Will Podolski be another 7/10 Wenger signing?

Ivan Gazidis has again suggested Arsenal are on the right footing to improve and make a stab at major trophies, particularly once the financial fair play league kicks in. I’m not convinced, due in large part to our transfer wheelings and dealings in recent years.

Whenever I question Arsene Wenger’s transfer record, I inevitably get comments telling me I’m a moron and people pointing out he bought Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry so he must be a genius.

My gut feeling has always been since the move to Ashburton Grove his eye for talent has been more miss than hit.

But in fairness to the boss man and everyone who reckons he’s still a miracle worker, I thought I’d assess the impact of the signings since our austerity period began – the close season between 2003/04 and 2004/05.

In a massively subjective exercise, I ranked the signings out of 10, took transfer fee into account and players’ contribution overall (so someone like Diarra who I think was good but played seven games only gets a five). I've ignored the issue of wages because, while important, it's impossible to know who earned what, even more impossible than truly knowing the transfer figure.

Ten is someone who is a complete success, arguably the best player in his position in the league. An eight is someone making a positive difference. Seven is good, not great. A six is someone who is more good than bad but never makes game-changing contributions. A five is someone more likely to be bad than good… you get the idea. As I say, completely subjective and one that will doubtless prompt many complaints but life's all about opinions so bring it on.

Since Arsenal are as transparent as a piece of titanium wrapped in lead, encased in a wooden box and then placed in the stomach of a whale, it’s impossible to know for sure how much everyone cost. But for consistency I’ve used the details from a single source, www.transferleague.co.uk, which look about right to my eye. I’ve also only included players who we saw enough of to give a score, hence Amaury Bischoff isn’t included. Anyway, here’s how I rated them…

ARSENAL

Player	Cost	Score
Robin Van Persie	£2,750,000	10
Thomas Vermaelen	£10,000,000	9
Laurent Koscielny	£10,000,000	8
Bacary Sagna	£6,000,000	8
Alexandre Song	£1,000,000	8
Theo Walcott	£9,100,000	7
Samir Nasri	£15,800,000	7
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain	£12,000,000	7
Mikel Arteta	£10,000,000	7
Eduardo	£7,500,000	7
Emmanuel Adebayor	£7,000,000	7
Tomas Rosicky	£6,800,000	7
Mathieu Flamini	£1,000,000	7
Nicklas Bendtner	£200,000	7
William Gallas	Swap	6
Andrei Arshavin	£15,000,000	6
Aleksandr Hleb	£11,200,000	6
Gervinho	£10,600,000	6
Per Mertesacker	£10,000,000	6
André Santos	£6,200,000	6
Aaron Ramsey	£5,000,000	6
Lukasz Fabianski	£2,000,000	6
Vassiriki Diaby	£2,000,000	6
Mikel Sylvester	£750,000	6
Carl Jenkinson	£0	6
Sol Campbell (10/11 signing)	£0	6
Sebastien Squillaci	£4,000,000	5
Lassana Diarra	£4,000,000	5
Denilson	£3,400,000	5
Park Chu-Young	£3,000,000	5
Emmanuel Eboue	£1,000,000	5
Vito Mannone	£350,000	5
Armand Traore	£250,000	5
Marouane Chamakh	£0	5
Fran Merida Perez	£0	5
Manuel Almunia	£2,500,000	4

Having done that I realised it meant nothing without a context so I rated our rivals too (I include Spurs for context, I’m not elevating them to our standard). There needs to be a bit of a disclaimer here because obviously I don’t see anywhere near as much of this lot compared to the Arse so I’m working on reputation far more (as I said before, this is highly subjective). Plus, I have included players (mostly from Chelsea) who didn’t play very much but cost a lot of money or had a reputation, such as Steven Sidwell at Chelsea or Bebe at Man U. I’ve left off others who never played and didn’t break the bank, like Scott Sinclair at Chelsea or Radek Cerny at Spurs.

