#luis suarez

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ByZach Ricchiuti

A disastrous summer and disappointing start to the season have Arsenal at odds with its fans already.

The Premier League started this past weekend, and like a kid on Christmas eve, I was giddy for days leading up to the morning kickoff here in the U.S.

When the moment finally did arrive, I wanted to shake all my roommates awake, jump around the room and yell, “It’s back! It’s back!” The last few weeks of a long summer are a time for unbridled optimism, and that first touch at midfield is your club’s opportunity to turn that pent-up anticipation into concrete results. Anything seems possible at that point.

For Arsenal fans, that glorious feeling lasted all of an hour. The time since then has been consumed by one massive existential crisis. It’s difficult to put into words just how catastrophic it was to watch Arsenal’s opening defeat to Aston Villa. The entire stadium turned on the manager and club almost instantly, alternating chants of “spend some f***ing money” with the ever-popular “you don’t know what you’re doing.” If Arsenal were not prepared for the season’s start, at least its fans were.

Then again, the squad’s supporters have had a full summer of disappointment to prime themselves. Despite holding onto all of their key players, Arsenal nevertheless failed to strengthen an already-solid unit. The club missed out on ideal targets, lost bidding wars and squandered what could have been a revolutionary few months.

The missteps started early, with CEO Ivan Gazidis declaring that Arsenal were entering a new era of financial firepower. The boast made for a good headline, but served no tactical purpose. By telling the whole world about Arsenal’s cash pile, Gazidis put enormous pressure on the club to make a major acquisition while, at the same time, effectively doubling the asking price for available players.

The  club proceeded to lose out on Real Madrid striker Gonzalo Higuain, who chose a higher bid placed by Serie A’s Napoli. But that loss was just a warmup for the summer’s most painful saga: the failed courtship of Luis Suarez.

The Uruguyan footballer became Arsenal’s top target, and arguably for good reason. Suarez is a fantastic player and the runner-up for 2013 PFA Players’ Player of the Year. But throughout its pursuit, the club showed a startlingly amateur knowledge of just exactly how transfers work.

Suarez’ contract included a clause requiring his current club, Liverpool, to enter good faith negotiations with him if another team bid more than £40 million. However, that clause was open-ended; Liverpool were not obligated to do much more than reject Arsenal’s low-ball bids. And that’s just what they did, batting away a too-clever-by-half offer of £40 million and one pound. Manager Arsene Wenger later admitted that the club had “no chance” of signing Suarez before the transfer window closed.

The whole episode was as puzzling as it was embarrassing. If Arsenal really wanted Suarez, they should have gone straight to his agents and convinced them that holding out was the only option if the striker wanted to escape Liverpool. It would be ugly and controversial, but necessary to give Arsenal leverage over the incumbent club. Instead, Wenger insisted on playing it straight, and never gave himself much of a chance. In the process, Arsenal also alienated a faction of fans who believed that, after suspensions for both biting and racial abuse, Suarez should have never been the club’s main target in the first place.

The hapless offseason exposed Arsenal’s structural problems in navigating the transfer market. Wenger is supposedly in charge of transfers and responsible for shaping the club’s long-term vision, yet is prone to miscalculations. Gazidis is a part of that process as well, but appears to lack the necessary technical knowledge. Compare that to a club like Tottenham, where a technical director and manager in sync with one another revitalized them through shrewd offseason moves.

It might have seemed like impromptu bombs raining down on the Emirates last weekend. But against that offseason backdrop, it is clear the ground beneath Arsenal has been cracking for a long time. Club morale has sunk to toxic levels. Fans are furious that ticket prices remain among the most expensive in the country, even as Arsenal spend the least in the entire league on transfers. As the transfer window nears its close, the summer’s early ambition is fading away.

“In life, you get what you pay for, unless you’re an Arsenal fan,” one spectator said outside Emirates this past weekend. So far, it’s a point that’s hard to argue.

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Zach Ricchiuti is a contributor and resident soccer expert for Began in ‘96.