When to Expect Arsenal's Next Transfer

Last week’s arrival of the skillful and feisty Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka seemed perfectly coordinated with the unlikely St. Totteringham’s Day of May 22^nd to tamp down unrest in the Arsenal fanbase.

Yet after the revelations of this spring, you have to wonder how widespread that unrest is.

The situation on the ground and in the ground

In particular, all the hullabaloo and lobbying from three supporter groups resulted in only the most tepid and amateurish of protests during Arsenal’s 1-0 win over Norwich on April 30^th. This led some observers, Arseblog’s Tim Stillman prominent among them, to suggest that social media produce an inaccurate representation of Arsenal support.

That certainly jibed with my experience at the Crystal Palace and West Bromwich Albion matches earlier in April. There was localized grumpiness and limited encouragement during the uninspired display against Palace, but I would describe the environment as disinterested rather than toxic. Two early goals against West Brom and a different fan demographic made that a more festive affair.

The atmosphere at these matches surprised me a little, because with my support restricted by distance to television, blogs, and Twitter, I had feared outright revolt in person. What I got instead was more evidence that the self-regard, outrage, and hyperbole we witness through social media aren’t pervasive among our fellow supporters.

How time rolls

In addition to attitude, social media tends to warp the sense of time. The immediacy of the vehicle, especially Twitter, creates an endless desire for news and feedback. But, in the real time experienced by most people, revelations and faux-revelations are not constant.

It’s worth remembering the different dynamics of virtual and earthbound existence during the close season. The patterns of the league and cup competitions aren’t there to guide us through the summer months, but the appetites and expectations driven by social media don’t abate.

To satisfy these desires, many fans look to the club’s player acquisitions. Intensified by print and broadcast media, supporters’ hunger for transfer news has further distorted reality. Now, we’ve reached the point where some observers expect their own needs for news to drive the club’s decisions. As if solipsism and ceaseless satisfaction of the Arsenal twitterati should somehow guide the business.

When manager Arsène Wenger responded to questions about fan discontent by saying “I’m sorry if I can’t keep [everyone] 100 percent happy,” he was referring to the team’s overall performance and its inability to sustain a challenge for the league title. But he could just as easily have been speaking about the way the club conducts its business activities.

Alternatives to PR priority

It doesn’t, for example, let public relations become the dominant priority during the transfer season. That might be an obvious point, considering the futile clamoring of supporters and observers for the acquisition of a top center forward since 2013. Still, Arsenal officials do very little to manage perceptions of what positions need to be filled, and they certainly don’t measure acquisitions to fit the social media news cycle.

More important are the club’s background work, the clarity of negotiations, and the preferences of incoming players. In the case of Xhaka, Arsenal’s scouts “have been watching him for a long time,” in the words of Wenger; Xhaka confirmed that the manager had made the initial contact in mid-2015: “It was a year ago, I was almost speechless when he called!”

From the outside, we can’t know how straightforward the negotiations with Xhaka’s representatives and former club Borussia Mönchengladbach were. The news cycle and popular appetites encourage misinformation, as when stories emerged that Arsenal had lowballed the German club. All we can assess is the outcome, which suggests very little fuss.

The timing also depended on Xhaka’s interest in concluding the move before the start of the European Championships on June 10.

So if any fans are thinking that their own desires and perceptions had anything to do with these events—the position Arsenal are filling, the player’s identity, the unfolding of negotiations, the arrangement of the announcement--all the evidence indicates other factors drove the business.

At the other end of the transfer period, when moves are about to be cut off for four months, the forces could be different. Even so, Arsenal isn’t likely to act based on fans’ longings. Opportunities might materialize, such as when playmaker Mesut Özil became available in late summer 2014. Now that the club has greater, perhaps unprecedented, financial stability, we can expect it to be a buyer more often than a seller in those situations.

No matter what the scenario, the plan for the business and the sporting strategy will guide decisions. Our own personal or collective preferences of what position, which player, or when won’t.

Although a football club’s business is entertainment, Arsenal’s genre isn’t fantasy.

The Inscrutable Arsène Wenger

The close of the summer transfer period on Tuesday prompted an incredulous response from many Arsenal supporters. How, they asked, could Arsenal state aspirations to compete for the Premier League title and neglect summer transfers?

The disconnect seems all the more pronounced in light of the activity of other title aspirants, particularly Manchester City and Manchester United and, to a lesser extent, Chelsea. They were three of the top four spenders, on a net basis, in the league, while Arsenal ranked 15^th.

To broaden and intensify the contrast: Arsenal were the only club in the top-five European leagues not to recruit a senior outfield player during this transfer period.

This is seen as a clear indication of a character flaw in manager Arsène Wenger.

Reasons for the uproar

I think this misguided response comes down to three factors:

1. Our own ignorance of the arcane environment of football transfers
2. Our lazy equation of one man with the activity of a multifaceted enterprise
3. Wenger’s remarkable ability, despite years in the public eye, to defy assumptions and expectations

I’ve written about the bizarre world of football transfers before, so instead of restating my case here, I’ll just direct you to a piece on my personal blog, “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Even Small Crowds.” The main point is that football transfers don’t have the characteristics of any transaction we’re familiar with – and they certainly aren’t as straightforward as popular computer games make them seem.