MAN UTD

Player	Cost	Score
Wayne Rooney	£27m	10
Nemanja Vidic	£7m	10
Edwin Van Der Sar	£2m	10
Patrice Evra	£5.5m	10
Nani	£13.5m	8
Carlos Tevez	£9m	8
Javier Hernandez	£6m	8
Ji-Sung Park	£4m	8
Paul Scholes	£0	7
Demitar Berbatov	£30.75m	7
Michael Carrick	£18.6m	7
Ashley Young	£17m	7
Antonio Valencia	£16m	7
Rafael Da Silva	£2.5m	7
Phil Jones	£17m	6
Michael Owen	£0	6
David De Gea	£18.9m	6
Chris Smalling	£10m	6
Anders Lindegaard	£3.5m	6
Owen Hargreaves	£17m	5
Anderson	£15m	5
Fabio Da Silva	£2.6m	5
Tomasz Kuszczak	£2.15m	5
Mame Biram Diouf	£2m	5
Ben Foster	£1m	5
Gabriel Obertan	£3m	4
Giuseppe Rossi	£200,000	4
Zoran Tosic	£5m	3
Bebe	£7.4m	1

CHELSEA

Player	Cost	Score
Didier Drogba	£24m	10
Petr Cech	£7m	10
Ashley Cole	£5m	9
Michael Essien	£24.4m	8
Ricardo Carvalho	£19.85m	8
Ramires	£18.3m	8
Branislav Ivanovic	£9m	8
Arjen Robben	£12m	7
Nicolas Anelka	£15m	7
Florent Malouda	£13.5m	7
Gary Cahill	£7m	7
Michael Ballack	£0	7
Paulo Ferreira	£13.2m	6
Daniel Sturridge	£4m	6
David Luiz	£26m	6
Juan Mata	£23m	6
John Obi Mikel	£16m	6
Raul Meireles	£12m	6
Salomon Kalou	£8m	6
Lassana Diarra	£1m	6
Juliano Belletti	0	6
Jose Bosingwa	£16.2m	5
Deco	£8m	5
Tiago	£8m	5
Khalid Boulahrouz	£7m	5
Yossi Benayoun	£5m	5
Oriol Romeu	£4.35m	5
Claudio Pizarro	0	5
Shaun Wright-Phillips	£21m	4
Yuri Zhirkov	£18m	4
Mateja Kezman	£5m	4
Ben Sahar	£3.2m	4
Franco Di Santo	£3m	4
Jiri Jarosik	£3m	4
Nemanja Matic	£1.5m	4
Steven Sidwell	£0	4
Asier Del Horno	£8m	2
Fernando Torres	£50m	1
Andrei Shevchenko	£30m	1

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR

Player	Cost	Score
Gareth Bale	£6m	10
Aaron Lennon	£1m	9
Dimitar Berbatov	£10.9m	8
Michael Dawson	£4m	8
Michael Carrick	£2.75m	8
Rafael Van Der Vaart	£8m	8
Brad  Friedel	£0	7
Kyle Walker	£3m	7
Luka Modric	£16.6m	7
Scott Parker	£6m	7
Younes Kaboul	£5m	7
Jermain Defoe	£15m	7
Benoit Assou-Ekotto	£3.5m	7
Tom Huddlestone	£2.5m	7
William Gallas	£0	6
Niko Kranjcar	£2m	6
Robbie Keane	£12m	7
Carlo Cudicini	£0	6
Jermaine Jenas	£7m	6
Wilson Palacios	£12m	5
Sandro Raniere	£6m	5
Steven Pienaar	£3m	5
Kyle Naughton	£5m	5
Peter Crouch	£9m	5
Sebastien Bassong	£8m	5
Vedran Corluka	£8.5m	5
Heurelho Gomes	£10m	5
Pascal Chimbonda	Signed	5
Roman Pavlyuchenko	£14m	5
John Bostock	£700,000	5
Jonathan Woodgate	£8m	5
Chris Gunter	£2m	5
Danny Rose	£1m	5
Darren Bent	£16.5m	5
Steed Malbranque	£2m	5
Didier Zokora	£8.2m	5
Danny Murphy	£2m	5
Edgar Davids	£0	5
Wayne Routledge	£2.5m	5
Pedro Mendes	£2m	5
Paul Stalteri	£0	5
Bongani Khumalo	£1.5m	4
Giovani	£4.7m	4
Gilberto	£2m	4
Kevin Boateng	£5.4m	4
Adel Taarabt	£3m	4
Ben Alnwick	£900,000	4
Pascal Chimbonda	£4.5m	4
Ahmed Mido	£4.5m	4
Hossam Ghaly	£3m	4
Grzegorz Rasiak	£2m	4
Teemu Tainio	0	4
Calum Davenport	£1.3m	4
Noe Pamarot	£1.75m	4
Thimothee Atouba	£0	4
Erik Edman	£0	4
Alan Hutton	£9m	3
Ricardo Rocha	£3.3m	3
Andy Reid	£4m	3
Noureddine Naybet	£700,000	3
David Bentley	£15m	2

