There is a particular kind of frustration that comes with watching your best players leave. Not the frustration of a bad transfer — every club makes those — but the slow, agonising frustration of watching a player’s contract tick down, month by month, until the inevitable happens and they walk out the door for a fraction of what they’re worth. Or, worse, for nothing at all. Arsenal, I regret to say, have become specialists in this particular brand of misery.
The roll call of departures
Let’s take stock, shall we? In the space of a few short years, Arsenal have lost Cesc Fàbregas to Barcelona, Samir Nasri to Manchester City, Robin van Persie to Manchester United, and Alex Song to Barcelona. Four key players, four departures that weakened the squad immeasurably, and in at least two cases — Nasri and Van Persie — the club received fees that fell well short of the players’ true market value because the contracts had been allowed to run down.
This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern. And patterns, in football as in life, demand explanation.
The wage structure question
The standard defence of Arsenal’s contract management — and I’ve used it myself, because I like to think I’m fair-minded even when I’m furious — is the wage structure. The argument goes like this: Arsenal moved to the Emirates in 2006 and took on enormous debt. To service that debt, the club needed to operate within strict financial parameters. Paying players what they could earn at City or Chelsea would have been irresponsible. The wage structure was a necessary discipline, a constraint that ensured the club’s long-term financial health even at the cost of short-term competitiveness.
There is truth in this argument. The Emirates is a magnificent stadium, and the long-term commercial benefits are beginning to materialise. Arsenal’s financial position is strong. The club is not beholden to a sugar daddy or a sovereign wealth fund. In an era of financial doping, there is something admirable about doing things properly.
But here’s the problem: a wage structure only works if it’s flexible enough to accommodate your best players. And Arsenal’s wasn’t. When Van Persie wanted £200,000 a week, Arsenal offered £130,000. When Nasri wanted parity with the top earners in the league, Arsenal couldn’t — or wouldn’t — match it. The principle was preserved. The players left. And Arsenal finished fourth.
The definition of insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. By that measure, Arsenal’s contract management has been certifiable since approximately 2009.
The timing issue
What compounds the frustration is the timing. In almost every case, Arsenal allowed the player’s contract to enter its final two years before serious negotiations began. By that point, the leverage had shifted entirely to the player and his agent. “Give me what I want or I’ll leave for free in eighteen months” is a negotiating position that’s almost impossible to counter.
A well-run club — and I believe Arsenal aspire to be a well-run club — should be initiating contract discussions when there are three years remaining. This gives the club time to negotiate, time to plan, and time to sell if an agreement can’t be reached. Instead, Arsenal have repeatedly found themselves in a position where they’re either paying over the odds to keep a player or selling at a discount to avoid losing him for nothing.
Is Wenger the problem?
It would be easy to blame Wenger for all of this, and plenty of people do. But I’m not sure it’s entirely fair. Wenger is a football manager. He picks the team, he devises the tactics, he identifies transfer targets. Contract negotiations are — or should be — the responsibility of the club’s executive structure. Dick Law, the transfer negotiator, and Ivan Gazidis, the chief executive, bear at least as much responsibility as the manager.
That said, Wenger’s loyalty to players who are clearly heading for the exit has, at times, been counterproductive. Playing Van Persie for an entire season when everyone knew he was leaving. Keeping Nasri in the team when his head was already in Manchester. These decisions were understandable — Wenger always picks the best team available — but they sent a message to the rest of the squad: you can run your contract down, refuse to sign, and still play every week. It’s not exactly an incentive for commitment.
The way forward
Things may be changing. The Özil signing suggested a willingness to spend that hadn’t been evident for years. The commercial revenues are growing. The stadium debt is being serviced comfortably. There is money available, and the challenge now is to use it wisely — not just on new signings, but on retaining the players we already have.
Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott, Aaron Ramsey, Kieran Gibbs — these are the players whose contracts need sorting out now, while they’re happy, while they want to stay, while the club still holds the leverage. If we find ourselves in another situation where a key player is entering the final year of his deal with no agreement in sight, then we will have learned nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Contract management is not glamorous. It doesn’t generate headlines or fill column inches. But it is, arguably, the single most important aspect of running a football club in the modern era. Get it right, and you build a squad. Get it wrong, and you spend every summer replacing the players you should never have lost.
Arsenal have been getting it wrong for too long. It’s time to change. For more on where we go from here, see the end-of-season assessment and our editorial archive.