Even the term “transfer market” creates a false impression, because it suggests a large pool of transparent transactions that can be compared to each other. That’s not the case for the few, murky, discrete exchanges of footballers and money among European clubs.

My article “Arsenal, Arsène Wenger, and the Cult of Personality” examines the second factor, arguing that the equation of individual managers with clubs is lazy, misleading, and convenient, in the sense that it allows me as an individual to criticize a public figure based on the way I would have acted in similar circumstances.

An exceptional figure

It’s the third factor I want to look at here. Accepting that Wenger plays the dominant role in Arsenal’s acquisition of players, the manager has shown instincts that so few of us can understand, let alone summon.

To wit: When the next summer transfer period closes, Wenger will be in the final year of his contract. Yet in this penultimate opportunity for a major expenditure, he held back, or at least endorsed the approach of holding back. How many of us, knowing we could be out the door in the medium term, would have done the same?

Instead, the manager and his colleagues made just one acquisition at the first-team level. Even there, the move went against expectation. Arsenal paid Chelsea £10.9 million for 33-year-old goalkeeper Petr Cech. That’s the highest fee for a goalkeeper in Wenger’s tenure – Richard Wright’s transfer cost the club £6 million in 2001 – and certainly represents the largest proportion of any transfer period’s activity for a goalkeeper. (Transfer figures are from The Arsenal Report's Transfer Centre.)

The remainder of Arsenal’s transfer activity involved younger players, part of the club’s clear effort to enhance the player development structure and personnel. Jeff Reine-Adelaïde, the 17-year-old acquisition from Lens, put in two eye-catching preseason performances with the first team, while his compatriots Yassin Fortune and Ismaël Bennacer have also been highly touted. In all, the club spent £3.3 million on five youngsters, the largest single outlay on youth team players in Wenger’s time at the club.

That suggests that, despite his age, Wenger continues to manage for the long-term, valuing the training and upbringing of talented youth. At the same time, he has eased his prior practice of cutting ties with players older than 30, extending the contracts of Tomás Rosicky and Mikel Arteta this summer and showing a willingness to let 31-year-old Mathieu Flamini's contract run to term next summer.

Adaptation or image management?

This portrayal isn't of a hidebound geriatric or a spendthrift. Wenger is making multiple adjustments, not least deploying a considerable amount of the club's resources in the past two years, to move the club closer to its title rivals. He won't ever match their spending because profligacy doesn't suit his philosophy--if it did, he'd have left for Real Madrid in 2005--and because that's not the club's strategy.

What Wenger will do is see out his current contract and keep us all guessing about his subsequent plans. Whether this coyness is a deliberate ploy to stay in the public eye, to take some of the scrutiny off his players, to solidify his legacy, or to remain true to his nature, that's all conjecture.

We may never fully understand Wenger's motives or decisions, but it's incredibly interesting to try. If those efforts don't figure him out to our satisfaction, that's more on us than it is on him. Might it just be more worthwhile to marvel at this extraordinary steward of an organization that means so much to so many?

In Search of More Arsenal Deals

This transfer period has brought just one newcomer into the Arsenal team that finished the 2014-15 season. That's goalkeeper Petr Cech, who arrived from Chelsea on June 29.

The only other developments have been one-year contract extensions for veteran midfielders Mikel Arteta and Tomas Rosicky and the departure of the loaned-out forward Lukas Podolski.

The noise you'll hear is coming from the critics and the fantasists, perpetually clamoring for the perfect deep-lying midfielder and center forward. Meanwhile, those of us who want to understand the club's football strategy, priorities, decisions, and actions remain calm and look for clues in statements and documented activities.

Although the evidence isn't plentiful, we can draw three conclusions thus far and identify several implications for the shape of the 2015-16 squad.

1. The timeworn transfer narrative is moot

The theme of financial restrictions has dominated the story of Arsenal's work in player transfers. Call Arsenal a selling club, because every year from 2004 to 2012 it sold at least one of its stars and rarely acquired a high-profile player. The self-sustaining financial model demanded it.

That blunt and clumsy characterization, which didn't always capture the net transfer activity, is certainly invalid now. Thanks to increasing commercial and television revenues, a sizable cash stake, and easing stadium debt, the financials no longer require player sales to fund acquisitions or other operations. As a result, manager Arsène Wenger can keep the players he values rather than see them leave (Arteta, Rosicky), and "project" players--young, out-of-favor, or undiscovered--no longer dominate the acquisitions.

These new dynamics were made flesh in the last two off-seasons. Recognized stars Mesut Özil and Alexis Sanchez joined Arsenal, while no major contributors left. Just as telling, the club paid £11 million, potentially £16 million, to acquire the unproven Southampton defender Calum Chambers. As I wrote on my personal blog last July ("Suddenly, This Summer"), the Chambers deal signaled the club's renewed willingness to assume significant transfer risk.

This does not mean that Arsenal can compete with Europe's big spenders for every world-class player. The point is that the club possesses the financial, cultural, and personal resources to attract a top talent or two a year, as well as accomplished or promising supporting players.

2. The professed priority for 2015 is goals

Wenger indicated toward the close of the last campaign that he was seeking additional firepower. "We need another player who gets 10 or 15 goals, but we have a good mentality and good cohesion in the team." Maintaining that chemistry while increasing the production seem to be the imperatives for this summer's activity, considering how the players comments have echoed Wenger's. (See "Arsenal's Title Ambitions.")

