Arsenal do more with less while money has not solved Tottenham woes

Arsene Wenger's penchant for spending on clever attacking midfielders has left another Arsenal side unbalanced, while Spurs spread the money around with limited success, writes Jonathan Wilson.

In each season of the past decade, Arsenal have over-performed, given their budget and big part of that is because of manager Arsene Wenger. AP Photo/Matt Dunham

It is impossible to approach the North London derby these days without a sense of weariness: will these two sides, so fraught with potential, ever sort themselves out?

Arsenal, figures released this week showed, are sitting on cash reserves of £173.3 million (Dh1.04 billion) and that excludes the money already set aside for this year’s debt repayments.

On the one hand, there is something admirable in Arsenal’s prudence in the modern world of football when the answer to every question seems to be to throw money at it. On the other, it’s hard not to wonder whether they might not be better with just £100m plus an additional central defender and somebody who can dominate the game from the back of midfield.

Research done by the US statistician Zack Slaton has shown that in each season of the past decade, Arsenal have over-performed, given their budget. Which is great, and it probably is true that Arsene Wenger will not truly be appreciated until he is gone, as Arsenal discover that the Uefa Champions League qualification that has seemed theirs by right doesn’t seem so secure any more. And yet the doubt nags that he might at the same time be holding Arsenal back.

At Manchester City, transfers are decided upon by a three-man panel: only if all agree is the player signed. That provides for a certain caution and means that huge sums of money will not be spent on a whim. But it also means that there are three voices making suggestions, three brains trying to work out what is best for the squad.

Since David Dein, formerly the vice chairman, left the club in 2008, Arsenal has become a dictatorship. Wenger makes the decisions. As a result the team becomes formed according to his quirks, the results of which, thanks to his extraordinarily long tenure, have become increasingly pronounced. He likes small, technically gifted attacking midfielders and so, like the old woman who buys a cat every year even as her sofa collapses, he has an unmanageable number of them.

After the victory at Aston Villa last Saturday, Wenger commented that he could not guarantee fielding Mesut Ozil, who had played well in a central role in a 3-0 win, in his preferred position because so many of his side liked to play in the middle. To which the obvious response was to ask why on earth he had signed so many.

The injury to Mathieu Debuchy has reduced Arsenal to five fit frontline defenders. Against Borussia Dortmund last week, Wenger ended up giving a debut to the 19-year-old right-back Hector Bellerin, while Lukas Podolski, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Santi Cazorla and Tomas Rosicky sat on the bench.

Not that Bellerin was the reason Arsenal were unable to stem the Dortmund tide; that was the lack of a breakwater in midfield, which has been an issue pretty much since Patrick Vieira left in 2005.

Still, the example of Tottenham, who visit the Emirates Stadium on Saturday night shows that money doesn’t solve everything. Their expensively assembled squad is better balanced than Arsenal’s and offers impressive depth in every area apart from centre-forward. And yet they remain eternally Tottenham, never quite living up to the obvious potential.

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