WE’VE FALLEN BEHIND
Arsenal now fourth choice for star players Club left in limbo as Arsene Wenger dithers
ARSENAL will need to undertake major rebuilding of their squad in the summer even if Arsene Wenger stays, with up to nine players, including Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Jack Wilshere, likely to move on.
As the club plan for next season, there is a sense among some players that the gap between Arsenal and their Premier League rivals is growing.
Those Arsenal players who go on England duty are often regaled with stories from Manchester City and Liverpool players about the innovative methods used and by Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp, as well as the intensity of their training.
City players in particular are full of praise for the facilities and the physiological and medical back-up that they receive, which the Arsenal players suspect is superior to theirs. Arsenal take on City in the first of two clashes against Guardiola’s team – they are drawn in the FA Cup semi-finals later this month – with today’s fixture crucial to Wenger maintaining his 20-year run in the top four.
Most staff and directors at Arsenal want Wenger to stay but plans for next season are hampered by the fact that he has not officially committed himself. Agents representing players being scouted for next season want to know whether Wenger is staying and club representatives can’t yet give them a definitive answer.
With Arsenal not yet clear whether Mesut Ozil or Alexis Sanchez will stay, the sense of uncertainty is even more pronounced. Ozil and Sanchez have both been offered deals which are understood to be in excess of £250,000-a-week once image rights are taken into account, the biggest salaries the club has ever paid.
Sanchez will have interest from Chelsea, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain and can let his contract run down, which he would almost certainly need to do if he wished to join Chelsea. Ozil is expected to wait to see whether Bayern Munich would match his offer. Oxlade-Chamberlain, once the heart of the English core Arsenal were meant to be nurturing, has not been offered a new deal and has taken that as a sign that he will be leaving, with interest from Liverpool and Chelsea.
Jack Wilshere and Kieran Gibbs have yet to be approached about new deals. Ronald Koeman is keen to take Wilshere to Everton and it seems increasingly likely that a man once touted as a future Arsenal captain will leave.
Having fallen behind Nacho Monreal and with Arsenal scouting left backs, Gibbs will have to move on if he has ambitions to play regularly. Carl Jenkinson, also one of that English core, is also expected to leave. Targets to bolster the squad will include Bayern’s Kingsley Coman, who visited Arsenal before he joined the Bundesliga club in 2014.
Borussia Dortmund’s Marco Reus is a longstanding midfield target and Monaco’s Benjamin Mendy is the preferred left-back option, but Arsenal face an uphill battle, given the fact that Manchester City and Manchester United are also interested.
Indeed, Arsenal are now third or fourth choice for players when it comes to recruitment. Atletico Madrid’s Antoine Griezmann and Monaco’s 18-year-old Kylian Mbappe are likely to move to more powerful clubs, with Manchester United favourites to sign Griezmann.
Wenger, meanwhile, can justifiably point to how the club has been transformed under his tenure. ‘When you see what the club was and what it is today, when I arrived we were 70 (members of staff) and today we are 700. One share was £400, it £18,000 today,’ he said.
That said, the pertinent question now is who is best placed to take the club into the next phase of its history.