da dobrowin： There was a debate on Twitter – and I use the word debate extremely loosely – that Arsene Wenger has never signed a striker of the calibre of Gonzalo Higuain. In many ways that’s true.
da esport bet： Wenger made Thierry Henry; prior to that he turned Nicolas Anelka from a teenager with bags of potential into a £23million striker; Wenger played the biggest role in turning Robin van Persie into the player he is today; and the Frenchman wasn’t at the club during the signing of Dennis Bergkamp. So there is a lot of weight to that notion: Wenger, for Arsenal, has never signed a ready-made striker of the calibre of Higuain.
As distorted as it creates the landscape of the game, money isn’t everything in football. I’ve seen supporters, both Arsenal and rival, question who the club can attract in the way of big names. It’s been said that the club’s wage budget won’t allow for them to compete, nor will the ‘fact’ that Arsenal aren’t a big club any more. But lesser clubs have done a lot to build themselves up as challengers to the traditional powers of both domestic and European football. Arsenal are one of the traditional powerhouses of English football. The club has history, prestige, a global status certainly off the field, and a manager who is still seen by the wider footballing community to be one of the modern greats. The signing of Higuain will only go on to reinforce and remind many people of those characteristics.
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It’s something fans should be excited about, yet history forces dismissals and pessimism, sometimes to the point of sarcasm. Higuain to Arsenal has been doing the rounds heavily this week and an announcement may not be far off. But it’s such a lofty rise from what Arsenal supporters have seen and come to expect that the safest option is to just bury your head and wait for something concrete. As frustrating and dated as the phrase is, “I’ll wait until it’s up on Arsenal.com to get excited,” does hold value.
The signing of Higuain isn’t really a signal to many players but mostly to fans and the media. The club have gone all the way to stopping just shy of promising a summer of excitement. Some need the cash to flow to warrant the term “excitement,” while others simply need to have heard of the player to get the juices flowing. But big players, very good players at least, haven’t been strangers to potentially entering the doors permanently at the Emirates.
Juan Mata was the most recent and highly-rated name to come close to swapping the Mestalla for the Emirates rather than Stamford Bridge. Eden Hazard, too, could have been an Arsenal player. In 2008 Wenger said he had no interest in signing David Villa after the Spaniard admitted he’d like a move to the Premier League and admired Arsenal’s style of play.
The big names haven’t been out of club’s grasp because of a lack of drawing power. Rather it’s been the fact that Arsenal want to build organically. Even with the availability of Alisher Usmanov, Ivan Gazidis has made it clear that the club will continue to hold true to its values.
Nothing has changed now. Someone has a record of the exact figure in years, days and minutes as to the last time Arsenal lifted a trophy, and yet Real Madrid’s Gonzalo Higuain is said to be on his way. Wasn’t it overly similar in 1995 when Bergkamp came in? The club needed a boost and yet they had been far from stripped of their worth in English football due to a small dry spell on the league title front.
The best players say they want a ‘project,’ and yet a lot of the time we know what they really mean. Marco Reus could have turned down Dortmund last year in favour of Bayern and what would certainly amount to a higher wage package. But the player moved to the west of the country for football reasons, for the history of the club and for his own affiliation with Dortmund. It shouldn’t have needed last season to highlight just how good Reus is but it did. He was outstanding in his final year with Gladbach; he could be playing at Real Madrid or Manchester United if either club had their way. It showed that Dortmund were serious about their position in German football, building to something bigger which obviously ended with a trip to the Champions League final. They did it by building almost from scratch.
Arsenal are arguably in a similar boat. Not necessarily a sleeping giant, as they’ve managed to maintain their top four status during what were a number of difficult seasons. But now that the finances are in order Arsenal are ready to pull the trigger on a group of players who belong in a market which was previously closed to the club. Trophies aside, they would have come regardless; history and tradition dictates that.
Will Higuain provide the boost to draw other top players to Arsenal?
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