“When I arrived here 13 years ago I could sense that

this club had values, tradition, and strength in their belief and in their

values.

“When I travelled at that time

to Derby or to Coventry when they were in the Premier League, they always told

me it is ‘the Arsenal way’ to do things.

“They do it their way and it

was always respect and admiration in their statements and I believe it is

essential and important that we keep that inside the club.”

– Arsene Wenger, 2009

I sometimes feel, from what I hear

from fellow football fans and read online and on Twitter, that I am one of the

few remaining Gooners that are in total reverence of Arsene Wenger, Ivan Gazidis,

and their performance to date. Yes, reverence. It’s the word I’m looking for.



You see I believe it takes an

enormous amount of resolve to hold steady to your goals in the face of the

perpetually negative coverage, derision, ridicule, abuse, distrust; and, at times,

open hostility that appears to have taken over these past 10 years.

Here are two men that have been

accused of using Arsenal as a cash cow, of allowing our competitors to get away

from us, and most hilariously of all, of lacking ambition.

Arsenal lack ambition – Really?



You see the hilarity isn’t even in

the basic argument that we can have over and over again. That in itself is

funny, the fact that building a world class stadium, paying for it ourselves

and maintaining elite European status while other clubs had the luxury of being

able to invest solely in usurping us, is considered ‘lacking ambition’.

Really? While simultaneously

building a huge cash reserve, expanding our revenue and worldwide reach despite

regularly hemorrhaging top quality players, and doing this during the most

economically ridiculous times the game has ever seen.

Really? So who else has done it

before?

And even having achieved all of this

in the face of such derision, the deriders are still not seeing the punchline…

What’s hilarious is that the joke is

about to land squarely on anyone that levels or has leveled that claim against

Arsenal. They are, in fact, the ones who lack ambition. They have no idea what

we’re building here. They haven’t been able to see it, and they’ll still take a

couple of seasons of convincing probably, but that’s ok.

The truth is, the end game has never

really been about winning FA Cups and Carling Cups, or even throwing everything

at winning the league during this period of growth. To have thrown all our

money at top quality players in order to win trophies in recent years, would

have been shooting our load a bit early. We may have had success for a period,

but it would have taken us longer to reach the real end game.

Let me tell you what ambition is to

me. Ambition is doing what nobody has ever done before. Ambition is having a

vision so big that you earn more detractors than admirers.

How dare they?

Ambition is believing that, during

an era of artificial financial conditions within the game, you can still build

a world class footballing empire through patience, dedication, focus, skill,

and application.

That is what Arsenal have done. That

is ambition. We did it with football. That is our purpose. We are a football

club.

Back in the late 90s and early

century there were two heavyweights in English football: ourselves and Manchester

United. However there was only one European heavyweight hailing from the UK,

and that was Man Utd. Only Man Utd could go toe to toe with the likes of Bayern

Munich, Juventus, A.C. Milan, Real

Madrid and Barcelona. On the merit of

our game we were considered a class outfit, but in truth, for us to stay at the

top and consistently recreate that level of quality, we needed to be making

more money. Recycling and maintaining a world class squad requires world class

finances. It requires a world class reputation and world class facilities, and

it requires a world class philosophy. If you have all of these, you don’t need

anything else. It’s all yours for the taking.

Arsene Wenger had come in and raised

the bar so high for Arsenal fans, that he wanted us to be able to enjoy that

level of football long after he had gone. That was the end game, and he

promised to do it all with the football.

Fast forward to 2013 and Arsenal

have just announced that we are on target to match the £300m revenue generated

by many people’s model superclub – Bayern Munich. We congratulate them on their

success but they had their stadium given to them. It was a gift. The money

they’ve been making ever since, although superbly managed, was aided by a

tremendous gift. No such luck for Arsenal, we had to build ours with our own

resources.

We now have the money to make

signings at the financial level that the artificially enhanced and

traditionally giant clubs have been doing for years. You know, the clubs

that you’ve been accusing us of lacking the ambition to match. The ones that

could afford to dismantle our squads by brandishing obscene amounts of money

that some of them didn’t even earn, at our star players and those of many other

clubs. They took steroids to overtake us, pushed the financial limits beyond

anything we’d planned for… and after eight years of eating clean, training

mean, ignoring the haters, and staying completely focused on the end game…we

are now poised to become a true superclub, trophies et al.

Ambition is taking the path you

believe in and having faith in your ability to get where you want to go.

Ambition is to keep swimming against

the tide, no matter what conditions you face, until you have reached your

destination.

In the face of financial doping, of

media negativity, open criticism, horrendous injury luck, treachery,

temptation, so many near misses and having to start all over again. Never

giving up my friends, that is ambition.

Ambition is to continue on your path

despite making costly mistakes, so long as you know that somewhere within the

grand plan, your efforts are helping to reach your goals. Remember, this is

about the end game.

Ambition is knowing that even those

that accuse you of lacking it, have no idea how big your dream truly is.

They can’t quantify our success

because they can’t even see it.

This has always been about now. We

may have had success earlier than now, but after careful management, planning

and development, Wenger has had two potentially world-beating teams taken

apart. Some would say by mismanagement but personally I put it down to hugely

inflated transfer fees and wages at the top of the game. So inflated that

football itself is taking steps to calm it down.

The 07/08 team had made massive

strides. They needed one more year. They were picked apart. The 10/11 team the

same. They are the two squads that really looked like we’d cracked it on the

field. Picked apart again. Then we lost Cesc Fabregas, Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri,

Then Robin van Persie and Alex Song. This was their time, the squad would have

been peaking and we’d have been epic.

Contract naivety undid us in 10/11

especially and the following summer with Song and RvP. We’ve fixed that. The

club have realised that loyalty in this game can easily be bought now.

