Arsenal's late transfer activity represents the death of Arsene Wenger's youth project
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By Wayne Veysey | Chief correspondent
It is a measure of how expectations have altered at Arsenal that there was such jubilation at the completion of the eleventh hour signings of Mikel Arteta and Yossi Benayoun.
The club who have prided themselves on a clear strategy and careful planning were reduced to last-ditch bids for a 29-year-old midfielder with a dodgy knee and a 31-year-old Chelsea reject whose fitness was suspect enough to preclude a permanent deal, even at £2 million.
Suddenly, chaos reigned and Arsenal were slugging it out like market traders bartering for damaged goods.
Arteta and Benayoun will bring pedigree and experience to a team stripped of belief by Sunday's massacre at Old Trafford, as will the three overseas signings who were also registered as Arsenal signings in the last 48 hours of the window, Per Mertesacker, Andre Santos and Park Chu-Young.
Yet this is not what Arsene Wenger would have envisaged even a week ago, never mind when he drew up his list of transfer targets at the end of last season.
Not one of the five additions on Tuesday and Wednesday were first choice. Effectively, they are sticking plasters to stem the bleeding that increased rapidly over the summer from a steady trickle to a torrent following the Manchester United humiliation.
Arsenal had identified proven Premier League defenders to plug the leaks in front of Wojciech Szczesny, from centre-halves Gary Cahill, Phil Jagielka, Scott Dann and Christopher Samba to left-backs Leighton Baines and Jose Enrique.
But the premium for English defenders in particular was enough to put off a manager and board notorious for their refusal to yield to inflated transfer and wage valuations even when it was clearly to the benefit of the team.
In midfield, which had been shorn of one world-class playmaker in Cesc Fabregas and one potential A-lister in Samir Nasri, Wenger's scouting team had identified the likes of Yann M'Vila, Marvin Martin, Eden Hazard and Mario Gotze as having the calibre to fit into the vacated positions and supplement Gervinho, who looks a shrewd signing.
For various reasons, they did not happen. Restricted by their self-sustaining business model, Arsenal cannot or will not pay the seven-figure weekly salaries that allow Manchester City, Chelsea and Manchester United to recruit proven talent.
Yet that does not tell the full story or explain why a club comfortably positioned with an estimated £90m kitty following the sales of Fabregas and Nasri were tabling offers that so insulted Bolton Wanderers and Everton
"Wenger is, of course, culpable. He has the final say on all aspects of the club's transfer policy, and his is the most significant voice on the players' salaries."
One theory is that the board are more financially hamstrung than Wenger lets on. But this is not backed up by evidence from Arsenal's healthy accounts or the transfers in and out of the club this summer.
Even allowing for incremental add-ons and bonuses that might top up the fees and wages splurged on new players, around £40-50m has been left unspent.
That smacks of a dereliction of duty rather than prudent business. For this, Wenger is, of course, culpable. He has the final say on all aspects of the club's transfer policy, and his is the most significant voice on the players' salaries.
But the board of directors, contract negotiator Richard Law and the manager's army of scouts, so brilliantly led by Steve Rowley for so long, must also take their share of the blame should Arsenal lose out on a top four spot this season. Not even the greatest optimist believes they can challenge for the Premier League and Champions League crowns.
Those acquainted with the inner workings of the club say the board nudged Wenger to cash in on Nasri rather than lose such a significant asset for nothing next summer, and that the wage policy has been shifted to reward achievement rather than potential.
What can undeniably be deduced from the splurge in the final two days of the window is that Wenger's youth project, borne out of the death of the Invincibles and the financial restrictions caused by the switch to the Emirates Stadium, is finished. It failed and it has been binned.
Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Carl Jenkinson and Joel Campbell are all archetypal Wenger signings of whom big things are expected.
Nevertheless, it is the present that now counts, not some misty-eyed future. The five signings in the last hours of the window are all aged between 26 and 31. Three of them - Mertesacker, Park and Benayoun - captain their countries.
It has been a seismic few days in Arsenal's history. In a huge ideological and philosophical change, a strategic approach was replaced by a scattergun one. How things have changed.
Sep 2 2011, 12:43 AM
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