The most straightforward approach to achieving both the production and chemistry objectives would be for current players to score more goals. The prime candidates are Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Danny Welbeck, and Theo Walcott. Oxlade-Chamberlain had just one goal in 23 league appearances in 2014-15, while Welbeck scored four times in 25 league matches.

Walcott is the most interesting case. He did not return to action until mid-season, then started just four league contests among his 14 league appearances. Despite this limited action, he netted five goals in the league, opened the scoring in the FA Cup final, and was productive on a per-90-minute basis. This output led some observers, notably @PoznanInMyPants in "FEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!," to suggest that Walcott is the goalscorer Arsenal craves.

There's evidence for this proposition in Walcott's returns last season and in his production in 32 league appearances in 2012-13. According to FourFourTwo's StatsZone app, Walcott converted 50 percent of his "big chances" that year, had 40 key passes, and delivered 10 assists. These numbers are comparable to the 2014-15 statistics of the center forwards on many fans' wish lists, including Real Madrid's Karim Benzema and Lyon's Alexandre Lacazette. (See 7AMKickoff's analysis "Lacazette, Higuain, Benzema, Griezmann; Does Arsenal Need an Upgrade on Giroud?")

If Walcott stays for the next campaign, as the lack of contract drama suggests he will, my guess is that any attacking addition to the squad would have to bring something different. The most convincing argument points to a wide playmaker. Tim Stillman makes that case in his Arseblog column "What Does Wenger Want to Add to his Front Three?"

But the quality of Arsenal's existing forward line and the team's overall cohesion mean that a newcomer would have to be a top talent with the right mindset. Wenger and his colleagues will be vigilant for opportunities that meet these standards, but they won't see an addition as a necessity. The same thinking will, I expect, shape decisions about the deep midfield role--open to improvement with the right deal, but no urgency.

3. Arsenal will not traffic in wish fulfillment

Fantasy is the genre most suited to the transfer season. Supporters want their wishes fulfilled or their theories justified. They're led to believe those possibilities by the incomplete, manipulative, and misleading public statements of many managers, players, family members, agents, and observers.

Arsenal's representatives try to avoid this fantasy realm. They typically shoot down or refuse to answer leading questions and seem conservative in their statements' depth and timing. These are unsatisfying stances in the make-believe land of transfers.

The club's authorities don't seem the least bit concerned. They'll continue to seek ways to improve the team, taking a much longer view than most supporters do, and deciding based on realities and not fantasies. This might mean no more acquisitions this summer; or it could produce a deal that no one expects.

If you enjoy flights of fancy and can keep them in perspective, follow the rumors. If their consummation affects your support or interest, though, I'd counsel you to reassess your pastimes or choose another club to follow.

Arsenal's Omniscients Miss the Point

If you're so smart, how do you explain your spectacularly poor timing?

That's the only meaningful question raised by the dismissive banner unveiled in the away end after Arsenal's 1-0 win against West Bromwich Albion. The team had just won its second match in four days, holding the opposition scoreless again. Yet a few of the leading lights in the grandstand thought that was the right occasion to publicize their desire to usher manager Arsène Wenger into retirement.

The episode was unedifying. We heard no new arguments about freedom of expression, got no insights into the internecine debates among Arsenal supporters, gained no appreciation of the complicated task of managing a professional sports organization.

What we did get was a glimpse of modern sports support, if not life, in all its simplistic self-indulgence.

Contrary in almost every respect

The impulses behind this type of expression run counter to the drivers of a successful, attractive footballing enterprise. Despite the clarity of the final results, professional football is a complex group undertaking, requiring business savvy, judgment of character and ability, tactical experience and smarts, psychological and motivational skills, uncommon physical ability, collective understanding, and other expertise.

That complexity frightens many. Those are ones clinging to the notion that "the simplest explanation is always the best," not recognizing that Occam's Razor has long been a logical fallacy. They latch on to every new piece of information about the club, not understanding how to assess the accuracy or meaning of that information. This same group appoints itself arbiter and tribune of The Truth about Arsenal Football Club, usually defined by an in-or-out vote on the manager.

The lack of nuance in this line of interpretation signals the fool's own stupidity. What's modern is the ability to gain an audience for that foolishness.

"Part of our emergency is that it's so awfully tempting to do this sort of thing now, to retreat to narrow arrogance, pre-formed positions, rigid filters, the 'moral clarity' of the immature," wrote David Foster Wallace in the essay "Deciderization 2007 - A Special Report." "The alternative is dealing with massive, high-entropy amounts of info and ambiguity and conflict and flux; it's continually discovering new vistas of personal ignorance and delusion."

Or, more to our point, Gunnerblog observed in the aftermath of the 2-1 defeat to Manchester United: "The truth is that a result is rarely determined by one single thing. It's almost never entirely due to the brilliance of one player, or indeed the error of another. Football is a game composed of thousands of interconnected moments." ("Arsenal 1 - 2 Man United: Why the players have to take blame too")

Your known unknowns

Those myriad connections during a match certainly call into question straightforward, cause-and-effect analyses. Similarly, simple narratives fail to convey a football club's complicated preparations for competition, in particular its player acquisition activities, fitness regimes, and man management style.

