Adios Adey and Adios Fourth Place For Arsenal

by Puneet Singh

As much as I dislike Arsenal, I have a huge respect for them. I respect the fact that they play beautiful football and have an economic way of going about the transfer market.

But what happens when that economic side gets the best of you? Better yet what happens when you don't sell on a high or this "economics" game is preventing you from moving further in terms of success?

This is the case of Arsene Wenger.

To my recollection, Wenger opted to sell Thierry Henry and Emanuel Adeybayour after the down years. Henry and Adeybayour brought in €16 million and Adeybayour netted them €25 million. While many Arsenal fans are delighted, does anyone recall when Barcelona and Madrid offered €30+ million bids for Henry the year before he moved to Barca? Or last year when Barcelona and Milan were both offering upwards of €40 million for the Togolese strikers services?

It seems that Wenger has slowly just come to the philosophy of "those who don't want to be here can leave." While it's a good theory and philosophy, it's probably not so good when key players to your franchise are leaving.

Case in point: Henry, Matteiu Flamini, Adeybayour.

The loss of these player's has and will continue to hurt Arsenal. They still have not found a suitable replacement for Flamini who was a rock in the midfield and the Ying to Cesc Fabregas' Yang. Those two should have been the foundation for the Gunner's midfield for the next five to six years. Clearly that's not the case.

Now onto this Adeybayour move.

It would make a lot of sense if Arsenal's remaining strikers weren't Robin Van Persie, Andrei Arshavin, Carlos Vela, Nikolas Bendtner, Eduardo Da Silva and Theo Walcott.

Walcott, Arshavin are more of wide players. Vela, Eduardo and RVP are supporting strikers and Bendtner is just a tall goof. Say what you want, but when you take a respectable goal threat like Adeybayour out of the picture, this doesn't look like the strongest of strike forces.

It also doesn't make sense selling Adeybayour to a team that's hungry and on the rise.

Say what you will about Manchester City, but Abu Dhabi and Matt Hughes are an ambitious bunch, and have slowly built a squad talented enough to hang with the biggest of challenges.

This being said, with the sale of their most lethal striker, it seems as if Arsenal may have sold their ticket for fourth place.

Without another young goal scoring, in the box threat on their roster Arsenal stand at a fork in the road. Clearly another forward is needed, and Arsene needs to address this issue before the season starts, so this doens't end up like the Arshavin saga of last winter.

In the end I hope this; Arsenal can find a way to battle it to fourth and higher, that way we don't have to see City fan's rejoice a la Chelsea fans circa 2003-2008.