Newcastle, Arsenal, Cabaye and lessons never learnt

If Newcastle United’s 2012-13 season review DVD was stocked in the horror section, surely no one could have complained about it being misplaced. In the space of 12 months, the sleeping giants of the North-East have gone from being tagged as the “most underrated” to “massively overrated”.

The Magpies, as always, have again managed to shoot themselves in the foot and now seem to walk into a lake of lime juice with what looks like the imminent departure of one of their crown jewels. Add to that the fact that they have only Loic Remy to show for their endeavours to add quality to an already paper thin squad, and you have problems aplenty.

Lessons were there to be learnt from last year’s experience for Mike Ashley and Co., and the question marks were big enough to stare them in the face and give them restless nights. Yet, three months have flown past since the end of last season and Newcastle have only managed to make the house a bigger mess. A year on from a summer where they only managed to add Vurnon Anita to a squad that was screaming out for help with the added stresses of Europa league at hands, and it all seems a bit like déjà vu.

The story of the miserable Magpies in the past decade has been that of taking the worst decisions imaginable at every vital turn. From board level hiring, to incredible debts, to recruitment of players, the stories have gotten uglier. This is how a team has ended up with expensive flops like Hugo Viana, Albert Luque, Titus Bramble, Claudio Cacapa and Jean-Alain Boumsong on their roster.

From being regular contenders for the top 4 at the beginning of the century, the club has steadily taken a tumble for the worse over the years. Sporadic success accompanied by prolonged periods of agony and humiliation have been the order of the day for the club. If failures to execute on the ground weren’t enough, the hierarchy now seems to be all over the place, with no clear chain of command.

With the appointment of Joe Kinnear (more popular for his foul mouthed antics and contortion of names rather than skills at running a club) and Lee Charley as the new directors of football, the club now seems to be a rudderless ship. Newcastle have tread this part before with Dennis Wise and Tony Jimenez in the past, and it didn’t end prettily. The current leadership doesn’t seem to be going in the right direction either. First, Freddy Shepherd went in search of marquee players at extravagant prices and now Mike Ashley is in search of players at “the right price”; in the process, millions of Newcastle faithful have been taken for a wild ride.

South of Newcastle but not by pedigree, Arsenal is another big wounded animal lying in another mess. Frugal attempts in the transfer market yet again have seen the club left with nothing to show and their fans frustrated and feeling betrayed. From “The Invincibles”, the Gunners have become “the incapables”. From a team harbouring one of the nastiest hardcore squads that included the likes of Patrick Vieira, Ray Parlour and Martin Keown amongst others, the team’s identity has changed to being a bunch of “soft romantics”. It’s as if some teenager had just learned he had to add some doze of romanticism to be cool among his peers.

The club’s focus on developing young guns now seems an obsession. In the past decade, the Gunners have assembled young talent no matter what other sub-plots may have been brewing within the confines of the club. So confident that the young talents will get the Gunners silverware, Kroenke, Usmanov and others before them have offloaded one established player after another without any regret or remorse.

While they may not have believed in the cliché of “money doesn’t buy class”, they surely have sold some. While the squad kept floundering, Wenger and Arsenal have watched their former stars win trophies and adulation elsewhere. Losing a few of your main players time and again may not be the end of the world, but when 11 of your squad walks out without any re-enforcement arriving, it signals the latest in the return of a bad habit.

When the Yohan Cabaye angle fits in to all this, you have got yourself a mess on your hands. Arsenal’s frugal attempt at signing the French midfielder a week earlier was laughed off by Mike Ashley, and rightly so. It’s like a very stoppable force meeting a very annoying object and the results may be as bewildering as they get.

Make no mistakes about it, Cabaye still features in the central scheme of things at Newcastle and thus was included to play again against West Ham at the weekend. With the shrewd business head of Mike Ashley overseeing matters regarding the transfer of one of the club’s prized assets, as was the case with Liverpool in the Andy Carroll transfer, Arsenal will, however, have to pay the premium amount for the Frenchman’s services.

Yohan Cabaye, with all due respect, is a fine player that was instrumental in Lille and Newcastle’s recent success. But the valuation of the midfielder remains far apart for the two sides involved, and not only monetarily. While Cabaye is a cornerstone at Newcastle, for Arsenal he is a midfielder they want but not need. With both clubs unable to salvage anything on the transfer market, Cabaye becomes now an essential piece to save their face. The problems for Arsenal lie way further than doubling up on their creative prowess and it’s hard to paper the deficiencies that the Londoners have and yet choose to ignore.

If the deal finally goes through, you might end up with three losers. Newcastle will have to end up selling at the price they asked for but as is the norm with them in recent years, fail to provide any replacement. Arsenal and Arsene Wenger may claim victory but that won’t last long. With Cabaye , who recently lost his place in the French national team, he would move from a team where he was the orchestrator in chief to one where he is another of the midfielders. From told to pen the script, to one where he is just another actor.

The Frenchman will not only lose the fans he gained at Tyneside but may struggle to make new ones at North London where he would be told to do a job that isn’t his forte. In this mired tale, there is a bad and an ugly. The good remains obscured.