Are We Being Left Behind? Robin van Persie and Manchester United.

I started watching football, and supporting Arsenal, in the early 90s. My first footballing memories are of us winning the league in 1991, followed by the cups that we won in the following years. But, I suppose more than anything, I was a child of two domestic football trends: the birth and subsequent explosive popularity of the Premier League, and the dominance of Manchester United of English football.

After our triumph in '91, every year seemed to be marked by Manchester United winning the league (it seemed). I have no affinity to Blackburn whatsoever, but I, like many others I assume, almost celebrated their league triumph in '95, as it seemed to break the monotony of United's inevitable league championships.

United's dominance manifested itself in other ways. They were the preferred choice of most school kids, who, thanks to Sky, were suddenly able to watch tons of United games while safely ensconced miles away from Manchester. I suppose most of these kids now support City or Chelsea, or maybe even Barca, but they were all United in the 90s.

To cut a rambling introduction short, I grew up hating Manchester United. Much more than Spurs -  who, let's face it, we've hated for almost old time's sake for most of the last twenty years. Before Arsene arrived, United were the annoying oversuccessful team that won fucking everything; and, after Arsene arrived, United became our fiercest rivals in a series of compelling league championships. And then, just as it seemed that we'd finally destroyed Fergie and his evil minions in 2004, along came Chelsea's petrodollars and the expense of our new stadium. We subsequently disappeared from the pack of serious title challengers, while United regrouped and came back, if anything, even stronger.

While Chelsea may have replaced United as the opposing team that I now detest the most, you can never fully jettison the raw emotions of childhood, and the games with United are still probably the two I dread/look forward to most each year.

So, the prospect of selling our best players to United hurts. Chelsea and City? Well, we can ascribe it to pure greed. But with United, there is the undeniable tinge of pain that comes from a broader realization - we've been left behind. Even with all the debt that the Glazers have put onto United, they have seriously competed for the league title, and even won it, in the years since petrodollars became a factor in the Premier League. We, on the other hand, have dabbled with a failed youth project, and now face a yearly saga in which our best players want to leave once they've lined up a sufficient number of potential suitors. And they want to leave not just because of the money, but because, to put in bluntly, we've stopped winning trophies. We can try and pretend it away through accusations of greed - and this is a huge factor, obviously - but players want to win stuff, and we haven't been able to seriously offer them that in recent years.

Selling Robin van Persie makes sense on a number of levels - many of which I've outlined here. In short, he's old, injury prone, and he's never going to have a season as good as he had last year. (7AM Kickoff has the stats somewhere, but, basically, it's very rare for Golden Boot winners to score anywhere the same level of goals in the next season.) If we are to be rational economists about this, we should sell at the peak value of our asset, especially when we are offered 22m + 2m potential add-ons.

But, we're football fans, and hence irrational. To me, today marked a potentially sad day in the club's history. It's one thing for Cesc and Thierry to go to Barca; it's another for us to sell our best player to a team we used to rival for the league, but who have left us in their dust.

Hopefully, this is an absurdly over-pessimistic interpretation of events. But I can't help but feel a bit down after they events today. Despite our signings thus far this summer, it still feels like we've taken a step back after taking a few tentative steps forward. I suppose we'll see where we are on August 31st, and then in May 2013, but I hope, at the very least, that the club reinvest this money in the squad, rather than just bank it, as they have been inclined to do so in recent years. If not, our entrenchment as a second-tier team within the Premier League will continue, and events like today will become the norm, rather than the exception.