Life As an Arsenal Fan: An Experiment With Madness

Arsenal are maddening. Maddening. Maddening. It can't be said enough. And it is Arsene Wenger, who for all intents and purposes embodies Arsenal at the present moment, who is the source from which all this madness emanates.

I write this in light of the Andrei Arshavin transfer saga, in which a player the Gooners desperately need is on the verge of being missed over a few mil. A few mil? Who cares when you are struggling to reach Champions League status, a failure which could cost the club much more? Who cares when you are, what, the seventh most valued sports franchise in the world, according to a recent report? 

Arsene Wenger stubbornly operates under a transfer philosophy best described as "unbendingly reasonable." If he values a player at 16 million, and they value him at 17 million, he will not buy the player. It happened with Xabi Alonso, and it is about to happen with Arshavin.

What he fails to understand is that, as a top club, to retain an elite standard of quality, one has to overpay sometimes. How does he think Chelsea reached the top of the league? Of course, I do not call for that obnoxious extent of overspending, but to keep Arsenal where Arsenal need to be, he HAS to be flexible in regards to spending money. In fact, by trying to be pragmatic and reasonable, he has ironically become unreasonable.

Wenger is stubborn and overprotective of funds to the point of idiocy. He is the widowed grandma who has a bank account large enough to account for one-quarter of an African country's GDP, yet insists on buying generic coffee instead of Starbucks so as to save money. You don't pay, you don't get quality.

Of course, the rabidly pro-Wenger crowd will cite all the finds, deals, and risks that have worked out for him, from Henry to Adebayor to Fabregas to Van Persie and so on. I applaud this, I hope he and the great scout staff continue this. However, what this overlooks is:

A)these finds need to be complemented by marquee names, which can come at a price

B)finding talent on the cheap is increasingly harder with each passing year, as scouting and talent evaluation become more thorough and refined. With every stone unturned, Wenger can no longer rely on Arsenal's ability to find hidden gems.

All of this gets to the point that this article's title alludes to; which is that being an Arsenal fan is maddening. For something to be maddening, it has to have some qualities that are alluring and reassuring. If Wenger's transfer and scouting policies were horrible and nothing else, we would simply hate him. But madness is love/hate, and this is what Wenger leaves us with.

The transfer policy is the perfect example, as his and Arsenal's nearly unparalleled ability to find quality on the cheap has helped form the quality Arsenal teams of the last decade. However, what we have seen in the past several trophy-less years is that his policy of never overspending for talent (that would, fittingly enough, put us over the edge) has meant that Arsenal is a half-pace behind the likes of ManU and the Chelsea of years past.

Further, his teams often overperform, as did the squad that last year led the league until a lack of depth (which transfers would have fixed) did them in. In fact, this year, it's a minor miracle that a midfield that regularly starts Eboue and Denilson is only six points aback of the leaders.

However, one cannot watch without thinking that plus a Xabi Alonso, plus an Arshavin, plus a Ribery, the team would be winning the league and stomping around the fields of Europe. And this knowledge is maddening.