Difference between now and years gone by is that we can afford it.

We have, organically, maintained our

position amongst the elite. The only teams that have overtaken us in England

had to artificially strengthen themselves in order to leave us behind. They

cherry picked our top talent: they strengthened by weakening us. We dipped but

we never fell.

Now we go toe to toe with them

again. In eight years we have built everything that it took Man Utd 26 years to

build. City bought it all. Chelsea, though the most successful English club

outside of United, still have a way to go. They need to bring their stadium up

to superclub level.

We have done what every good father

tries to teach his child. We have focused and have not been afraid of our

mistakes. We have been resilient; we’ve been fair and sporting. We’ve lived

within our means and strived to achieve something better. We’ve looked to the

future and established a foundation that is ready to succeed within these crazy

times. We’ve been loyal to our staff, both playing and otherwise. We’ve given

anybody that shows true determination and application, the chance to succeed.

We’ve been a proper football club.



Now we have money, we have a stadium

and we have commercial reach. We have a British core to take us into these new,

fantastic times. We can afford world class players any season that we need

them. We have a squad that has maturity, unity, resilience, technique, emerging

talents and space for one or two top class additions to truly complete a group

that will challenge for years to come.

Through all the trials and

tribulations – granted, some were self-inflicted, but in the same breath you

have to congratulate them for not letting such mistakes veer them from a path

that they believed in… Arsene Wenger and Ivan Gazidis have built a modern

superclub. We can pay the big transfer fees and the big wages. We are at the

top of the game as the footballing world finally tries to regulate itself. It

doesn’t matter to us. If teams want to stretch us again they need more

steroids. We get stronger anyway.

Wenger and Gazidis kept going and

resisted all temptation. They didn’t look enviously into anyone else’s

plate. Arsenal ate clean, we trained mean. We took the rough with the

smooth. We took the bumps and bruises, went up against the juggernauts, won

some, and lost some. But we stuck to the regime.

Now we are on the cusp of becoming

one of the strongest clubs in world football. We can develop, AND buy world

class. We don’t have to pick one or the other anymore. Chelsea and City still

do, no matter what they’ve won to date.

We’re now about to make the arsenal

philosophy of exhilarating football a winning and revered brand around the

world. And if managed well, it will stay that way for generations.

That’s the end game

So can we stop lamenting and

scrutinizing the mistakes we’ve made, the players departed, opportunities lost,

and take a real long, hard look at the magnitude of what Wenger and Gazidis

actually done here.

Forget all the ‘have we, haven’t we

had money’ chat. Forget the ‘deadwood’ nonsense. Forget the trophy drought.

Just for a second, put it to one side. We’ve reached this point in

spite of Nicklas Bendtner, Park Chu Young, Marouane Chamakh and Sebastien

Squillaci. In spite of City buying four of our first 11. In spite of

Van Persie going to Utd. In spite of Piers Morgan, a man that clearly

cannot see beyond his own nose.

Can we just be immensely proud of a

club that has maintained its dignity while all those around them were whoring

themselves in an effort to stay current? A club that has absorbed venom and

vitriol for merely trying its hardest to be the best example of a footballing

institution that they can be? A club that has sacrificed short term success and

adulation in order to eventually surpass their own standards, standards that

have been used as a stick to beat them with as they quietly went about the

business of levelling up our capabilities forever?

We will buy players. But whether we

get Cesc Fabregas or we get Clement Grenier, I trust the boss. Gonzalo Higuain,

Stevan Jovetic, Christian Benteke or David Villa, I trust the boss. I see what

he’s done with the players he had and I cannot question his overall

performance, in spite of the well-documented gambles that didn’t come off. Now

he gambles less with the squad because he can shop for exactly that he wants.

He doesn’t have to tweak and coax quality out of them. If anybody thinks that

Arsene Wenger can’t do damage with an experienced squad that he can keep

together, they need to look away now.

He knows the attributes he needs to

give him the options on field to play the arsenal brand of football. It’s his

brand for crying out loud. The victory against Barcelona, the resilient

performance versus Bayern, the smashing of Chelsea, and countless other

glimpses of what to expect from a mature and integrated Wenger team. He’s

beaten over 90 minutes the champions of every one of Europe’s top five leagues

over the past few years. All with inferior squads that he hadn’t finished

gelling. Now he gets to gel a squad in his own image and build cohesion and

consistency, without losing his top talents every summer. He’s done it and

stayed with the elite, first with inexperience, then with inconsistency, doubt,

lack of cohesion and lower quality than his rivals. He no longer has these

handicaps, whether you feel they were self inflicted or not.

Bayern, Real, Juve, PSG, Barca, Manchester

City, France, England. All have tried to poach Arsene Wenger for themselves,

because they are aware of the damage he can do when he’s fully armed. By

remaining loyal to the club, he was accused of ‘lacking ambition’ by staying in

his cushy job where success didn’t matter.

Really?

Meanwhile, Wenger and Gazidis have

armed us. 21st century armed us. Strengthened us, while everyone tried to

weaken us. And they did it while the footballing world was laughing at them.

Now let’s see what they do with it.

My special thanks to Amartey Armar, a Ghanian Gooner who

approached us this week with the first blog he has ever written on his his

beloved Arsenal. We are honoured you approached Gunners Town and all we can say

is Amartry, take a bow son – Dave Seager

Please follow Amartey on twitter.

Amartey Armar

Follow @1MrT_AFC



Accra based. Big picture, always. New writer as of June 2013. Always tries to understand why Arsenal makes the unique decisions that we do. Haven’t really watched the trophy clock, prefer to sit back and watch the alchemist at work…It’s more fun that way. Views are my own. Real visionaries are rarely appreciated during their time… Arsenal has one right now. I’m just glad to have noticed early.

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