Gooners still cling to hopes that Arsene Wenger will sign a centreback and a forward before midnight on Friday August 31.
Names like Robinho and Obafemi Martins have been kicked around for months but Robinho has not left Real Madrid yet and Martins has not left Newcastle for his buy-out fee of £13 million.
Wenger has not been linked with any centrebacks apart from Curtis Davies. Surely, if he wanted to sign Davies from WBA for £10 million, he would have done so by now.
We are told that the money is there. The latest quotes from MD Keith Edelman suggests that Arsenal’s accounts, due soon, will impress the biggest businessmen in the football industry.
As expected, the Emirates Stadium is now generating the biggest gate revenue in world football. Since Arsenal’s ticket prices are the highest in the world, that is logical.
American sports tycoon Stan Kroenke has already said he is impressed by the way Arsenal run their business.
Edelman said, “We’d like Arsene to be with the club for a very long time, but he’ll have to look at what he wants to do as well. We are generating more money out of Emirates Stadium than our debt repayment. Therefore we are more profitable at Emirates than we were at Highbury and therefore we can invest more money.
“We will have the largest gate revenue in the UK and when our results are produced (in September) and you see the amount of cash the business has got, some of the comments that have been made over the summer are very wide of the mark. We’re in very, very good financial health and we’re financially very strong as a club.”
Many fans are still baffled by Arsene’s addiction to signing kids. He could win the title this season if he signed Mertesaker, Yakubu and Robinho. Per Mertesaker is a six foot six centreback who plays for Werder Bremen. He is 22 and has over 30 caps.
The Arsenal team, playing in a 60,000-seater stadium in Europe’s richest city, can now generate the most money in world football.
When the accounts are published in September, and again in March-April, prospective buyers will want to make a serious offer. As I’ve suggested before, Arsenal FC could be sold for £1 billion.
Just as Sir Alex Ferguson made Martin Edwards rich, so Arsene Wenger will make the Arsenal directors rich. In the meantime, Peter Hill-Wood will continue to say that the club will not be sold because we are custodians and the club is in the hands of Englishmen who don’t need the money.
By not buying the stars that Arsenal fans want to see, Arsene Wenger is making the accounts look very good.
By getting £16 million for Thierry Henry, by taking Henry and Ljungberg’s wages off the overheads, and by selling Reyes, Muamba and Aliadiere, he is proving to be a director’s dream, as George Graham was. Graham won two titles on the cheap and six trophies in all.Wenger has won seven trophies and sold players to Real Madrid, Barcelona and Juventus. In 1996, who would have thought that Arsenal could do that ?
Wenger says he is an employee, not a shareholder. His financial prudence is, of course, legendary. He insisted on a new stadium and he feels responsible for the club’s bank balance as well as for the team’s results.
For a year now I’ve been wondering whether the Professor is playing a long game. A really long game.
He will sign a new three-year deal soon, taking him to 2011. He says it’s a gamble because the club could be taken over, so he will be under contract to a new owner. He knows, of course, that Arsenal is worth far more with him under contract for the next three seasons. It looks as if 2007-2008, the second season in the Emirates, may be the last chapter in the manager’s four-year plan..
After that, from 2008 to 2011, it could be a whole new ball game. And the canny economics graduate will still be in charge. He could have walked when David Dein was sacked in April. He could have quit at the end of the season. But he is very tough and smart and ambitious.His quirks may annoy us, his obsessions often baffle us, but his long-term achievements are massive.
However, in 2007, we have sometimes wondered whether this manager has taken Arsenal FC as far as he can. He has won nothing in his last two seasons.
But his new three-year contract, which will be signed soon, suggests Arsene Wenger thinks he has something new to show us.
He has surprised us before and could do it again next year. Or in the next three days.
ON TOTTENHAM, I’ve now read the Kevin Mitchell piece Jol bruised by boardroom blunders – Spurs botched handling of the Michael Carrick sale typifies the turmoil at White Hart Lane.
Mitchell’s piece tells me a lot I didn’t know. So it’s the most informative football article I’ve read this season.
Read it now and be thankful that Daniel Levy is not your chairman.