Let’s start on a trivial note: Andy Reid, £4m! David Bentley, £15m!! Spurs have bought roughly double the number of players compared to everyone else and most of them were utter donkeys who I (and I would expect even most Spurs fans) struggle to remember.

Back to the issue at hand. In comparison to purchases made at other clubs, Wenger’s transfer record is not as bad as my instinct told me. He’s certainly not suffered any enormous disasters like Torres or Shevchenko and generally most of his purchases have been sound.

But in a sense his strength is also his weakness. Where he has not excelled is making signings who have made a real difference to the team or gone on to become among the very best. While Van Persie is clearly a 10/10, we have only a handful of 8/10s and quite a few 7/10s – players who are good but not great and who keep us at a steady level.

And so to our latest purchase, Lukas Podolski. I’ve said for a while that I don’t see what he will add to our team: he is a fine player and will fit in to the team comfortably but I doubt he will improve us. He’s another 7/10. What we need are individuals who provide the ‘x factor’, the missing ingredient that pushes us from good to great and secures us some silverware.

Finance is the biggest factor in all of this, of course. What is clear from even this basic assessment is Wenger has generally achieved excellent value-for-money. Ferguson isn’t far behind but just look at some of the huge amounts paid out by Chelsea for the likes of Shevchenko, Torres, Boswinga or Wright-Phillips – all of whom, remember, would be record signings at Arsenal – for almost zero return. And while it is funny to reflect on Spurs’ performance in the transfer market, it also goes to show just what a difference getting it right can make. Not only did they pay big amounts for flops like Bentley and Alan Hutton, they also paid lots of smaller amounts for total garbage. Spending less but on the right people would have made a world of difference to them.

The transfer market is the riskiest part of running a football club and because Arsenal never gamble we are less likely to suffer major busts. But of course it also means we are less likely to secure world class talents (and deny our rivals that same talent), meaning we end up with a surfeit of ‘good but not great’ players… which leads to a ‘good but not great’ team.

So is it inevitable we’ll stay like that? I would be tempted to say yes if the big scores were all for £20m-plus transfers like Rooney or Drogba, but they’re not. Evra, Vidic, Cech and Bale were all well within our transfer budget – yes they were the pick of a huge bunch but our rivals managed to buy them so why couldn’t we?

It isn’t all about money.

If Wenger looked for different qualities in players – people who were perhaps spiky characters, more driven by winning than playing beautiful football – it would help.

The flip side to that is Arshavin. He was a player I think Wenger hoped wouild be ‘game changer’ but the manager’s fingers were burned by a player who ultimately failed to live up to his reputation despite being our record signing. You can apportion some of the fault for that at Wenger’s doorstep but Arshavin himself looked to have given up caring.

I think the more pertinent issue is the personality of the people purchased and the system they work within, meaning the tactics, training and preparation – the mental side of the game. Would Arshavin have been allowed to drift in the way he did if he was playing at Man U? Would Nemanja Vidic have become the rock he is under Wenger? The answer is undoubtedly no to both questions.

The introduction of Steve Bould (who in his announcement interviews looked far more determined to bring his ideas to the table than I expected) and Neil Banfield to the coaching staff could change that.

It feels like that is our best hope, particularly after Gazidis made it clear little will change in the way things are run off the pitch. The club is happy with achieving 7/10 – it keeps the books healthy and gives us a good chance of remaining among, but never at the head of, Europe’s elite. There is a lot at stake and we shouldn’t put the club’s future on the line, but life and football needs to be more exciting than that and some risks are worth taking.