Plenty for the Coaches to Ponder

Theo, another one suffered playing too much too young.

I hope you’re having a lovely Friday. Another 29 hours before our clash with Chelsea at the Grove. Hopefully they will have Barcelona on their minds when the match starts. It’s only fair, we don’t have Mikel Arteta so they cannot be at 100% for tomorrow’s match as well. What? What do you mean the world doesn’t work that way.

Chelsea are behind us in at least two tables. The Premier League and the Forbes Richest Football Club table. Fine, it’s not so much a table as in a list. Still, Arsenal are well above Chelsea. We are fourth in that list while Chelsea are only languishing in 7th spot. Not so wealthy now, are we. The rest are as it us but we’re not far away from the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid.

What was interesting is our one spot higher than Bayern Munich. According to the last article on Arsenal posted by the magnificent Swiss Ramble, Bayern have almost four times the income generated from commercial deals compared to us. To me that represent the potential of real income growth for us. I’m no financial expert, so there will be no use of jargons from me. Improvement on our current commercials deals (which are known to be undervalued in today’s market) will certainly push us much higher up the table.

While I cannot say this for sure or be certain it can be used that way, we don’t necessarily have to move up that table. Much improved deals will give us the leverage to increase the salary ceiling at the club. With a higher pay packet, we would be able to shop on the main street instead of going for only bargain buys. And players would not be so reluctant to join us if wage is the biggest concern. Over to you Mr Gonella.

However, it is looking increasingly unlikely that we’ll be making any major generation of shirt sales in Russia any time soon. Andrey Arshavin being the reason why as he sounds like he’s looking for a way out. However, you can find that he’s being totally respectful of the club and the manager. He doesn’t stick the knife in like what many others would do. He knows he has been frozen out but doesn’t complain publicly.

We’ve got plenty of options out wide currently and that’s not even including the return of people like Ryo Miyaichi and Joel Campbell. Unless Arsene Wenger finds a spot in the middle for Arshavin, I think we’ve seen the last of the Russian captain in red and white. Although, given our current midfield crisis for the Chelsea game, I wouldn’t mind having Arshavin in the middle of the midfield trio.

Wenger have one new trophy to target next season and that’s the NextGen Series. It’s a competition which includes clubs from all over Europe and it’s an age group tournament comprising youth players from the age of 19 and below. It would be a good experience and learning curve for the youngsters. English football is played in a certain way and they will surely be picking up a thing or two playing against teams with different style and approach to the game.

However, we have to tread it with caution. Are we overkilling the players with the addition of this tournament? They are already playing reserves league games and U-18 league games as well as the FA Youth Cup. Don’t forget that the NextGen is a tournament that runs from August until March (based on the fixtures of this season). Too much too soon for these young ones?

Jack Wilshere is suffering from being overplayed last season and he’s not the only example of young players who played too much football when still at a young age and suffers the consequence of it. Their growing bodies does need games and does recover sufficiently faster than those within the 24 – 28 years age group. There’s also no doubt about the experience that can be picked up by traveling abroad with the team and playing in matches on a constant basis. Yet, the management of it all has to be very careful.

Perhaps there’s a need to pull out from one or two competitions. If the tournament is for U19 then I don’t see the need for us to continue participation in the U-18 league. Such is the history of the FA Youth Cup, I don’t Arsenal being the team that wants to pull out from there. There may be complications to if Arsenal pull out from the U-18 league, I’m not sure. But we need to have the long term health of these youngsters as the priority. I trust the coaches and Wenger will discuss this in detailed once the season end.

That’s all for today, have a lovely Friday.