Still, a contingent of Arsenal fans reduces these activities to simple stories, such as:

• In negotiating the transfer market, Wenger is a cheapskate and a ditherer
• Arsenal's injury problems stem from the players' delicate physiques, the manager's inability to rotate the squad, and/or the playing style
• The manager is a micromanager who can't get the best out of his staff or his players

We've debunked these myths before. Have a look at "Silly Season Survival Tips" on this site and "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Even Small Crowds" on my personal blog for better ways to think about the transfer market. In essence, if someone purports to have the complete, inside story on player acquisitions, dismiss that out of hand. It's such a murky environment that all accounts are suspect.

I'd encourage a healthy skepticism of injury analyses as well. A multitude of factors acts differently on each human body, so the idea that we could identify one cause or a few causes is far-fetched. For example, Wenger's recent implication that the World Cup schedule brought on the current spate of injuries doesn't account for the full summer vacations of the subsequently crocked Mikel Arteta, Aaron Ramsey, Nacho Monreal, and Kieran Gibbs.

Instead, we're better off trying to understand how the club is addressing the web of contributing factors. "Arsenal's Medicine Man, Shad Forsythe, Will Work Wonders over Time" provides a good foundation in the advances the new performance chief is trying to institute.

And rather than accepting an at-best dated analysis of Wenger's management style and its consequences, we should consider the possibility that structuring and nurturing human relationships are highly complex undertakings. Management approaches, including delegating tasks and setting performance expectations, and motivational work owe everything to systems and psychologies that outside observers won't fully grasp. (Some attempts to describe these multiple dimensions appear in "Management the Arsenal Way" and "Mesut Özil Plays for Arsenal, and You Do Not.")

Legitimate questions

These dynamics don't mean we should give up trying to understand what's happening with the club we love. They just call for appreciation of the complexities, wisdom to ask insightful questions, and skepticism of obvious answers.

For example, the question of who will succeed Wenger is now a shallow one. We should instead be asking how Arsenal's leadership is preparing itself to identify and hire the next manager, what principles will guide that process, and what structures will produce the choice. No writer or analyst, to my knowledge, has pursued those lines of inquiry with club officials.

That's a failure of the Fourth Estate. Indeed, the media is an active party to fans' rush to judgment because the simple story is easy to write and popular. Inaccuracy and banality don't seem to be concerns.

Acknowledging complexity and the limits of our own knowledge and ability should be of high importance, though, if we truly care about Arsenal more than our own opinions and brief moments in the spotlight.

Arsenal's Experienced Youth Movement

Manchester City's visit to the Emirates Stadium on Saturday displayed two contrasting approaches to building and enhancing a professional football squad.

That's no revelation to anyone who's followed the game over the past five years. Man City, propelled by the oil riches of Abu Dhabi, has spent lavishly on experienced world-class players and has been rewarded with two of the last three Premier League titles. Meanwhile, Arsenal has doled out less than it has brought in, selling many of its top performers, acquiring young but unproven talent, and amassing a sizable cash balance in the process.

Many will look at the average ages of the two squads and see confirmation of these long-held perceptions: City has the oldest squad in the Premier League on average; Arsenal, at 25.4 years, the third youngest. (Figures from the September 8 SoccerEx Transfer Review by Prime Time Sport.)

In my view, this conclusion is no longer valid. It ignores significant shifts in Arsenal's methods, which are becoming more apparent with each transfer period, as well as the striking changes instituted by other top clubs.

A core of experienced, valuable youth

Arsenal's youth policy governed the management of the club's playing resources while it paid down the debt and endured the commercial arrangements connected with the Emirates Stadium. Those financial conditions don't exist now. As a result, the type of players the club is acquiring and retaining has changed.

In particular, the youth of today are experienced. The headline signings of the past two off-seasons, Mesut Özil and Alexis Sánchez, are now just 25 years old, but they've earned 62 and 71 international caps, respectively. Overall, despite its relatively low average age, the first-team squad has made 877 international appearances. The latest was by 19-year-old Englishman Calum Chambers, another summer 2014 signing. Among 25 first-team players, only four have no senior international experience. That is hardly a callow squad.

While Arsenal players have built their credentials with national teams, they've also been deepening their familiarity with each other. The squad boasts the third highest stability in the League, having played together on average 2.7 years, according to Prime Time Sport's report. That's vital to the Arsenal style characterized by interchanging positions, quick ball movement, and in-game instinct.

Indeed, manager Arsène Wenger and his colleagues have constructed this squad in a distinctive fashion, but perhaps not in the way most observers assume. Arsenal spent the fourth-highest amount in Premier League transfer fees this summer, while acquiring the lowest number of new players (5). This leads to several conclusions:

1. The £56 million net transfer fee (from the Arsenal Report Transfer Centre) shows that the days of building the team with a severely limited budget have passed
2. The club is no longer fighting inflation of player salaries, refusing to pay what the transfer market demands
3. The club is deploying its increased resources to acquire the players it wants but is not spending indiscriminately
4. The approach focuses on a tight, unified team over potentially problematic star characters (See "Will Wenger's Roster Gambit Pay Off?")
5. The team is composed of highly accomplished, highly compensated, but still relatively young, professionals

The core home-grown

With home-grown players at the foundation.

