Investment and sustainable investment

Dear group members of the Beautiful Game, I'll try my best to be neutral here. I started responding to Anand's post ("Monetary investment is fine in a free economic world") on the comments thread, but as I kept typing, I feared anyone seeing a comment of that size wouldn't bother reading through. So this is for those of you who would have been interested in doing so,  presented in the uncluttered environs of Plumb in Front (pretty shameless eh...? So what!). Read on I say...

Before I start on other clubs, I'd like to say that I AM aware of the fact that even the club I support was at one point a benefactor in terms of revenue (rather unfairly, you can say). David Dein, an Arsenal fan who invested in the club was a fanatic and would do anything to see his club at the top. Pre-Wenger he had a huge influence on anything that went on at Arsenal. Dein - after becoming chairman of the Football League Management Committee (FLMC) - along with a few others championed the deal with ITV in 1988 for exclusive rights to home games, that saw the top 5 teams getting a lion's share of TV revenue for a few years. This obviously gave these clubs (Arsenal, United, Liverpool, Tottenham and one more which I can't remember) a significant financial advantage. The formation of the Premier League, meant that these clubs could negotiate better commercial deals (naturally) even though the TV revenue was then distributed evenly once Sky took over. What I'm getting at is that, at the end of the day any club/business will do what (it thinks) is best for itself. Dein and Co., definitely gave the top 5 an edge and its probably the implications of this deal that saw these clubs more successful in the years that followed.

"Monetary investment is fine in a free economic world" - 90% correct. 

"Sustainable monetary investment is fine in a free economic world." - is 100% correct, as far as I'm concerned. 

At a time when the world's markets are plunging, football seems to be (actually is) thriving in a different solar system. It's unsustainable and it should stop. It will stop. At least that's what I think.

I accept that for a club outside the previous Big Four, the ONLY way to get in amongst them was to spend BIG. The dominance of these clubs would have otherwise definitely continued and we wouldn't have reached this point at which we are witnessing an exciting league with no real big four any more.

While I acknowledge that there had to be spending to give the traditional big teams a run for their money, the manner in which this has been carried out is what makes me give no importance to the success (that may be) achieved as a result. The methods employed by City and in years past by Chelsea astound me for the short termism in decision making. Chelsea's mad spree started in 2003-04 (am I right there?), yet almost a decade letter, I'm not sure they can say they've built up a club that is envied by anyone. Trophies yes. What else? How many managers have stayed there for more than... a year? Can they say they're completely stable? What if Abramovich decides to pack his bags and leave to invest in a kabaddi team in 2019 (assuming we have the Indian Kabaddi League set up by then)? How many players have they invested in from a very young age by buying them at a reasonable cost (sorry but £50m is not reasonable)? How many outstanding players have come through their academy? In my mind, the commercial clout and everything else that Chelsea gained after the first few trophies started pouring in, should have been made use of sensibly, to build a long term plan, a plan that should have considered becoming even more successful by forming foundations that would have seen them dominate, not through further spending sprees, but through an excellent system supplemented by intelligent purchases in the transfer market. I don't see that kind of system in place. After almost of decade of a foreign investor coming in, there are just too many uncomfortable questions. 

From what we've seen from Manchester City in the last two years, they seem to be heading down the same path, although this made me 0.0001% more interested in what they're trying to achieve. Even if I was a Man City supporter, I would have been utterly flabbergasted when I heard about the scale of losses that were posted last year. Only one word comes to mind. Unsustainable. A trophy at the end of such massive spending is a minimum requirement and won't be a truly great achievement. Anything less would be a complete/utter disaster. In fact their exit from the Champions League in the group stages is already for me the flop of the season. 

I actually hope they win the domestic league in a way, because I'm curious to see how they will build on that. A successful team will financially strengthen the whole club. The question that remains is, will trophies be used as a platform to build on or will it just be the start of a never ending obsession to win-at-any-cost(£££)? That for me will determine whether they're class or classless. This is not aimed at the fans but just at the way this/these club(s) is(are) run.

As a football fan, I'd like my team to win things, but that doesn't look likely in the current climate. Trophies would be great, but it's not an obsession - which it is for many - for me. Arsenal may not win anything this year (Champions league maybe.. heh) or the next year or the year after that, but Arsene Wenger will continue to be a genius in my mind, for the culture he's cultivated at the club; someone who has ensured that this club will be in good stead even years after he eventually says goodbye. Arsenal for me will be a successful club as it is now. We'll be back in the reckoning for silverware when the football bubble bursts. It surely will. Ciao! 

Wenger's "failed" youth project

Three months and a decent revival later, Arsenal have now well and truly gone some way to establishing themselves at the right end of the league table. The nightmarish start to the current campaign, although not yet a distant dream, has now been replaced by a string of solid if not elegant performances. There is still no guarantee that we will finish in the top four this season, but then, it looks like we've given ourselves a bloody good chance. The added experience in the squad has no doubt played a huge part in the resurgence with the likes of Gervinho, Arteta, big Mert and Santos adding some steel and calm to a flamboyant and young team. There seems to be a notion doing the rounds though, that Wenger's investment in experience, has meant his youth project of many years has failed and that he has abandoned his youth policy. I'm not quite sure about that. 

Pleasant Hangover

Most of us Arsenal fans are still gloating over the 5-3 victory at Stamford Bridge and quite a few others have been asking us not to get carried away. You know who? The people who got carried away themselves after Arsenal lost by that unmentionable scoreline at Old Trafford. In any case, for the record, we're not getting too excited as we very well know there's still almost 30 games to play. We know.

Others have been joining Alan Hansen in crying out loud about the sloppy defending from both Chelsea and Arsenal. While there is a little truth in that claim, after a great game that kept you on the edge of wherever you were sitting, with some decent attacking football, if the only thing you can talk about is the bad defending, you must be a really sad kind of character who fails to enjoy the good things in life.

Arsene Wenger was not one of those people and he was quite chuffed about the "big win". On being asked about the performance of his players he said, "We played a very technical game. Normally we drop a bit physically and mentally in the second half. This time we did it in the first half. That's how we fooled them." 

So what was said in the dressing room at half time?

"I don't want to comment on what was said. All I can say is we had enough petrol for the second half, which Chelsea didn't know about." 

What did you think of the Chelsea defence? 

"I thought our defending has been little bit shit, but today we saw that others can be shit too. Like John Terry."

Should Szczesny have been sent off? That could have changed the game.

"Should Joey Barton have been sent off in our first game? That could have changed little bit our position in the league table."