From Chris Wood: A sign of the future perhaps?
Wenger has done in some senses an amazing job, seemingly weakening the squad every year and still getting Champions League football every year.
This year, I thought he had played the same trick once too often, as it looked like there were no near world class match winners left in the squad.
And even though Cazorla has done very well and is obviously a top quality player, it’s really hard to see who has really stepped up in that area especially.
Koscielny and Gibbs and Theo have made steady progress. Giroud and arguably Podolsky have done quite well for their first season in UK football.
Szczesny has made unsteady progress, as has Ramsey (and good luck to him) but unless his strike against Wigan is the start of something amazing, he’s still a long way from the 15-goal a year box-to-box midfielder I was hoping for at one point.
Most of the rest have been fairly steady – except Sagna and Vermaelen, who have both regressed fairly obviously.
And we haven’t seen enough of Jack.
It’s not really a CL squad at first glance – and their results against the best teams shows that clearly.
And the quality of performances generally shows that too (who would you rather watch – Spurs or Arsenal?
Once upon a time Arsenal was the only answer to that question.
But, they’ve dragged results from games against weaker teams more consistently than Spurs and Chelsea, and if they beat another poor team away on Saturday they will be in the CL again, somehow.
NB in my book, Spurs are big favourites at home to get 3 points, which makes them favourites to finish 4th (I believe this is a betting opportunity, as I undserstand they were second favourites even before the Wigan game).
BUT at least there is no purpose whatever for Arsenal in a draw so they know they must win, whereas Newcastle don’t need anything so maybe it can be done (and Spurs could still conceivably slip up, although if they were going to do that they should have done that against Man City, Chelsea or Stoke, I would have thought.
They have handled their very tricky run-in very well indeed and are three points up on my predictive model – so if they get there, then they deserve it imo, reliant on Bale or not).
All the same, after Sunday, especially if Arsenal do get 4th place, they will have decisions to make.
As Wenger said, the club is far stronger financially now, with very significant increases in income coming through in the Puma and Emirates sponsorship deals as well as the new TV money and some of the dead overpaid salaries are finally starting to fall off the wage bill.
So if they don’t invest in better players this time around.
And they sell anyone from the first team other than Sagna (I personally cannot believe they’d sell Jack or Koscielny or Cazorla and who else is there?), you’ll know they really are a money-generating machine – and I would expect Wenger to leave at the end of his contract in that event (because why would he want to stay.
He is presumably as rich as Croesus anyway and presiding over this lot and finding ways to get them to win must be getting a bit much even for him by now – so if it’s jst going to go on and on like this, why would he bother?).
If they significantly upgrade the squad that might mean something as well (and then I suspect Wenger will sign another contract, not just to upset you but maybe even to surprise you)
All in all, what happens after Sunday is in a lot of ways more important than what happens on the pitch on Sunday.
Myles says :
Come on, Chris!
After eight years of AW selling us the future, you’re now selling me the future?
Significantly upgrade the squad? That would kill Diaby!
Why would Higuain join?
Just to live in London?