Arsenal now has a reasonable claim to eight home-grown players on its first team roster, the highest number in the League, including six Englishmen. According to "The Premier League's Home Grown Player Rule, Explained," Martin Tomlinson's (@Heisenbergkamp) skillfully researched and argued piece, this makeup gives Wenger considerable roster flexibility.

That's because any 25-man Premier League roster can contain only 17 players who are not designated home-grown. Arsenal's eight home-grown players represent a full contingent, and all but two of those eight, midfielder Francis Coquelin and third-choice goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, compete for starting roles.

In other words, Arsenal can be at almost full strength and depth under the regulations, while many competitors have to carry smaller squads or compromise on quality to comply.

The opposition makes other choices

Arsenal's direct competition has for the most part not sought advantage in experienced, young, home-grown players. Last year's winners Man City lists only two home-grown players on its Premier League roster, meaning its full squad can consist of just 19 players. Now, those 19 are top quality, but perhaps this setup doesn't maximize the club's resources. It's also been dancing around UEFA's Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations and sanctions, which appear to have slowed the club's transfer spending and, according to some reports, caused City to move out striker Álvaro Negredo and halt its pursuit of Radamel Falcao. (Read Ian Herbert's "Radamel Falcao: A Symbol of UEFA Shackling Manchester City in the FFP Era").

According to manager Manuel Pelligrini, City also sent Negredo to Valencia because UEFA's sanctions capped its Champions League squad at 21 players for the 2014-15 campaign. Pellegrini said that "it all starts from the restriction about the number of players. We have restrictions about the number of players and the money we can spend." Don't cry too much for Pellegrini, though, because UEFA seems to be cutting City considerable slack, allowing it to field only one non-club-trained home-grown player among the five (disproportionately) required under the settlement.

Meanwhile, Chelsea is essentially outsourcing player development. It has loaned 26 of its players to other clubs, mostly outside England and Wales. That can remove these players' salaries from Chelsea's books for the purposes of FFP but does not work toward either the Premier League's or UEFA's home-grown requirements. Chelsea has also turned to a much more circumspect spender in 2014: Its net transfer spending was just £10 million in summer 2014.

The tacks of two other clubs do seem similar to Arsenal's in some ways. The most alike is Liverpool's, which was the third highest spender on a net basis and now has a squad whose average age (25.2 years) is even younger than Arsenal's. The main difference is that Liverpool brought in 11 players to Arsenal's five. Manchester United, like Arsenal, has a large home-grown contingent and a relatively young average age, but those traits are secondary to United's net expenditure of £122 million on an assortment of attacking talent, which looks like a desperate rush to return to a Champions League position.

That might work over 38 matches--who can predict? But it seems far more risky financially and less designed as a long-term response to the new Premier League and UEFA regulatory regimes than does Arsenal's approach.

Arsenal, Arsène Wenger, and the Cult of Personality

As the summer transfer deadline approached Monday, millions of keys were called into action to lambaste Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger.

"He's still cheap."

"He's a ditherer."

"He's too loyal to current players to acquire anyone who might replace them."

These are well-worn, superficial explanations of the club's transfer activities, criticisms that transform the perceived personal traits of one man into the guiding principles of a multimillion-pound sports business.

It's not just the amateurs making this association. Marketing professional Alex Fynn and Arsenal fanzine innovator Kevin Whitcher called their 2008 study of the club "Arsènal: The Making of a Modern Superclub," essentially equating the organization with its field manager. Even more striking was Arsenal CEO Ivan Gazidis's recent characterization of the club as run-of-the-mill, save for Wenger. He told Sports Illustrated's Jeff Bradley: "There's nothing that really distinguishes us from other clubs in England, other than this man."

To me, this line of thinking is simplistic, misleading, and damaging to the spirit of the game.

The full-blown obsession with managers

The overemphasis on the character and power of the football manager doesn't affect Arsenal alone. Although it's easy to identify Wenger with the club due to his extraordinary tenure, to say nothing of the spelling connection between his first name and the club's, observers are just as likely to limit their analyses of other clubs to the perceived traits of their managers.

The English media are particularly sycophantic toward Jose Mourinho of Chelsea, hanging on his every word, giving undue credence to all of them, and buying the image that Mourinho wants to present of himself. The fawning press then depicts Chelsea as a worldwise, ruthlessly practical organization; an equally legitimate characterization would be decadent and inhuman, but those descriptors don't comfortably connect to Mourinho's accepted public persona.

Then there's the case of new Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal. He presents himself as larger than life, which made him a good fit for a while at the similarly grandiose Barcelona and is in line with the hubris at Old Trafford. Van Gaal benefited from good fortune as Netherlands manager at this year's World Cup, where many touted his tactical genius based on the Dutch defeat of an aging Spain squad and a goalkeeper substitution that could've just as easily gone wrong. The fawning led to predictions that van Gaal would bring Manchester United the title, notwithstanding the squad's midfield and defensive deficiencies and the questionable performance of the club's executives.

Manchester United may, despite its slow start, contend, but it'll be more down to money and good fortune than to the brilliance of van Gaal.

Easy but inadequate analysis

This focus on the manager as the sole representation of a club makes work easy for those who craft the stories through which we understand matches and campaigns. All writers and broadcasters have to do is perform some amateur character analysis or copy those of others; they don't have to ask players any hard questions about their decisions or performances. That'd be too uncomfortable and complicated.

