Arsenal has always been a selling club. True or false?

by Tony Attwood

Waiting for the match to start is nerve-wrenching.  I suffer just like many others.  In my case, once the pre-match articles from Phil and Dogface are on line, I sit and wait.  And wait.

OK I am at work, wherein I have certain duties to perform, and there’s the question of the faulty light bulb in the car to get sorted, but by and large the issue is the game.

Phil’s told us the line up.  Dogface tells us the form of the referee, and now?

Among other things I flitter around web sites looking for inspiration.  Which can work – although today it caused annoyance for I found myself reading an article about finance in football which focussed on what the site saw as the inevitable transfer of Van Persie to Man City, following the sale of Nasri, Clichy, and Kolo.  In among the chit chat was the line, and I quote verbatim, “Arsenal has always been a selling club.”

In a literal sense all clubs are selling clubs, since all clubs transfer out players.  But the term “a selling club” is always a derogatory term, suggesting that the club brings on young players and sells them to a bigger club.   Teams in the 3rd division and below tend to be “selling clubs” since if they get a really top player they will move him along, to get in the cash.

But to apply the term to a team with 15 consecutive appearances in the Champions League is well, just a deliberate bit of abuse.

Straight after each major trophy is won Arsenal sell players as they start to build for the next assault.  Sometimes the players don’t want to go, sometimes they see the money they make from the transfer, sometimes they are unhappy at the club and want to leave, sometimes they acknowledge that their time is up, sometimes they know they need another challenge.  It happens.

It certainly happened at the time of the first Double in 1971.  As readers of the Arsenal History quizzes that are being run on the Arsenal History web site will know, a group of players who were central to Arsenal in the 1969/70 victory of the European Fairs Cup then left the club and so didn’t win the cup and league.  There were transfers again after the Double too.

So in one sense Arsenal were a selling club as they achieved that (and indeed each subsequent) double.

But if the site means that Arsenal now are forced to sell their players in order to survive, that is nonsense.  If however it means that because Chelsea, Man City, Real Mad, Barca and PSG can offer salaries beyond even the insane levels of current salaries, and if it means that because Spain is a two horse race they will probably win things at Barca or Real Mad, then yes, they can  tempt out players who might otherwise stay.  (Although I notice not many English papers comment on the league table in Spain these days).  But still we think perhaps of Flamini who went to Milan when they had more money, Nasri with Man C and Cesc to Barca.  Earlier maybe Henry and Vieira.  Before that, it is true we lost a few.  Brady, Kennedy, Stapleton all come to mind.

But most of these cases (and certainly the recent ones) have more to them than meets the eye.  Flamini was (certainly in the first few years) a very expensive last minute sub in Milan who never achieved a regular position in the side.  Nasri has done better but is not an automatic first choice and was warned by the manager that he had to do more if he wanted a regular first team position.  Cesc had a personal connection, was often injured, and interestingly, led a side that was no more successful than the current team.  Barca needed him more than anything to get Real Mad jibes stopped – although he certainly isn’t going to win a league medal this year.   Henry was on the wane, and as I said in a previous article, was the most expensive player of all time if you calculate the cost of the transfer and the tiny number of minutes he played for Barca.  Vieira went and won championship medals in Italy, and then lost them again as his club was found guilty of match fixing.

One could say then that these players had the best made out of them at Arsenal, and failed elsewhere (although that is not the case either with Kennedy or Brady).  Or, maybe, just maybe, you could say that Arsenal under Mr Wenger pulled off a string of brilliant sales ploys, selling players who were not after all quite as wonderful as we thought (or at least were on the wane) for insane amounts of money.  That’s a thought – Arsenal as a selling club that regularly tricks its competitors into paying infinitely more than they ought to.  (OK I know Flamini was a free, so that doesn’t work – but he basically had one good season with us, and quite possibly Mr Wenger realised there was no guarantee that the form of one season would continue.  And he was right – at least we got rid of his salary).

Anyway, there are still quite a few hours to go before the match, so, in tune with my thoughts of players past, I am proud to announce the latest Arsenal History Society quiz relating to the 1971 Double.   Some of the questions are surely answerable by any and every fan of the club.   But some are a little nerdy.  And some relate to the players who were sold by Arsenal, the famous selling club.

This is the third quiz in our sequence, and below the quiz today there are the questions and answers for yesterday’s quiz.  But in case you want to go from the very start, here is the complete set…

The Arsenal Double Quiz Part 1:  The build up to the famous first Double

The Arsenal Double Quiz Part 2: Achieving the Double!

The Arsenal Double Quiz Part 3: 10 more questions on the 71 Double

The quizzes are part of the work of the Arsenal History Society, which is itself part of Arsenal Independent Supporters Association.

The Society publishes are regular blog here and has been involved in the creation of “Making the Arsenal” – the story of the club in 1910 – the year when the old club finally collapsed and the new club was born.  We are also working on a book about Woolwich Arsenal, and another one on Arsenal in the 1970s.

There are some links below.

Six and a half hours til kick off.

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Woolwich Arsenal, the club that changed football.  Have your name in the book as an official sponsor.  Updated information here

When Arsenal and Fulham were within moments of merging into one club… full details in “Making the Arsenal”