So, according to the News of the World Arsene Wenger has admitted that we are a selling club and we need to be for nearly another 20 years, we have to pay monies back for the stadium, this is in direct contrast to what our soon to be departed director Keith Edleman has been saying over the last couple of years after declaring we have 50m – 70m of transfer funds available, maybe that is why he is on his way out

I never believe anything in the News of the World, even to the degree where if I picked up the paper on a train to read that somebody had left behind and I saw it had News of the World written in red across the top , I would still check to see if it really was something else such are the lies they write.  I don’t believe this NOTW story to be totally true however there could be a whiff of truth to it for the following reason, is this a story being released by Arsenal FC themselves before another Arsenal bad news story is to break?

This is common practice in politics especially around budget time when you hear about beer and petrol are going up 25% each but when the actual rise is announced it is a lot less at 10%  than reported and people count themselves lucky as it could have been a lot more……according to the papers!! It is a way of breaking bad news with a positive spin on it. 
 

Two possible targets are obviously Arshavin and Klaas-Jan Huntelaar as well as the on/off saga of the Nasri deal or no deal, I do think Arshavin may be Arsenal bound because it was so unlike Arsene to say the player would probably be Premiership bound if he was not in the know, but this is really a gut feeling rather than based on any facts

We are not in such financial difficulties as made out, in fact I would say our finances are in very good shape and are being managed very well, especially the refinancing the loan for a better rate just before we hit the credit crunch, an absolute financial masterstroke whoever sorted that out.
 
One problem we have however is this, and it could be the crux of the matter of why our top players are forever leaving even though we have one of the biggest wage bills in Premiership football, enough to rival the likes of Manchester United, Liverpool and to some extent Chelsea, but we keep hearing our players moan about the wages at Arsenal? So how can this be if we have this massive wage bill?

This is very strange, usually it is the top stars moaning and actually I believe rightly so as well. It seems to me that when you reach Arsenal Football Club as an academy player you are given the best of everything and rightly so of course, however the problem seems to lay when the academy players reach the fringes of the first team squad, all or most of the first team squad are all on the same wages giving parity to the squad, however if you have just made you way into the squad say like Henri Landsbury, he is going to be earning the same wages as Kolo Toure. That is not right.

I believe our wage structure should be modified because it is quite staggering that we have the same wage bill as teams like United who can pay their top players £100k a week plus and yet we have players moaning about being the paupers of the Premier League because of our rigid wage structure, football is all about players ego’s and making them feel special and wanted, pandering to some of their needs is ok, we need to look at ourselves and ask if paying Djourou, Fabianski, Traore, Hoyte the same money as our “first teamers” is fair and more importantly is it the mitigating factor why our players heads are turned like Van Persie’s was at the Euro’s by claiming that he wants to be paid a higher wage, that he could get and was being offered by quite a few other Premiership clubs.

This was the exact reason Ashley Cole left Arsenal, over £5k a week, I do know the ins and outs of the story and of course we have Clichy in his place, however it was another case of a first team player leaving because the money was not as good as elsewhere. 

This has all come about since we have adopted the squad system of the academy and 30 first team players rather than the traditional youth teams for ages 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, then the reserves and then first team and squad numbers from one to eleven.

If you wore a number 1 to 11 shirt number on your back you were a first team player and got paid more than the players in the reserves, who were paid more than the younger players, it added a reward system for progressing through the ranks, yes the system did have its faults and I agree most players in the first team should be on the same wages as well but also financially reward players for loyalty, achievements as well, dare i say it but being back win bonuses if you stayed or won trophies you got additional money. If players are motivated by money alone then they deserve to leave as Arsenal do have a certain type of player that has a natural winning mentality first of all but pay them as well, Arsene is all for parity of wages for all of his players to keep it fair, but he is not prepared to offer parity with the Premiership. 

So going back to the News Of the World story today, is it true, yes, but only partially, and only because it is being instigated by Arsenal themselves!