Liverpool also struck gold by signing one of the best forward in the world for a pittance. And have one of the best coaches in the world who have gone through a similar process before.
So many things can go wrong with these ‘project youth’. Half of those players may turn out not good enough, one of two really good one might get itchy feet, someone may get a big injury or many niggling ones that set him back a few years, the coach may get fired and new coach doesn’t fancy what he sees, then some important positions may see players winding down or the replacement not up to filling the void. Then what?
Looking at the Arsenal team at the moment, Lacszette wants out, and Aubameyang even if he doesn’t want the same have been rotten for a good 14 months or so. What happens if he doesn’t regain his form, who is a good striker at a good age you can buy to guarantee the goals while the rest of the team matures? Is Kroenke even willing to open the purse string for that replacement, or you have to bank on flogging the deadwoods?
That’s to say nothing about the culture of excellence built by a squad required to compete year in year out. One of the lasting damage Moyes did to this club that we haven’t managed yet to recover from is the loss of that demand, that expectation to excel from everyone involved with club. Can you bank on Edu and Arteta to build that mentality for Arsenal, when neither of them were even close to possessing that during their playing career?
These are all good points.
Liverpool are interesting. They recruited brilliantly at the start of Klopp’s tenure despite not having CL football. Many of their signings (plus TAA from their academy) became key parts of PL and CL winning side. But they still need Barcelona to give them a ridiculous Coutinho windfall to bring in Alisson and van Dijk.
I think Arsenal have done the first bit. All six of our summer signings were on the pitch by the end of our last match. We’ve seriously strengthened both our squad and our 1st XI. But we need another window where we focus on a couple high-quality lynchpins (like Alisson and van Dijk).
It would need to be buys like Liverpool’s because while we can afford fairly high transfer fees, we don’t have the financial firepower to pay the sort of wages United and Chelsea do (plus we don’t have City’s lawyers to hide our true wage bill).
That (along with not currently offering CL football and lack of resale value) is why we targeted White when he was more expensive than Varane.
There is still a lot of work to do and there is no guarantee of success - but there is a clear strategy in place. Our owners didn’t spend £150m on a PR campaign as has been suggested in this thread. I would love it if our supporters had that much influence over the Kronkes - but that is famously not the case.
There are many ways to improve the fortunes of a football club. In an age of mercenaries, I’m personally enjoying watching a team full of players whom playing for Arsenal is clearly an honour. I’m not alone in that. I was at the Emirates for both games last week. We had over 50,000 for a League Cup game against lower league opposition and the crowd was buzzing. And the atmosphere against Spurs was literally the best since the move to Emirates. The players and fans have bought into a project. However it works out, surely it’s a good thing for football that a club like Arsenal is attempting to rebuild their team in a sustainable and methodical way?
It’s cool to get excited about signing Varane, Sancho and Ronaldo. But it’s also cool to be excited about signings with high potential that require coaching to reach their potential and be moulded into more than the sum of their parts. You can’t moan about petrol-rich clubs wrecking football and also laugh at the fans who are proud of their club for trying improve their club more organically.
