Wenger's folly: Why Arsenal blew it... again

At the weekend, Bayern Munich started their Bundesliga match against Bayer Leverkusen with no centre-backs in their starting XI. It was an example of a manager, the midfielder-obsessed Pep Guardiola, being taken to his ideological extreme. On Tuesday there was another case of the same phenomenon.

As the window closed on transfer deadline day, only one club in Europe's top five leagues had not signed a single outfield player. That it was Arsenal made complete sense. It was Arsene Wenger, ever faithful to his players and instinctively conservative in the transfer market, taken to his ideological extreme.

In the Premier League's summer of largesse, when Manchester United paid up to £58 million for a teenager with not even 15 goals to his name, Stoke signed Xherdan Shaqiri and Crystal Palace took a France international from domestic treble-winning PSG, Arsenal signed a solitary goalkeeper. A very good goalkeeper, yes. Perhaps even a great goalkeeper. But only a goalkeeper and nothing else.

The art of squad building is surely one of constant renewal. It sharpens minds and establishes continual improvement as a doctrine. Won the league? Buy a couple of players. Won the treble? Buy a couple players, even if you are operating under a FIFA transfer ban, as Barcelona are this summer. Won the FA Cup and indulged in some big talk about how next season is the moment you really challenge for the title and how you can compete with Real Madrid and Barcelona? Maybe buy a couple of players.

The point is not to spend money recklessly, to indulge in consumerism for consumerism's sake and get ripped off in the process. The point is that if you stand still when all other clubs are improving and pruning, the consequences for your team’s standing are obvious. And the question it raises about your ambition and desire to complete are searching ones.

Arsenal had a great opportunity this summer. They are blessed with a very talented young squad which in some key areas is deep with talent. Cech was signed - ending a decade-long wait for a goalkeeper of real repute - and hope was emergent. A couple of noteworthy additions in defensive midfield and attack and Arsenal might have looked something like a title-winning team. But that opportunity has been completely squandered, sacrificed on Wenger's twin altars of blind faith in his players and the reluctance to debase himself by playing the transfer market game.

At the same time, Arsenal's rivals have all improved. Some marginally, others completely, but they have all improved the options available to them. Chelsea have multiple Champions League-winner Pedro; Manchester City, clear winners of the transfer window, are endowed with the gilded talents of Raheem Sterling and Kevin de Bruyne; Manchester United bought well in Memphis Depay, Morgan Schneiderlin and others; Liverpool recruited Christian Benteke and other guaranteed Premier League performers.

If Wenger is expecting an extra degree of cohesion and understanding amongst his squad to counteract the tens of millions other clubs have invested he could be in for a rude shock. What did Gary Neville accuse Wenger of recently? Arrogance and naivety? It isn't hard to detect a flavour of both in what has been an inexplicable failure to strengthen the options available to him.

As an economist, Wenger should be able to recognise the correlation between investment and achievement. One doesn't guarantee the other but the scatter graph is fairly tight. Spending lots of money will buy you the odd dud, but it is a pretty good way of guaranteeing you advance in the table. United under Van Gaal are the perfect example of this. At no stage have they looked particularly convincing, but investing over £100m last season bought them back their place in the Champions League and after spending nine figures again this summer they can fairly expect to keep it.

Arsenal don't need to spend anywhere near that amount to transform themselves from annual also-rans to genuine contenders. Just a couple of good additions would have sufficed - and the money is there, piles of it sitting in a bank account earning interest. But the chance to make the kind of marginal gains which can have such a big effect on a team's fortunes has, Cech aside, been wasted.

It is familiar story: Arsenal, forever one or two signings away from being a serious proposition. And it is this cycle of self-inflicted punishment, this artificial lowering of ambitions, which damns the second half of Wenger's reign.

Keeping Arsenal competitive and in the top four during the era of austerity imposed by the move to Emirates Stadium was in feat in itself, but even then Arsenal always left themselves a signing or two short. For no readily understandable reason. As directors queued up to reassure the press there was money to be spent despite the tight budgets and the need to sell a big name every summer, Wenger often kept his hand in his pocket.

It would hardly have derailed the whole Emirates project if, in the summer of 2008, with Gilberto Silva, Mathieu Flamini and Lassana Diarra all leaving the club, Wenger had signed a defensive midfielder rather than putting all the responsibility - too much as it turned out - on Denilson.

It would not have tipped Arsenal's finances into the red and jeopardised their future if, at any stage during Manuel Almunia's bizarre tenure as No. 1, Wenger had signed a goalkeeper of any real standing.

It would not have compromised Arsenal's financial projections if, at any stage since 2008, Wenger had complemented the decidedly mixed centre-forward purchases of Olivier Giroud, Yaya Sanogo, Marouane Chamakh, Park Chu-young and Danny Welbeck with a genuine world-class striker.

This is why instinctive defences of Wenger's reticence to spend this summer do not hold water. Perhaps it is correct that too few quality targets were available; that the market for centre-forwards was closed after Karim Benzema made clear he was staying at Real Madrid. But Arsenal's inability to sign a top striker this summer cannot be viewed in isolation; rather it is a continuation of a process which has held the club back for years.

The strange thing is that two summers ago Wenger clearly felt it important to bring in extra quality. Gonzalo Higuain was pursued and the club tried to land Luis Suarez with a bid of £40,000,001. They failed, but that initiative has not been followed-up on. Last summer Arsenal unusually spent £80 million, including £30m on Alexis Sanchez, but the only nod to the strikers was the deadline day panic purchase of Welbeck.

Football has many other rich rewards for supporters than the transient thrill of incoming transfers. But nevertheless, the act of spending money and its umbilical link to success is a reality of modern football. You cannot hermetically seal yourself off from the excesses of the transfer market while at the same time asking your supporters to pay the highest ticket prices in the game. It’s an unfair transaction.

At some point you have to question what it really says about the hopes and ambitions of those in charge at Arsenal. If winning the Premier League is what drives them, does the summer's transfer work really assist in achieving that goal? At least Bayern Munich beat Leverkusen 3-0 with their defender-less team. Thanks to a wasted summer, Arsenal's title chances look remoter than ever.