Dear Arsene Wenger

I started supporting Arsenal Football Club because one of my older cousins did, he was cool, and I wanted to be like him. The first real moment I remember was driving in a car to a friends house after swimming. It was the Liverpool vs Arsenal match, you know the one, 'It's Michael Thomas bursting through the midfield! It's up for grabs now!' It was a metallic blue Audi we were in, and I remember thinking, wow, how exciting, this football malarkey is great.

We had highs, and we had lows. I remember where I was when Tony Adams dropped Steve Morrow and broke his arm. I remember where I was when we won the league at home against Everton. I remember where I was when Dennis Bergkamp missed that penalty, and then Ryan Giggs scored that goal. I remember the good times, and the bad. That is what football is, and that is what makes it great. It punctuates our lives, those people who care about it, and all we ask is that you try. You give your all, and then whatever the result, life will go on. There are far more important things in the world, after all, than a football result. Screw what Shankley said!

Yet people invest in you, and no fans invest more, financially, than Arsenal fans. And the least they have the right to expect is players who care about the club, and those in charge looking to invest that money they pay, not sit on it as a financial pile, and grow fat on the profits. Which unfortunately is what it looks like you are doing.

I am sure you wake up, and you give 110% to the club. I am sure there are few people out there as passionate, and as committed as you, but I know there are also few people out there as stubborn and deluded as you.

The game has changed since 1999. You can’t build a team anymore. You can’t raise players to play together because the moment they have even an ounce of ambition, they will have their heads turned, not just by money, but by the allure to win things. Think of the players you put your faith in, young players, such as Nasri, Fabregas, Clichy and the such like. The moment they realised that they won’t win anything in your molly coddling environment, they want out. Fabregas joined us to win things, he joined a team with Patrick, Thierry and Super Bobby. Now when he looks around, he sees Eboue, Squillaci and Denilson. If I had the choice of sitting on the Barca bench, or being captain of that lot of shite, I would choose the previous option. You understand that, you made promise after promise to that young man, and you let him down. You surrounded him with dross and expected him to stay. He is a winner, you are no longer one.

I hate to say it, but the apathy and performance comes from you. You refuse to highlight the foolishness of players like Diaby. You fail to buy in the areas which need fixing. We have gone from having the best defence in the league, to being serially unable to defend a set piece. It is their job and you don’t even train them to do that. There is no point signing decent centre backs, because they will join, and turn to crap. Because certain players regress with us as a club, and a lack of brains will cause that.

I know there are optimists out there, they have been saying Arsene Knows for 6 years now. 6 years. You like stats I hear, well that is a pretty big stat. The fact that you have the audacity to turn around to the fans and saying finishing 4^th is trophy is an insult to them. You owe them everything. I can’t imagine any other profession where someone can serially fail at their one task which is to win football matches, and still be the highest paid manager in the league. You should have been fired at least 3 years ago!

I know a lot of people, a lot of them, who want to see you fail. And they are Arsenal fans. Real zealots will say they are not fans. They will say that you support the club whatever, as fan comes from fanatic. I feel those who are willing to question you care more about the club and its direction than those who will blindly plough money into what is ostensibly a vanity project for you. Do you think you can honestly, ever again, build a team that will beat the billions of City, Chelsea, and United without spending? We used to be the biggest medium sized club, we are now the world’s smallest big club. We are a feeder club for those such as Barca, Real and United. United won the league and strengthened, yet we came fourth and you bought some unknown Fin from Charlton! Who is going to be coming back from injury and ‘like a new signing’? My friends want you to utterly implode at the beginning of the season because they see it as the only way we will get rid of you, and your defeatist, delusional and anachronistic ideas of what football now is.

I will watch this season, and I will scream and shout and everything else. But the love is waning, partly because of the club, and its reticence to make demands on you, and to charge its fans ludicrous prices, but also because you have so much faith and trust in players who have none of that in you. Because you have, for 6 years, along with the club, rewarded failure. You need to sell Nasri and Fabregas, because keeping disillusioned players is not good. You need to build a spine around Ramsey, Wilshire, RVP and some British centre backs, and you need to invest, now! If you don’t, you have no wiggle room, and the vultures are circling.

-         Anand

PS – You want to sell Fabregas to Barcelona, and then say to them, in no uncertain terms that you will never, in the history of the club, ever sell them a player again.