This is a short guest post from Sam Ruback, who retweets shedloads of good Arsenal stuff that saves me the trouble of following all kinds of dweebs and clogging my timeline with their less interesting stuff. Follow Sam on twitter: @SamuelRuback
A couple of thoughts on the accusation from certain journalists and fans that ‘Arsenal shouldn’t have let RvP’s contract get to this stage’, particularly after Nasri’s sale in 2011. It’s important to note that regardless of the number of established players Arsenal have sold in recent years, particularly to Man City, Nasri’s sale is the only real contractual comparable (one year remaining on deal).
RvP signed a 4-year deal in 2009. The earliest he patently deserved a pay rise after good form and fitness was 2011. Yes, that’s the same 2011 when RvP said he wouldn’t be discussing a new deal. Now, there’s a lot Arsenal could and should be doing as an elite club, namely contesting big prizes better and paying stars more. However, there really is little more the club could have done in this specific situation short of giving RvP a 10-year deal in 2009, which would have made no financial or sporting sense based on the previous five years.
I’m not dwelling on Arsenal’s shortfalls as a club or the desires of established players leaving the club, as they’re painfully cyclical. Players want more money and medals; constantly selling said good players makes this more difficult for Arsenal to achieve. Repeat ad infinitum. I have just wanted to make the point that regarding Van Persie’s contract individually, Arsenal couldn’t have done much more. It’s easy to want to attack the club from all angles when there are disappointments such as Van Persie’s announcement to not renew, but this shouldn’t be one.
Certain journalists like to paint Arsenal as almost negligent (a word awfully abused and overused in football parlance) in allowing RvP’s deal to reach one year remaining, yet freely ignore the leaps of faith the club often takes in rewarding oft injured players (as the club did with RvP in 2009), or up and coming ones. As ever balance and perspective is glossed over at times like this. I hope this has restored some, purely on RvP’s contract situation.
Also follow me on Twitter if you aren’t! @AngryOfN5
angryofislington 
No not really. The club would not be in this position (Van Persie wanting to leave) if they would have invested in the team both on players and wages in the first place. The elite clubs of today compete on a completely different level to Arsenal and yet we still sell our very best players and charge the highest ticket prices around. We the fans are the ones who suffer whilst the club turns a sizeable profit for Kronke, Hill Wood and co.
I’m not knocking you for trying to look at things sensibly but I do feel Arsenal FC were at one time a fantastic club with fantastic players and all of this is slowly slipping away.
Mark C
Unfortunately there is a massive difference between arsenal and the so called elite clubs and that’s that they have bottomless pits of money and we don’t. Until that changes we need to stop comparing ourselves to these elite clubs. To be honest if you took away man city and Chelsea’s billions away we would be the best run club in uk if not Europe and would win trophies every year, it’s a shame other teams can get away with what is effectively cheating. I wish Usmanov was allowed to bank roll the club so that we could compete again but it doesn’t look like that will happen.
What really P’s me off is all these players who have left in the last 5 years because they haven’t won trophies, if they had all stayed together I would bet my house that we would have won something by now, if only footballers were patient and showed some loyalty, until then we will continue to be a feeder club as much as it hurts me to say it
Where is the money to invest further? Arsenal is still a fantastic club and will return to the top table again because we’re doing things right. What’s happening now is unsustainable. Inflation in football is astronomical and something will have to give eventually. Super clubs like Citeh and Chelski will vanish just as quickly as they appeared.
If you feel like your suffering, no one is asking you to stay, please feel free to support City or Chelsea. It is simple economics that if you spend more than you earn you won’t last – can you understand that?
Or are you taking the spoilt child approach… whah… I want a Billionaire. If that’s the case you sound like a cheap Essex tart trawling the clubs for a footballer to Marry.
Talk about the change that we need & stop these things. Arsenal always get it wronga.why?
Well said Mark C. The club’s negligence was not in failing to renegotiate with RVP sooner, but in not building a team of quality players around him (and Cesc).
Back to football manager for you, and School would probably be a good idea.
I’d aslso look at the scabs on the back of your hands, Knuckle dragger.
Hold on there. We had a team with Cesc, RVP, Nasri, Wilshere, Walcott, Sagna et al. The team has been good enough, but, of course, it’s always someone else’s fault when we don’t win trophies. Cesc, RVP, Nasri, have pretty much blamed the rest of the team for not picking up the trophies, when they themselves were in those teams!
Good riddance I say.
Absolute rubbish.Gazides is a henchman for the chairman and owner. Usimov is absolutely correct.
Attacking the club he says he loves… destablising the team ahead of the next season…. that’s the man for Arsenal… NOT.
Why has he not invested in the team so far…? nothing is stopping him if he feels that strongly….
Take your head out of your arse mate.
must our best players always leave, i think smthing is wrong smwhere. Maybe d fans shd boycott few hme matches in prtst
agree your comments on RVP’s contract situation. He,like, Flamini only came good for one season. If we sign him on an extension earlier,lots of fans will cry foul, sayingwhy are we rewarding an injury prone player. Everything looks clearer on hindsight.
As for elite clubs, only two in BPL, MU and Arsenal. The others two are just pretenders, one likely to be eventually discarded when the Oligopath gets a new bimbo and the other will be overthrown by another Arab spring.
I love Arsenal, I love their supporters we really care and on the whole are more intelligent than most other supporters. Most of us are deeply frustrated, and the RVP situation is a repeat of last season Cesc, Clichy and Nasri leaving. We can dress it up in many ways but few other sides have the bleeding top players every year.
Whats wrong with Ivan is as follows, he speaks in that sort of MBA HR Jargon (Strategy, Business Models!), he answers question without answering questions and has done media training, Just like Bob Diamond. He needs to be more honest and straight forward, we are not fools. I dont want to know we made a profit of 56M. I want us to be challenging Barcelona, Real Madrid in football terms
Arsenal model/stratgey needs to be twicked, we got it wrong, we need to realise the fair play rules wont sort out Man City and Chelsea. So much I could say but bye for now.
You need to make the money to spend it.
We don’t have a sugar daddy and we don’t want one.
55m lasts season filling obvious deficeincies all over the squad with 8 players and a panic loan. 24m thus far this season with two top strikers in their own right (and I highly doubt we’re finished in the market)
Not sure what you’re moaning about.
Yes we could be better off with RVP on board but if two top strikers coming in isn’t enough to convince him of ambition, there isn’t much we could do except up his asking price to 25-30m quid to scare off buyers and make certain we keep him, which we did, which precipitated his little histrionics on his website.;)
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