Football is getting more expensive. Everything about it is inflating so rapidly the whole thing could just explode. Ticket prices, T.V. revenues, player prices and player wages are now so high that you could be forgiven for falling behind. For people of the younger generation who’ve grown up alongside the prices, the stories of the old days do not seem real. An old friend (literally), told me that when he was a kid he could get the bus to White Hart Lane, his matchday ticket, programme, chips, and the bus home again and have change from a pound. You would probably assume this man is older than time itself or at least in his 80’s, but he is actually only 55. Six years younger than Arsene Wenger.
This may go some way to explaining some of Arsene’s recent activity in the transfer market. When I saw his bid for Gary Cahill last week it struck me that Mr Wenger may be labouring under the impression that he is still in the early 90’s.
Is Arsene living in his own groundhog year? His Casio Calculator-Watch has gone into meltdown, and Wenger wakes up every New Years Day to find it’s 1992. In response to the harsh recession of 1991, he reduced his £12 million bid for Everton’s Phil Jagielka to £10 million. Sensible man, but I don’t think that’s how people do business these days. You can understand why no-one on the board wants to tell him what year it really is and how much modern players actually cost, they’re making a fortune while he pinches the pennies.
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The £6 million bid for Bolton’s Cahill is such a wonderfully low bid, so brilliantly far away from the Club’s very public valuation that it stands out a mile from all the other business this summer. Just as his tactic of offering less money for Jagielka even though the first bid was rejected also stands out. Perhaps Arsene’s long-standing fear of buying English is preventing him from making a bid that might be accepted. After his disastrous attempts in 2001 that saw him buy Francis Jeffers and Richard Wright in the same season, he may still be scarred and understandably so.
Wenger’s bids only really seem crazy because the world he is operating in has gone mad, still, it’s his job to stay in touch.
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