And Now is the Window of Our Discontent

It all started out so well.

Finally, after ten years without a world class goalkeeper, we acted ruthlessly and bought one. And from a major rival no less. Petr Cech was coming, and Almunia, Mannone, Fabianski, Szczesny and Ospina would all be consigned to the dustbin of history. Smokey McShowerson was even sent off to Rome. It was a statement of intent. Ozil, Alexis, now Cech - we were serious about getting elite players, and constructing a squad that could challenge for the big trophies.

And then nothing. Even as things sped up in the last week, there wasn't even the usual avalanche of half-baked rumours that usually surface before the window shuts. I was reduced to ever more desperate searches on Twitter. Benzema posed in his Real kit and laughed at our transfer hopes. Arsene was pictured in Paris, for reasons unknown. And as the De Gea deal broke down, Stones stayed at Everton, and United punted a fortune on a teenager, the Arsenal negotiating team was presumably down the pub enjoying its third pint of the evening. We are the only club in any of the top five leagues in Europe who didn't sign an outfield player this summer, unless you count the mighty one known only as "Jeff". Barca signed more players than us while being under a transfer ban.

So where does this leave us?

In summer's past, the debate would inevitably have revolved around money. Namely, did we have any. We can't afford to compete financially! We'll do a Leeds if we buy a player for more than 10m! FFP! Financial doping! Despite the ample evidence from Arsenal's accounts that we were loaded, this excuse was bounded around for years. But it took the arrival of Ozil and Sanchez on whopping fees for the it to be finally dispelled. We have financial firepower. We have loads of it. We are a billion pound club with the tenth biggest wage bill of any team in any sport. Arsene is on 8 million a year. We've just concluded massive deals with Emirates and Puma, and are receiving the benefits from an enormous new TV deal. If you are really still using the 'we can't compete financially' excuse you probably have difficulty counting your fingers and toes.

So a new argument has emerged, essentially a variant of the above - "there were no players available who a) are better than those we have b) who wanted to come and c) we could afford". Let's just assess this for a moment. Arsenal have 25 players, give or take, in the squad. Are these the undisputed 25 best players in the world? Are they all such titans of their profession that the mere idea of upgrading any of them is patent nonsense? No, of course not. Arsenal have a core of elite players - Ozil and Sanchez for sure, Ramsey just about, and now Cech - who are near to being the best in their respective positions. Beyond that, everyone in the squad can be improved upon. Are there no better full-backs in world football than Debuchy and Gibbs, for example, that we could afford and who could provide real competition to Bellerin and Monreal? Tomas Rosicky barely played a game last season yet is taking up a squad spot and wages. Joel Campbell failed to GET OUT WHILE HE COULD and is now deadwood.

And then there are the real problem positions. Arteta's legs are so badly gone that he can barely play twenty minutes of football. Yet he was given a new deal, and takes up a spot and wages. It's very nice that he 'has experience', but I'd rather have someone who can, y'know, play football for an entire match. Flamini is so bad we couldn't get rid of him on a knock-down price. I'd rather we pay off his contract than worry about getting a paltry fee. Coquelin seems to have risen to superstar status by having some degree of defensive nous, but is so inept at building from midfield that Wenger has to play Cazorla next to him as a passer by proxy. I simply refuse to believe that we tried hard enough here. I wonder if Wenger is now caught up in the vanity project of Coquelin's resurgence, and, again, just won't take that risk to see if we can truly upgrade and push on. Kondogbia took our midfield apart in two games against Monaco this season - he was available for a price we could afford and we didn't buy him. But of course there are no players in the world better than what we have who were available.

We also now go into the third season since van Persie left without a world-class striker. Giroud is petulant, lightweight, wilts in big matches, and simply misses too many chances. Arsene has now reached a point where he is dropping OG for big games, yet there are fans out there who would claim he couldn't be improved upon. Theo is, conversely, a big-game player. He's also injury-prone, drifts almost completely out of games, and is one-dimensional. Against Newcastle, I think he fell asleep at one point he had so few touches on the ball, save where he missed an open-goal from less than five yards. I like Welbeck, but he is not a clinical goalscorer, and, as shown at United, will end up being deployed on the wing ultimately. Again, the notion here that there is not one striker in the entirety of world football who we could afford who is better than these three is utterly absurd.

The idea that we can't upgrade on this squad is the refuge of the unambitious, or of those with a near cultish devotion to Arsene. We've been making excuses for Arsene and Arsenal's transfer activity for so long now that fans have arguments outside the Emirates about the correct accountancy terms to use when discussing the market, fella. We have enough money to make big, big transfers happen, but we are choosing not to do it. This is fundamentally how a huge amount of transfers work - clubs don't want to lose players, so you effectively bribe them into doing so. Arsenal can make that happen, but chose not to this summer.

What are we doing as a club? Where is the money going? We have the highest ticket prices in Europe yet we are content with a collection of players that have proved incapable of mounting a credible title challenge. The inertia of the club is startling. We would rather slip into the comfortable familiarity of the third-place finish, than think long and hard about whether what we have is good enough, and whether we can really do better.

Indeed, it is interesting that Arsene continually argues for 'cohesion' and 'stability'. It's almost as if he might have a vested interest in doing so, as the longest running manager in the Premier League. Two trophies in ten years would hardly seem to provide substance for Arsene's arguments of the need for continuity over change.

And this is the rub. The need for change goes all the way to the top at Arsenal. Watching us fall apart in big games, playing the same tactics every week, losing to the same teams in the Champions League each season, there is a profound sense that this is as good as it gets under Arsene. We have the recent FA Cup wins, which have been great. But we are now at a plateau. Ozil, Sanchez and Cech aren't enough to gloss over persistent failings in the transfer market. Bu they are enough to show we could build a better squad, headed by a better manager. There are no transfers that happen, or don't happen, at the club without Arsene's rubber stamp. Until he goes, we won't build a squad capable of a title challenge. The problem is, he shows no sign of going. A sobering thought.

Gb.