As a result, we get fed and regurgitate a line of analysis that is simplistic in three main respects:

1. It ignores structures, systems, finances, and club culture that make particular actions by individuals possible and comprehensible
2. It creates a story we quickly relate to and understand by focusing on one individual
3. It permits a knee-jerk critique based on a contrast of how that individual has acted and how I as an individual would have done differently in the same circumstances

 Deeper factors and dramatic outcomes

The character-based drama is indeed attractive, partly because it is so easy to grasp. Nobody wants to think too hard about a pastime. However, as a means of explanation, the personality-driven narrative falls short.

What's much more influential is the minimal degree of regulation defining football's culture and structures. In contrast to American professional sports, which have governmental oversight and self-imposed salary constraints, European football as a business is a free-for-all. This encourages the financial frenzy, which itself drives player acquisitions, which threatens to trump the game itself as the object of attention. (See Rory Smith's excellent piece for ESPN FC on this perversion.)

In this unregulated financial environment, the apparatuses driving clubs' commercial and player acquisition activities have a greater effect on results than the personality of one man. I have cautioned in "We Are All Bean Counters at Arsenal Now" about paying too much attention to the business side, but that doesn't mean the organization supporting the players and the manager isn't important; it's just not the reason to follow a sporting endeavor.

The competitions themselves are that reason. And at pitch level, thousands of individual decisions and actions, as well as twists of fate, occur that no one person controls. Any one of those small events can be decisive. That's because football matches are tight-scoring affairs contested by elite athletes of similar talent.

It's also why the matches are inherently dramatic. We don't need to psycho- or otherwise analyze one person sitting in the manager's chair to make that drama any more enjoyable.

Suddenly, This Summer

A year ago, my post entitled "Platform or Plateau" considered whether the Arsenal Football Club had reached a static position or had established the foundations for greater success. Although its 2013-14 campaign brought silverware in the form of the FA Cup, featured a long stay at the top of the Premier League, and finished with the most league points since 2008, the question of progress persisted because of the way the title challenge faltered and because manager Arsène Wenger had not yet agreed to renew his contract.

Wenger's signature on a three-year contract extension may not have quieted those who complain because they enjoy complaining or who criticize him due to francophobia or an exaggerated sense of their own importance. Any reasonable analysis suggests, though, that the Arsenal is back to a level of competitiveness not seen since the move to the Emirates Stadium in 2006.

Top-level talent arrives and signals a renewed intent 

The most obvious indication of the upward trajectory is this summer's transfer activity: Four headline players have arrived since the current transaction period began, while none has been sold. That's a significant change even from this point in 2013, when the inexperienced Auxerre striker Yaya Sanogo had been the only acquisition.

The cost of these 2014 acquisitions stands at £56 million according to the Arsenal Report's Transfer Centre; the club has never entered an August with a transfer bill even remotely near that figure. That points to a confident, proactive approach to the playing staff and validates CEO Ivan Gazidis's contention that this summer would see enhanced revenues deployed to strengthen the team.

The level of investment and the obvious quality of the players recruited, forward Alexis Sanchez, fullback Mathieu Debuchy, goalkeeper David Ospina, and defender Calum Chambers, have rightly received the attention. What's struck me, though, is the change in Wenger's image and emphasis.

The manager recrafts his image

I try not to make assumptions about people's thoughts, feelings, or intentions, particularly those of individuals whom I've never met or interviewed. Doing so leads to facile analyses and conclusions that are both flimsy and irrefutable.

It's not presumptuous, though, to remark on the image public figures present. In the past three months, Wenger has stopped giving the appearance of a drawn, tense man and has (re)established the look of a relaxed, assured one.

Whether he felt any differently about himself or considered his future in a new light after beating Hull City in the FA Cup final, we can never know. What most observers will say is that he has appeared revitalized. It didn't hurt that he displayed the skills and physique of a much younger man in a much publicized video of his beach football exploits during the World Cup.

Emphasis and strategy emerge as different

Wenger's recent comments also reveal a return to confident competitiveness. He is no longer bemoaning the irrationality of the transfer market or downplaying Arsenal's prospects of landing recognized, world-class talent. He is instead stating the assumption that the players he wants want to join the club.

When asked about the Ospina deal before it had closed, Wenger did not redirect the inquiry or wait for the official announcement. He said: "There were four candidates, and I decided on one." When? "It was during the World Cup."

"I decided on one," and I was confident he would join us. Not "we had to negotiate with his club, convince his agent and entourage, court him, and get him to accept our financial terms." This is not a tenuous stance or a nervous message. 

What the manager said as the signing of Chambers drew close was similarly telling. The Telegraph reported these remarks from Wenger: "He hasn’t played many games, no, but the English players on the market in England are very expensive and at the end of the day I was ready to take a gamble because he is a player for the future."

"I was ready to take a gamble" -- those are not words common in Wenger's public statements about players in recent years. It's a fair and revealing characterization, though, of the potential £16 million outlay for a 19-year-old defender.

It's one thing to break the club's transfer record to secure Mesut Özil. Wenger and Gazidis knew then that they were getting a mainstay of the German national team and a star at Real Madrid. I think it's even more consequential to acquire an unproven Chambers with potentially one of the club's five highest transfer fees to date. This move reverses nearly a decade of aversion to transfer risk and emphasizes the desire to be a serious contender.

