Whither Nasri?

I’m baaaaaaack. Naw, just kidding — Homey and the others who have swooped in to take over the site haven’t been entered into the system yet, so I told them I could put up their posts as a short term solution. And since I’m doing it, I’ll go ahead and throw up a gratuituous plug — check out my first real post over at my new site, Martin on Mondays. Or not, if you don’t want to, I guess. Anyway, without further ado, Homey’s much-anticipated Arsenal Offside debut:

The current contract impasse with Samir Nasri has the potential to tell us quite a bit about the direction of Arsenal over the next couple of seasons.

As you probably know by now, he’s reportedly in the last year of his contract, but has so far refused to sign a new deal. If the club is unable to reach an agreement with him by the end of the summer transfer window, then Arsene Wenger may feel he has no choice but to sell, in order to prevent Nasri from leaving on a free transfer next summer.

I’ve read conflicting reports about the reason why Nasri has refused to sign up to this point. The three different reasons I’ve read are: 1) money differences, 2) ambition to win more, and 3) desire to play more centrally. I’ll take these up in that order.

The first, and most believable reason for me, is that it’s about money. He’s reportedly been offered £90,000 per week, or £4.68 million per year. But he apparently wants money in line with what Cesc Fabregas makes, which is £110,000 per week. Now, I’ve heard naysayers claim that he’s being greedy, and that it would shake up the fabric of the team to have him making Fabregas money. But I find that to be rubbish for multiple reasons. First of all, professional athletes (and their agents) are almost always going to look for big money in this day and age. That’s just life. Second, I think any problem with Fabregas feeling slighted could be cured rather easily. We just turn around and offer him an extension for even more than he’s making now. Of course he’d be unlikely to sign, what with his desire to leave for Barca and all, but at least he’d have no room to complain about not making the most money on the team. Third, do any of us think for a second that if Nasri got a transfer this year or next, that another club wouldn’t pay him the £110,000 per week? Teams are already lining up. In other words, if he were truly too greedy, nobody would pay what he wants. But by the fact that other teams are lining up, and would in the future, it indicates that he IS worth that much in the market. Fourth, keep in mind that we’re living in a world where Yaya Toure is making £8.7 million per year. Do you think Nasri, Fabregas, and their agents don’t know what he’s making? So while we can scoff all we want at the insane money that Manchester City is throwing around, there can be no doubt that there ARE teams out there that will readily pay Nasri what he wants. Therefore, if we want to compete with said teams, we’re going to have to readjust what we consider to be a reasonable salary. Finally, I’ve read in several places that we’ve already decided to part ways with Nasri, but we’re lining up a big money replacement in the form of Eden Hazard (or some other big name). But let me try to get this straight. We’d be willing to let a guy go to avoid paying him roughly £1 million more per year, but yet we’d be willing to spend maybe £20 million for Eden Hazard? And what would Hazard expect to be paid anyway? That whole notion is like shipping coals to Newcastle. (Not to be confused with shipping GOALS to Newcastle – something we’re very fond of as well.)

The second reason given for Nasri’s refusal to sign a new deal is that he wants to go somewhere more ambitious – where he can win trophies. This one is connected pretty closely to the first reason, because it comes back largely to Arsenal’s willingness to spend money. Even Theo Walcott has recently hinted that we need to make at least one “mega signing” to get fans on board and hopefully win something next year. And if we don’t win something next year, then a lot of players will look to leave. I can’t say that comments like that are unexpected or untrue. We’re going to have a lot of problems in the future besides just Nasri if we don’t step up our financial commitment to winning right now.

As it pertains to Nasri himself, if we need to prove our ambition to him to get him to sign a new deal this summer, then I think some action in the next couple of weeks will be critical. While our top EPL rivals have been lining up expensive purchases, we’ve been in the midst of our annual summer “Sitzkrieg.” And no, I’m not counting the purchase of something called a Carl Jenkinson.

The final reason I’ve seen for the impasse is that Nasri wishes to play in a more central midfield role, which he is currently unable to do with Fabregas in the lineup. And it would appear that Manchester United would be able to offer him a spot in the middle. However, I have to think that if the first two reasons were cleared up, Nasri wouldn’t insist on leaving just to get a position change. There ought to be a lot at Arsenal to like for Nasri if he feels he can get paid well and compete for trophies. Nearly half the team is French, including the manager. We gave him a chance to start while he was still 21 and relatively unproven.

Simply put, there is no excuse in my mind for Nasri to leave. We’ve been told again and again that the club has plenty of money. It was detailed quite well recently by the Swiss Ramble. So we CAN meet his salary demands, and we CAN be aggressive in the transfer market. But will we? That remains to be seen. We’ve been promised major changes this summer, and we’re still waiting for some evidence of that happening. Just the thought of selling Nasri to a rival like Man Utd is a sickening thought. I can think of no better way to signify that we’re a small, non-ambitious, selling club.

With a player like Gael Clichy, we can at least try to convince ourselves that we’re letting him go to improve ourselves on the field. (However, until we sell Clichy and buy someone like Leighton Baines, I’ll believe it when I see it.) But anyway, with Nasri, there’s not really any way to rationalize it. He’s a young player entering his prime. We’re supposed to be a club that pays and holds onto its best young players. He’s not a head case like Emmanuel Adebayor, so it can’t be said that we’d want to offload him to help team chemistry, or some such. He doesn’t have “DNA” of another top club, so he doesn’t have the Fabregas excuse. He wouldn’t bring us a windfall of money, since he’s in the last year of his contract and coming up for a free transfer next year. So it’s not like we’re not getting an offer we can’t refuse, like we arguably received for Kolo Toure.

There just aren’t any excuses for not getting this thing done. And by the way, I’m not at all opposed to buying Eden Hazard. In fact, I’d love me some Eden Hazard. But not at the expense of Nasri. Am I asking for too much here? Can we please have both?

This summer is going to tell us a lot about Stan Kroenke, Wenger, and the future of Arsenal. Let’s hope we get it right this time around.

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Category: Arsenal News, Players, Samir Nasri, Transfer News and Player Movement, Transfers