The Abyss of no Ambition
Even though the headline might suggest it this is not going to be a blog about the club lacking ambition. Far from, rather more the opposite in fact. The suggestiveness of the headline was very much deliberate and serves to make you, at this point, consider the irony surrounding the debate about the clubs lack of ambition. This summer the club has shown more ambition than they have in a long long time, they have pursued world class targets and put in bids three times higher than our record fee. Instead it's now the fans who seem to lack the ambition for the club to succeed. It's the fans who wavers at the risk of losing out on targets. It's the fans who would settle for lesser players.
Every summer we hear the same narrative from the fans on how the club lacks ambition. How going for the cheaper option may be more expensive in the long run than paying more for better players who are more likely to succeed. Yet this summer when we are going for the likes of Suarez I keep hearing how we should have not bothered and just gone for Higuain instead. As the safer option. But you tell me, who is more likely to succeed?
If we, in the end, fail to get Suarez and end up with a lesser striker than Higuain then in hindsight it would have been better to have picked Higuain. But the thing about hindsight is that you have information you didn't have at the time. A decision should be evaluated on the same premisses as it was taken and when we chose to go for Suarez that was the ambitious choice.
This is of course not only true in the Suarez case. For example there is a lot of talk about the squad being to thin, and I will agree with that. While the quality to finish top 4 is there the number of players just aren't enough. There is also a lot of talk about how the season starts now and that should be our deadline for transfers. Ideally it would, but as the window closes later it's not true.
Here is where ambition comes into it again. Do you settle for lesser players so you can bring them in earlier or do you take a chance at the squad that, whilst thin, has the quality to see us through August, allowing us to keep working on our true targets? As long as the window closes after the season starts negotiations can continue after the first games meaning the ambitious thing to do is to continue negotiating rather than setting our own fictional deadline and opting for lesser players.
It is incredibly frightful to watch the club gamble at signing world class players we might not get. It truly is. But this is the reality we live in and you cannot get world class players without pursuing them. Tell me, who really lacks ambition. The one who reaches for the best despite the risk of failure or the one who settles for less because they are afraid of losing everything?
Goonersphere's response:
Thank you for that post Martin and for sharing on YouWrite. I think most of us at Goonersphere are in the "reach for the best" camp although, understandably, the majority of Gooners are concerned about how thin the squad is with the season starting this weekend. We certainly do need more players, Wenger himself has said so, but that doesn't mean we should settle for lesser players just to make up the numbers. Ambition is a word that is used against the club a lot and it is truly ironic that their fervent pursuit of an ambitious signing is being used as a new stick to beat them with.
What did you think of Martin's post? Leave him a comment telling him what you think or maybe even write your own post on YouWrite.