Future titles aren't guaranteed, primarily because the difference between victory and defeat at Arsenal's level of competition is so fine, but the intent to engage the contest on advantageous terms has certainly reemerged. Supporters should watch with less trepidation, while opponents approach more warily.

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Even Small Crowds

Transfer season is upon European football again, and with it come the delusions and madness. 

Arsenal supporters have been infected, with some actually contacting the club via social media to demand the immediate deployment of the large cash stake on new players; the new Manchester United manager David Moyes has experienced the epidemic of crazy as well, having thus far failed to sign any of his high profile transfer targets; the denizens of the blue side of Liverpool have been flummoxed that Everton's new manager Roberto Martinez sees players from his former and relegated team Wigan as his main solution to improve the Toffees.

Although distinctive dynamics are at work in each club, all have more to spend thanks to the explosion of television rights money, which is increasing from £3.5 billion in 2012-13 to more than £5 billion in 2013-14. Meanwhile, Financial Fair Play (FFP), whatever impact that may have, will not come into full effect until at least mid-2014, so some clubs may be taking a last run at profligacy. Then there's the peculiarity of the system of player exchange in Europe and the illusion that this system creates a "market" for players, especially at the highest levels.

The infernal design

Bizarre individual and group behavior is almost unavoidable given the twisted nature of the transfer window, the structure through which clubs exchange player services. Viewed among other systems of moving professional athletes, the transfer window has three distinguishing characteristics:

1. It limits activity to only three months (January and July-August)
2. It overlaps with the most crucial period of the season
3. It is dominated by cash deals

The brevity of the open transfer window not only produces a mad rush of activity, it means that club managers and executives have little opportunity to improve their charges' fortunes based on observed evidence. If they see a shortage or a surplus in a particular area, they can only address that in January or between seasons. That leads to questionable decision-making. (See Samba, Christopher, and Redknapp, Harry.)

Improving a side through transfers is more difficult because the primary period of player movement occurs during the pre-season and the first few weeks of the season. This schedule can keep a team from developing a full collective understanding, which is a vital quality given the flow of a football match and the relative self-regulation of  its participants. The degree of player autonomy in manager Arsène Wenger's philosophy and flurries of transfer activity in the important weeks of August have at least partly caused Arsenal's early struggles in the past two seasons.

This summer's transfer period will again see big money move among the European football clubs, unlike transactions in U.S. sports. In Major League Baseball and the NBA, for example, cash is often a secondary component of a deal; it's the exchange of players themselves that drive most transactions. Some parties in those deals are even motivated by "anti-cash," or the savings enjoyed from unloading a large contract and the flexibility that brings under league-wide spending caps.

Cash, the dominant currency of football transactions, gives the appearance of free exchange: One club doesn't need to employ a player sought by the other party to do a deal, it just needs enough money to persuade the other to sell.

A market for crazy

But the freedom, flexibility, and comparability cash theoretically provides do not make player exchanges informed or their pricing transparent. I'd suggest that these transactions don't add up to a market at all. They're instead a number of discrete exchanges giving off the illusion of market characteristics because cash is enabling the transfer of similar services for a price.

Close observers of the Arsenal, particularly Elliott of @YankeeGunner, have argued that the issue of a player's "worth" is beside the point. If Arsenal wants a player, CEO Ivan Gazidis, chief negotiator Dick Law, and Wenger have to be willing to pay what the other club demands. I'd take this logic a step further. Because there are so few transactions among top clubs for world-class talent, I'd say that each transaction bears almost no relationship to any other.

Here are the summer 2013 transfers to date between Champions League clubs for world-class talent, defined as members of national teams (figures from transfermarkt):

• Edinson Cavani, striker, from Napoli to Paris-Saint Germain for €64.5 million
• Mario Götze, attacking midfielder, from Borussia Dortmund to Bayern Munich for €37 million
• Henrikh Mkhitaryan, attacking midfielder, from Shakhtar Donetsk to Borussia Dortmund for €27.5 million 
• Mario Gomez, striker, from Bayern Munich to Fiorentina for €15.5 million 
• Carlos Tevez, forward, from Manchester City to Juventus for €9 million
• David Villa, striker, from Barcelona to Atlético Madrid for €2.1 million

That's it. Only six national team players have moved from one Champions League club to another during the current transfer period.

What if we expand the borders and look at national team players from top-four clubs outside the European leagues? None qualifies.

My point is that this handful of transactions doesn't serve as much of a market. There just aren't enough comparables to determine what prices should be, and each exchange seems distinct from the ones before and after it.

The only exception I would make is for moves in which one club is participating in another transaction. Even then, thanks to their resources, Bayern Munich, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester City, and PSG can conduct multiple, megamillion-euro or -pound acquisitions without concern for offsetting the costs.

Add the intensification of player power, and you have a hugely distorted "market." Players tempted by moves elsewhere, regardless of their contractual status, can threaten to go on strike, leaving their current employers with little recourse but to sell. That changes the supply-demand dynamics and the prices of transactions, which makes connections from one deal to the next even more tenuous.

If it's hard to discern a clear relationship among exchanges during one transfer window, connections from one period's transactions to what went on in previous periods are positively opaque. For that reason, any meaningful conclusions about trends--"prices are going up" doesn't count--are suspect, and models based on those trends seem flawed. 

