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Last month, Arsenal released a documentary about the legendary Invincibles side. Few things sell better in 21st century football than nostalgia but in fairness, few teams are more worthy of the sepia tinted treatment than Arsenal’s 49ers. Watching the film brought back its fair share of memories. It’s tempting to say that the achievement feels as though it happened a long time ago, but the manager that masterminded it all is still present and correct in the Arsenal hot seat. So what has changed between then and now?
Well, most obviously, the competitive landscape has changed. Arsenal were consistently finishing 1st or 2nd in the league, until Roman Abramovich and Sheikh Mansour arrived and now they finish 3rd or 4th. It’s a crude distillation of the last decade or so, but it is very much the bottom line. Even now the strain of the Emirates Stadium mortgage repayments and its associated, restrictive sponsorship deals has eased, it is still difficult for Arsenal. There are a finite number of top class footballers and now there are more clubs competing for them – most of whom are still richer than Arsenal, even if the gap has closed slightly.
The Premier League generally is more competitive too. Even without billionaire beneficiaries, the explosion in television money means even mid-table clubs are able to afford a different level of footballer compared with 2004. Everton have £30m Yakubu upfront, West Ham can afford Andy Carroll. Even Leicester have been able to pay Esteban Cambiasso. There’s greater tactical sophistication in the Premier League, too. In 2003-04, most teams played either a 4-4-2 or maybe played 4-5-1 away from home and there was very little derivation from that. Nowadays, teams are more studious about their opponents and can conjure many different ways of stopping teams and they also have better players to enact these game plans.
The arrival of the oligarchs coincided with the building of a new stadium, which clearly created a kind of diseconomies of scale. Wenger’s response was to try and bind a group of talented young players together on a budget in the hope that they would consolidate together. The upshot was that many of the players did not develop as expected, whilst those that did, soon got bored of competing for 3rd and 4th place and left. Another of the byproducts of ‘project youth’, was that Arsenal became a smaller, more technical and altogether less physical team.
The lack of physical maturity at least partially contributed to the lingering presence of Wenger’s other great nemesis – injuries. As Arsenal’s wealth has increased, the profile of the players he has bought, both in physical stature and profile, has increased. He is able to buy slightly older players and physically more mature players. Though fitness issues remain, players such as Olivier Giroud, Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny are rarely injured and tend to recover quickly when they are, when you look across the spectrum of their entire Arsenal careers to date. Nonetheless, Arsenal really need to get to the bottom of their perennial injury crises, maybe new fitness coach Shad Forsythe’s magic will be weaved in time.
The Premier League is a tougher environment than ever. By adding players such as Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez, the Gunners can become exponentially more competitive and feature in the title race, even if they aren’t realistically favourites to win it. The weights are beginning to tilt slightly towards north London again with central regulation restricting the spending of richer sides and better commercial deals increasing Arsenal’s spending power. It’s no coincidence that the club have stopped losing big players and added to their trophy cabinet since their spending power increased. Arsene hasn’t really changed much since 2004 – in fact, you could argue that he hasn’t changed enough. The landscape looks a little brighter for the club than it did 5-10 years ago, it’s unlikely it will ever be as favourable to them as it was back in 2004 (when they had the second highest wage bill, not far from Manchester United), but there’s plenty of reason to be positive about the future.
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— Arsenal FC (@Arsenal) March 25, 2015
