On Monday, July 4th, the last of the Championship Medal winners from Arsenal’s “Invincibles” of 2003-04 left the club.  Incredibly (and sadly), the 2011-12 season will start in August with Arsenal employing no players at the club who have won a Premier League Championship Medal for Arsenal.

French International Gael Clichy, Arsenal’s first-choice left-back since the beginning of the 2006-07 season, is headed to the blue half of Manchester in a deal worth a reported seven million pounds.  With his departure, there are no more remnants of the team that went undefeated throughout an entire Premier League season. Though he wasn’t first-choice on that squad, this does signal the end of an era at Arsenal.

Here’s hoping the next great era is about to begin.

Though it’s hard for the Arsenal fan to accept their beloved captain is likely ending his nine-year love affair with the team to return to his home, its time to accept it.  It’s time to move on to the next chapter.  It’s time to end what has become an every summer on-again, off-again fiasco.  I mean after all, Arsenal can replace him with Samir Nasri.

Wait…what?

With rumours of both Fabregas and Nasri leaving this summer, even the most optimistic Arsenal fan has to ask their self if they can possible endure another trophyless season.  The thought of losing both of the young talented midfielders seems too much too endure.

Arsenal football club is a business valued at over a billion dollars. It employs over 400 people and has been making a tidy profit for the last couple of years. There are over 60 professional players and more than 40 employees that make up the training staff. The whole business is run day to day by one person – Arsene Wenger. He has complete control of the business. He controls the players and coaches the company signs, as well as negotiates their salaries. In any other business this would not and could not happen. However to the fans, Arsenal is not a Company but a football club.

So what is Arsenal?

To me Arsenal is a place I go to watch football. Arsenal is my football team. The team is made up of eleven players, and all I am interested in is the games they play and the performance of the team. I buy tickets, shirts and other merchandise. I am not a shareholder, and I am not bothered in the slightest around the Financial performance of the club. All I want is simple – to win trophies.

 

Cesc Fabregas has been at Arsenal for the last 7 or 8 seasons. He has turned from a promising star into a true world class performer. He has won the World Cup and European Championship, and played an important part in both tournament wins. He is also the talisman of the current Arsenal team. He is the captain, not a true leader of men, but on the pitch the younger players look to him to make things happen. Generally, when he plays well, the team plays well. However there has been plenty of speculation of him joining Barcelona, and the player himself has done nothing to stop the noise. Over the last few seasons now, his attitude has changed as well. He has been more vocal, at times verbally attacking other teams and players in the media. He has also had more than his fair share of injuries, with the club saying that at times the injury is in his head. I am going to provide some opinions as to what he adds, and what we would miss if he were to leave.

Now that the season has ended the time to analyse what went wrong is upon us. As has been the case for a few seasons now we have threatened to challenge for the title but have come up short. For the last couple of months it has become clear that the squad has not been up to scratch. We were throwing away points like they were going out of fashion. The one that sticks in my throat the most is the collapse at St. James Park. Four nil up at half time and flying the points should have been in the bag. However during a spell where Djourou got taken off injured and Diaby got sent off, our lead slowly ebbed away. It seemed as if the player’s heads were on the coach down the M1 and not on the game. There was panic in the team and it spread to all of the players. The confidence had gone, and even with a 2 goal cushion the result was on the cards. Some could point to the substitutions as to our downfall – taking off Arshavin and Walcott and replacing them with Eboue and Rosicky seemed to change the shape and pace of the team.

This failure to kill off games is nothing new. We have been doing this for a while. We were two nil up against Spurs at home and lost that one with the same symptoms on display. We looked in control in the Carling Cup and then gave away a silly goal to lose the game. Why does this keep on happening with this group of players?