel Petit when Wenger felt he was too expensive. In retrospect, the £140k-per-week wage packet Sol Campbell earned (which Wenger thought was too expensive) is peanuts compared to the ROI.

It’s not an overstatement to say that a lot of the glory Wenger achieved would have been impossible without those deals; deals that Wenger would’ve scuttled if left to his own self-destructive devices.

Things would have been different.

Continued…