By Chibuike Nkemakolam
I grew up to love Arsenal as a football club that had one of the best players Nigeria has ever produced (Kanu Nwankwo). The North London club was undoubtedly one of the best clubs in England, with their style of play, accolades, worthiness and otherwise.
The club in the late 90s and early 2000 grew by leaps and bounds. They featured the most talented and sought after players in the world then. This gave them slots in the Champions League competition every season. Their coach, Arsene Wenger, who transferred from a Japanese league club in 1996 became a household name and an epitome of coaching around the world shortly after his arrival. With all empirical facts, he’s regarded as one of the best coaches in the history of the club even without sampling opinions.
The feats gave the club and her followers what could be described as a pre-conceptional mindset, that no club would over-run them, hence they started settling for want-away, out of contract and meager players.
Now that the world most inclined sports have changed phase, many clubs are splashing out monies to sign or to acquire trending players that could add values to their clubs and as well give them values to their monies in returns. A reputable club like Arsenal shouldn’t be left out in such phase.
It has become an intensively and competitively battles in the transfer market nowadays, that players are either bought for COMMERCIAL VALUES or OUTFIELD PERFORMANCES.
Arsenal as a club has lost its flares due to non-committal investment in players. The club’s policy might be responsible to this because Arsenal is still one of the richest clubs in the world today. There are just quite a few clubs in Europe that make more money than Arsenal do. Their MERCHANDISE remains one of the costliest in the world. They have one of the best stadia in terms of beauty, facilities, and capacity in England and Europe; yet they spend little in buying players, but expectedly to come on top of other clubs that spent ten folds farther than them. The blame might not be far from their coach too. In the recent time, I have seen where Wenger criticised some players, whom he thought were acquired in the astronomical range of prices, but never knew that it could reach to his turn to splash out the MISERLY fund he’s been saving to the detriment of the club and their fans.
I’m not saying this as an UNREPENTANT PENSIONER or a rival but, as a lover of the most exciting game in the world, who grew up to know Arsenal as a top and world class club.
I’m of the opinion that the GLORY and the DIGNITY of the club should be restored for the benefit of competitiveness, respect, history, loyalty and otherwise.
What exactly prompted me to put up this piece was because of the transfer record bid Arsenal made on French and Monaco FC player, Thomas Lemar. The whopping £92M sum that was lately quashed could have been an English club record transfer fee and second in the world. Prior to the bid, I never knew that Arsenal would make such a bigger offer on a player, whereas they would have gotten this same player if there were more efforts earlier on. Also, the same amount could have added more names to their shirts. They waited until after their 4 nil humiliation by Liverpool and the exodus of their few player.
Lest we forget, our gains and loyalty to our individual clubs boil down to their good performances. Our direct or indirect supports is one of the contributing factors to the growth of our clubs. Therefore, our respective clubs and their shareholders should commit more to our joys. It isn’t all about taking the dividends without reinvesting.
ARSENAL as a club should get back on track.
Respect to all my Arsenal football club fans/brothers/friends/sisters.
