goal.com
Gone are the days when the Gunners sold their best players to wealthier rivals as they now challenge the Abu Dhabi-owned club for the Premier League title.
If you ask Arsene Wenger why Arsenal have failed to win the Premier League title since 2004, he will primarily put it down to the billionaire takeovers at Chelsea and Manchester City.
The almost unlimited spending by those two clubs as they sought to build title-winning squads shunted Arsenal down the pack as they found themselves perennially battling for a top four finish rather than the grand prize.
Arsenal’s new place in the food chain meant that, as the club continued to pay for their move to the Emirates Stadium, their best players were cherry-picked by richer sides.
Manchester City, in particular, looked to north London and used the financial might of their Abu Dhabi owners to poach Arsenal’s better players with inflated transfer fees and sky-high wages.
Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure moved to City in 2009 for a combined £41 million and were followed two years later by Frenchmen Samir Nasri and Gael Clichy.
Bacary Sagna trod the familiar path in 2014 after his Arsenal contract expired - but Wenger feels he is now in a position where he does not have to worry so much about feeling the pain of losing his best players to rival clubs.
“It was difficult to take but we had to survive financially and we had to live with it,” Wenger said.
“But we are in a much stronger position today. I cannot say it will never happen again because you never know, but we are in a position today where we don’t have to give in.”
City were not the only club to benefit from the weakness - both financial and in football terms - at Arsenal. The Gunners’ lost their captain in two consecutive years after Cesc Fabregas joined Barcelona in 2011 and Robin van Persie left for Manchester United in 2012.
Wenger is right, though. Not only do Arsenal no longer need the money, but there is also no football reason why the best players in Wenger’s side should look to move to another Premier League club.
On Monday night, Arsenal take on City at the Emirates Stadium in a match between the two favourites to win the league.
Arsenal are currently second in the table, five points behind leaders Leicester and one point ahead of City. With the implosion at Chelsea and the inconsistency of the other big clubs, Wenger knows they will never get a better opportunity to win their first title since the Invincibles team.
In Mesut Ozil, the Gunners boast a candidate for player of the year and the German will look to add to his incredible 13 league assists on Monday night. The hosts’ other star player, Alexis Sanchez, has a “slight chance” of recovering from a hamstring injury, according to his manager.
In the past, there would be a concern that Ozil or Alexis would leave the club next summer and force Arsenal back to square one, especially with their contracts winding down and an expectation on their parts that their contributions to the cause be handsomely rewarded.
Now, though, only the Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona, and perhaps Bayern Munich, could lure Arsenal’s best players away from the club.
Even then, Ozil was signed from Real Madrid for £42 million in 2013 after being told he could leave and a year later Alexis arrived from Barcelona after being forced out by Luis Suarez’s transfer to the Camp Nou.
Both were second tier players in Spain when compared to Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi - but in the Premier League they rank among the very best.
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