Steven Petrov
The Paw Print
Arsenal F.C. is a European football club playing in the best league in England (English Premiere League) and respectively one of the top leagues in the world. “The Gunners” have always been a major presence in English and European football and have achieved success on both a local and international scale. The club has won 13 Premiere League championships and is only behind Manchester United F.C. (20) and Liverpool F.C. (18). Having also won 10 FA Cups, “The Gunners” are holding the second-highest achievement in the country’s history behind Manchester United F.C. (11). On top of that, Arsenal F.C. is the only team in the country’s club football history to go unbeaten for a whole EPL season, during 2003/2004. Going unbeaten for 49 straight games was absolutely enough for the team to earn its unique nickname “The Invincibles.” However, ever since the era of “The Invincibles,” the hugely successful team from London has won only one FA Cup trophy and it was in the following year, 2005. The team, despite its history of winning multiple trophies and tournament championships, has been struggling to win the League Championship as well as FA Cup for more than 10 years. Sport and football analysts have pointed out one of the team’s great qualities, naming it also as their most dangerous enemy – the great academy and the ability to develop high-quality players.
Unlike many other modern day clubs Arsenal, usually spends a lot less money to buy top class players, but instead prefers to focus on finding talented, young players from their own academy or from around the world, buy them when they are still too young and not famous, and develop them as first-team top players. To name just few of the great players that were produced by “The Gunners:” David O’Leary, Sol Campbell, Emmanuel Petit, Marc Overmars, Freddie Ljungberg, Ashley Cole, Robin van Persie, and of course the club’s top goal scorer of all time Thierry Henry, with 226 goals in 369 appearances for Arsenal F.C. “The Gunners” inability to keep the majority of their great players has been a major issue within the club. I am saying issue because exactly the lack of trophies in the last 10 years has been the major reason for some of the great players like Ashley Cole, Patrick Vieira, Cesc Fabregas and many others to leave the club. On the other hand, the lack of experience in “The Gunners” squad has always been an important factor for their inability to win a major trophy. One can reasonably assume that if some of the 27 players, who have left Arsenal to win a trophy with another club throughout the years, would have stayed and gave “The Gunners” the experience and consistency in the team’s performance, they most likely would have won more trophies than they actually did after moving on with their careers.
However, after making some important and relatively “large” expenses for the club, the manager, Arsene Wenger, bought the Spaniard Santiago Cazorla from Malaga CF and the German striker, Lucas Podolski, from FC Koln during the summer of 2012. Another, and as many say the “final step” towards forming the “perfect team,” was made this past summer by buying the German super-star midfielder Mesut Ozil from Real Madrid C.F. Now the gunners are on their way of winning the EPL and are a huge “threat” for any team in the Champions League.
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