Coming of the back of another poor performance for Arsenal and exiting another cup with trophy aspirations squashed some fans are calling for change at the club. Fans have discussed many different changes from inside the board room to player personal and even a change in manager. Before I shed my views on the later change I will say I'm a massive Arsene Wenger fan and believe he is the right man to lead Arsenal. I remember when he came in over 15 years ago and totally changed the fortunes of this club and therefore always has my backing.
I also believe Arsenal and Arsene face unfair competition in which they can not match. If you shared players wages evenly amongst all 20 clubs in the premier league each club would get 5%. It has been proven that how much a club spends on players wages correlates to success and ultimately league position. In Arsene's first 7 years as manger when he experienced great success Arsenal actually spent 7.5% of the leagues players salary. At the time this was the greatest proportion by any club in the premier league.
The next 6 seasons where no success was experienced Arsenal did increase its proportion of player salary spend in the premier league to 8.8%. However in the same period the two oil rich clubs Chelsea and Manchester City spend over 10% each and show no sign of reducing their wage bill. Manchester United are also just outside this 10% mark. This makes Arsene's job so difficult in competing for the premier league against these 3 clubs and add in the evidence that players wages correlates to success Arsene has a tough job.
Arsene being an economic mastermind had noticed this correlation back in 1996 when he came to London along with other holes managers of English clubs had not spotted. These holes being players diets, use of statistical data and a great understanding of foreign markets which no other manager at the time had. He utilised these holes to propel Arsenal up the league and fill their trophy cabinet with silver.
Arsene now needs to show that he can change. Managers and clubs have caught up with him mainly through copying his great practises. All clubs now have a team of maths geeks who scrawl through data, 5 star chiefs who travel every where with the teams ensuring all the players eat correctly and have scouts that travel to the far corners of the globe hoping to find that next Henry or Veira. Wenger needs to find new holes and then capitalise on these in order for him to do this he will need to change.
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