Arsenal FC: Arsene Wenger's Youth Project Is Over, Now Is the Time to Buy

For years, Arsenal fans have been told that this is a team in transition, that the club needed to take on the youth approach because teams like Chelsea exploded onto the scene with Roman Abromovich and have blown them out of the transfer market.

Arsenal fans were also promised that the building of Emirates Stadium would help the team financially in the transfer market, giving them greater match-day revenue than Highbury did and thus allowing them to compete at the highest level.

Have any of these promises come to fruition?

Yes, Wenger has brought through some wonderful talents over the past five years. Fabregas, Van Persie, Clichy, Walcott and the emerging Jack Wilshere are a testament to Wenger’s hard work and belief in a group of talented youngsters.

Unfortunately, with every exciting prospect comes those who don’t quite reach the heights of their peers. Players like Denilson, Diaby and Bendtner—who had all the attributes to be named alongside those previous—have fallen short.

The problem with this Arsenal transitional period is that too much of it centered around young players. There were no senior figures to guide these players on the pitch. They didn’t have the comfort of a captain like Tony Adams or a goalscorer like Thierry Henry. These players had to go out and do it on their own.

Maybe this is why Wenger puts so much emphasis on mental toughness and togetherness in the squad.

But the fact is, like many have said in the past, you’re not going to win anything with kids. The problem with players like these—no matter how old they are now—is that they still continue to play like they are 19 and 20 years of age. There’s no direction to their game and their heads go down when things get tough.

Wenger needs to understand that now is the time to act with players who haven’t made the grade. He’s produced a wonderful group of talented players, and yes, it will be extremely difficult to keep Fabregas from the clutches of Barcelona—or any of his other players, for that matter.

But the truth of the matter is that this youth project is now over.

We have seen the end product of these barren years, and while we may be on the verge of something great with these players, it won’t happen with Wenger sitting on his hands and piling cash into the Emirates vaults.

Players like Fabregas, Nasri and Walcott need supplementing. It's no good talking about how great this squad is compared to previous years. Yes, on paper the depth of the squad looks good: but it's not displayed on the pitch.

Barcelona went through a similar trophy-less spell while producing players such as Xavi, Iniesta, Puyol and Valdes. The difference, however, is that those players were supplemented with world-class players. Ronaldinho, Giuly, Deco and Van Bommel came in and were able to take the team forward.

Arsenal need to come out of this phase of scraping the bottom of the barrel for transfer targets. It’s a sad indictment of a team as well-run as Arsenal, that the fans know every summer that they won’t be shopping in the same window as Bayern Munich, Inter Milan and Real Madrid.

It's time for Wenger to take some initiative and admit that this youth project is over. There’s no more going back and saying, "I do not want to buy Wesley Sneijder for £12 million, because it will harm the development of Diaby."

Arsenal fans do not want to wait for these players to maybe become good, and the good players at Arsenal will certainly not wait for those lagging behind.

The dead wood needs to be stripped out of the club and fresh faces need to come in.

The youth project has run its course. It's time to invest heavily in the transfer market.