Well there you go.
4.03pm, on Wednesday 4th July 2012. The moment
Robin van Persie announced on his website that he would not be renewing his contract at Arsenal, currently set to expire in the summer of 2013.
There’s no point going into detail about what he’s
written. We’ve all read it. We’ve all been bemused by it. But it’s a clear stab in the back to both Ivan Gazidis and Arsene Wenger, and you can infer what you
want from his pathetically titled “update for the fans”, but to me it reads as
a whole load of PR jargon covering up for the fact that he’s after a lot more
money elsewhere. Good going, for Arsenal’s self professed ‘number one fan’.
It seems Arsenal were unprepared, with this statement
recently being published on the club’s website. Even earlier today, articles were still being published
centred around Wenger’s desire to keep van Persie at the club. So for this to clearly come so out of the blue maybe
speaks volumes for the kind of character the Dutchman actually is. This is our club
captain who we’re on about, and he currently has our pants down as he takes a
final parting shot, leaving our reputation in serious distress, and all but
ruins any chances he had of running his contract out at the club that’s given
him so much over the past eight years, despite what the club have said.
It’s a sucker blow for Arsenal, especially our manager
Arsene Wenger, who has stuck by him for all those troubled years and shown
nothing but complete faith in a striker who for so long looked as if he was
never going to truly make it at the top level given his unfortunate injury
history.
But sadly, that’s the modern day footballer. One good
season gives him a Launchpad to go on and achieve “bigger and better things”.
And you know what? Good riddance to him.
This is nothing new for us. It’s the same old shit we’ve
put up with for summer after summer, and it’s tiring. Vieira, Henry, Nasri, and Fabregas previously, and now van Persie is soon to be added to the list of players, mostly
captains, who have been pursued and eventually buggered off to pastures new.
But hey, we’ve survived the departure of every
single one of them. There’s always been a player to step up in their absence.
It’s bloody hard to regularly compete for major honours when your best players
are leaving. And our recent history backs this claim up. But we’ve been consistently
excellent at finishing near the top in the Premier League, and making the
latter stages of the Champions League. And that’s a testament to Arsenal
Football Club, and Arsene Wenger.
Annoyingly, I was 85% of my way through writing a new blog
only a few days ago (which I should have posted last weekend, if it wasn’t for
my abundant laziness). In there, I was suggesting how Arsenal has done their
bit to show ambition this summer, by signing Lukas Podolski and Olivier Giroud.
And how it was now up to van Persie to keep his end of the “deal”, and lead us
into this new age of hopeful prosperity.
The thought of Podolski, Giroud, Theo Walcott, Alex
Oxlade-Chamberlain, Gervinho, and RVP all competing to start in the front three
was mind blowing. It was, on paper, set to be our strongest attacking unit for
possibly a decade. But now, that list will probably be one short.
Quite simply, we now have to sell Robin van Persie. To the
highest bidder, even if that is Manchester City. What would be the point of
keeping a player, the current club captain, for another year when he’s stated
that he doesn’t share the Manager and the CEO’s ambition in such a blunt and
inexcusable manner? Why waste wages on him, when all he will do is disrupt the
fantastic squad harmony that he was leading so well? He won’t play again for
Arsenal. We need to accept that, get over it, and move on.
And lucky for us, we have time to do that before the new
season begins. Which is in stark contrast to the situation we were in last
summer with Fabregas and Nasri. It’s clear, given the previously mentioned
Arsenal viewpoints, that this is unexpected. Which leads me to believe that
neither Podolski nor Giroud are direct replacements for van Persie. Whether
they turn out to be is a different matter, but there’s a chance for Wenger to
go out and add more quality to the squad well in advanced of our first Premier
League match against Sunderland on August 18th.
And whoever those player(s) are, with Podolski and Giroud
included, they’ll be our new van Persie’s. They’ll be the ones we admire, look
up to, depend on, and love. Because they’ll be the ones wearing the Arsenal
shirt. It doesn’t matter where RVP goes. All that matters is that he now goes.
I will loosely thank van Persie for his service, and
appreciate the eight years service he’s given us, which in this day and age is
normally unheard of. But then he becomes one of the many, many names who have
come and gone in the time that I’ve been an Arsenal fan.
We have some fantastic young players coming through the
ranks, and several other leaders who are more than capable of stepping up as
captain (Sagna and Vermaelen my early favourites for that post). This isn’t a
doom and gloom moment, it’s a moment in which we realise where our true
loyalties lie. To the club, and to the badge. And although this is a topic that
separates a fair chunk of Arsenal fans, in my eyes also to the Manager.
This will hurt Wenger a lot. I’m sure it hurts him more
and more every summer. But I trust him to do the right business, and prepare
the squad in the right manner. He has the time to do so, and we must be patient
whilst pre-season goes on. All he ever wants is the best for Arsenal Football Club.
That much is obvious. And as a fan who shares that same ambition, I’m going to
stick with him and see where he can take us.
No player is bigger than any club. And no one is
irreplaceable. Players come and go, but The Arsenal will always be constant.