Arsanity

For at least 10 years, Arsenal as a club resisted the excesses of the transfer system. I wrote in January that risk aversion seemed to be the guiding principle of the club's transfer dealings. This approach took the club away from acquiring world-class players from other Champions League sides, so it did not act as a buyer in those rare transactions. The sensible image of the club and its decision-makers therefore persisted, though I argued that their risk calculus was suspect.

Now that money is less of an issue for the club, it's seeking top talent from top competitors. The question is, are Gazidis, Law, Wenger, and their colleagues prepared to act in this different environment? They have been reasonable to apply economic principles to the host of transactions in the €20 million and less range, where the set is large enough to render the cash comparisons among player assets meaningful. Can they bend those principles to succeed in a different setting, one in which it's unreliable to compare asset values and unreasonable to expect selling those assets for a higher price later?

We'll have our first indication by September 2.


* - title an homage to Charles Mackay's seminal work

Whiffing on Risk

Since the start of the 2011-2012 season, Arsenal CEO Ivan Gazidis has regularly and famously said the club has "kept some powder dry," and the cash on the balance sheet shows it. There's most likely about £75 million available for player acquisitions and new salaries right now, if you set aside a good chunk of the club's £154 million cash position (at May 2012) for debt service and a Champions League contingency fund. The new five-year, £150 million shirt and stadium sponsorship deal with Emirates Airlines will add another £30 million to the pot in the coming summer.

That creates a 2013 transfer kitty of more than £100 million, which supporters can reasonably expect to be deployed, given the obvious shortcomings and poor form of the current team. (Read the January postings of the 7amkickoff blog for insightful analysis of where the club should be adding.) 

 

A single-minded focus on personnel risk

 

Gazidis says a lot of things, and to pick out the image of the dry powder might unfairly characterize the club's thinking. But it's an image that sticks for several reasons:

1. The club has not brought in new players whose fees have exceeded those of players sold by the club, having registered profits on player sales, since at least 2007 (source: The Swiss Ramble)
2. Prior to this month's re-signing of Theo Walcott, the club has sold marquee players rather than exceed the existing wage ceiling
3. The highest reported transfer fee in the history of the club is the £14.5 million for Andrei Arshavin in 2009 (per Arsenal Report's Transfer Centre)
4. Manager Arsène Wenger's statements, such as "We are open to strengthening the team, but the difficulty is to find what strengthens us," indicate skittishness about incoming transfer activity

This evidence in word and in deed suggests that the club's leadership considers the failures of new signings to be a primary risk to be mitigated. It's not difficult to understand this position given the long need of the club to pay off the burdensome aspect of the stadium debt and the transfer flops of Marouane Chamakh, Sebastien Squillaci, and Park Chu-Yung.

The problem is that the club's leadership has elevated the risk of personnel mistakes to a level of strategic priority. Often it seems like the only priority.

 

Ignoring the damage

 

In the process of focusing on the possibility of acquiring poor individual performers, which I would consider a tactical business risk, the club is now running a risk that is much more damaging--the risk to the Arsenal brand.

The Arsenal brand has been 125 years, or at least 85 years, in the making. Certainly beginning in the Herbert Chapman tenure in the 1930s, the club has worked to establish its brand as a distinctive and successful balance of sensible and innovative, of English and cosmopolitan, of street smarts and class. The most visible manifestations of this brand have been the exciting playing styles at the peaks of the Chapman and Wenger eras.

That's all being jeopardized by the approach to transfers and the near obsession with ensuring the precise value of new playing personnel.

As a result, a growing--and unfortunately not unfounded--perception of the club is emerging: It's stubborn and doddering, a full turn from the image hard-earned and well promoted over the years. When Grantland.com's Triangle blog recently published a Downton Abbey-to-EPL converter, Arsenal was equated with Robert Crawley, the Earl of Grantham, who is "electing to remain stuck in his ways as the modern world passes him by."

The history of brands indicates it's difficult to reverse the fundamental perceptions of a brand once they've been turned in a negative direction. The examples of Toyota, whose massive vehicle recall damaged its reputation of quality, and the Susan J. Komen Foundation, whose public split with Planned Parenthood called its focus on women's health into question, should serve as cautionary tales. Perhaps more to the point, Sony has stood still while such rivals as Apple, Panasonic, and Microsoft have usurped its prime positions in the laptop, television, and video game markets, respectively.

 

Where the pain will come

 

As has been the case with Sony's gradual decline, don't expect a single event to signal the downward shift of the Arsenal brand. Instead, each disappointing transfer period, followed by a stretch of subpar performance on the pitch, will represent a step in the worrisome direction. Eventually, the trend will show up in the club's finances, as sponsors drive harder bargains and ticket sales lag.

I was admittedly much more concerned about the potential damage before the new Emirates sponsorship deal was announced. Still, the positive effects of that agreement could be wiped out by weakening match-day revenue, failure to secure secondary and regional sponsorships, and prolonged absence from the Champions League.

As Arseblog wrote on 9 January, "How long before that [a combination of high prices, under-performance and refusal to invest] has a knock-on effect on revenue in other ways, such as sponsorships, advertising, endorsements and so on? Do you want to pay for a pitchside ad running in front of swathes of empty seats?" 

Here's hoping that majority owner Stan Kroenke, Gazidis, and their colleagues recognize the risk before the effects hit the finances. By then, it'll be too late.