Wenger’s Dilemma

By: Martin | July 20th, 2009

Hope everyone had a nice weekend. As was covered in the comments, we came away with a disappointing 2-2 draw with Barnet in Saturday’s friendly. While we shouldn’t ever really come away with anything less than a win against a League 2 side, this was a friendly very early in the preseason which didn’t feature our first team. It really was just a glorified practice for our boys, so it’s nothing to get too worked up over. The highlight was Tomas Rosicky’s return to action–if he can somehow get back to health and become the player he was before his injury, I don’t think it can be overstated what a difference he can make for us.

The big news, though, was Adebayor’s transfer to Manchester City finally going through. Many Gunner fans (me included) think this was a good move for the club, although some think we should have hung onto him. That’s all irrelevant now, though. Now, the question is what to do with the money. We had a poll on the site recently, and opinion seemed to be pretty split–some of you thought we should immediately reinvest the money in a big name striker like Huntelaar or Eto’o (though we could never pay Eto’o’s wages), others thought we should get a lower profile organizational soldier type like Chamakh and use the leftover cash to get a much-needed holding midfielder.

But the bottom line is this–at the beginning of the transfer window, most of us were talking about how, unlike in many past summers, this might be the transfer window in which Wenger actually spends more money than he brings in. By and large, in past years, he has had to pay for his own transfers with an equivalent value in sales. Now, no one thought we were going to suddenly turn into Chelsea or Madrid, but I think most of us thought this would be the summer we actually spend some cash to improve the team.

But here we are, into preseason training, and thus far we have a £15 million surplus (£25 million for Adebayor-£10 million for Vermaelen). Wenger has said we don’t necessarily need to replace Adebayor, and that we still have plenty of options in attack. We all understand that this is what he has to say–to come out and say “we desperately need a replacement! If I don’t buy another striker we are totally screwed!” would just make him look desperate, and other clubs could take advantage of this at the negotiating table and jack up the price on anyone we’re interested in.

But we’ve heard this before and tried to assure yourselves that “he’s just saying that–he knows we need more players and will go out and buy them,” only to see a transfer window pass us by with no significant reinforcements. Wenger has said all the right things this offseason, but saying all the right things has never been his weakness. Doing what needs to be done has been. But I think I, like most supporters of the club, think this is a club only a player or two short of being very competitive in all competitions, and it would be a shame for us to come up just short of trophies again because we were playing a makeshift backline or makeshift midfield, which is what happened at the end of last season.

So Wenger has a dilemma. He’s got a good nucleus of young players that are on the doorstep of winning something, and he’s got cash to spend. But it’s not immediately clear that he has any targets he really likes out there. So does he: (a) spend the money, knowing that’s he’s probably overpaying for players and not getting players he thinks are great, even if they’ll still provide some depth and quality to the club; or (b) hang onto the money, and not spend it until January or maybe next summer, but spend it on the right players he believes capable of providing valuable contributions to the first-team squad, even if that means in all likelihood the squad may come up short of winning anything again this season?

I’m inclined to say he just needs to spend the money and improve the team. Even if he’s not convinced Blaise Matuidi or Lorik Cana can be first-rate players at this level, they’re relatively affordable and will certainly be better than playing guys out of position or calling up some kid who’s not old enough to drink from the reserves. But I think Wenger’s philosophy has always been option (b), so it will be interesting to see if he really is committed to winning this season or whether he sticks to his views and principles in all circumstances.