Every football sage has offered their take on Manchester City’s two-year Champions League ban but few are as interesting as Arsene Wenger’s.
The former Arsenal boss, who now works for FIFA, believes it is right that the Abu Dhabi owned club have been collared, not least because their riches “bought all of my players” and denied him further trophies.
But is that true? His last team of champions began to break up in 2005 when Patrick Vieira left for Juventus moaning about the club’s lack of ambition, which started an exodus.
Ashley Cole went to Chelsea, Thierry Henry and Alexander Hleb to Barcelona, Antonio Reyes to Atletico Madrid and Mathieu Flamini to AC Milan.
All wanting bigger wages and more trophies, and all moving before the Sheikh arrived at City in August 2008.
In 2011, when Gael Clichy and Samir Nasri followed Emmanuel Adebayor and Kolo Toure to City, for a combined £31 million an even better player, Cesc Fabregas, went to Barcelona, also for £31 million.
The following summer a disillusioned Robin Van Persie headed for Manchester United to finally win a league title.
And during the rest of Wenger’s tenure, Bacary Sagna may have moved to the Etihad on a free but it was United, not City, who lured Alexis Sanchez with a mountain of cash.
So more stars, and in most cases, bigger ones, left Arsene Wenger to go somewhere that wasn’t City.
And they did so because they wanted more medals and more money, believing Arsenal had stood still.
For that, Wenger, or the hierarchy he failed to challenge, deserve greater blame for their talent drain than Sheikh Mansour or FFP.
And if City’s ban is upheld the best players are likely to move on from the Etihad for precisely the same reasons.
Because, as Mino Raiola has pointed out with Paul Pogba, in the modern game no club can ever hold a player against his will.
If City’s players are told that, after this summer, the next chance they have of winning the Champions League with them is 2023, the top ones won’t stick around.
Especially when Pep Guardiola admits he was joking about being prepared to drop into League Two to boost morale, and turns down a new deal.
If Kevin De Bruyne, Raheem Sterling or Gabriel Jesus believe they have the talent to win the Ballon D’Or but know it can only happen if they go far in the Champions League, how will City stop them?
Raheem Sterling’s agent said: “Raheem is solely focused on Manchester City and will not be distracted by any talk of transfers to any club at the moment.”
That quote led to headlines saying Sterling was staying loyal.
But, by including the words “at the moment” it sounded about as loyal as a Love Island hunk vowing eternal fidelity to his latest flame while he catches a new bikini-clad option in his eye-line.
There were reports in November of Sterling refusing to accept a new contract until discovering Guardiola’s intentions, so the prospect of a two-year Champions League ban would surely only intensify his reluctance to commit. And who could blame him?
Certainly not City, who convinced Sterling not to tread water at Liverpool when he could swim up to the next level and compete for the biggest trophies.
Just as they told those Arsenal players whose exit left Wenger feeling so bitter.
This is a club which didn’t beat around the bush when recruiting players to an oil-rich project, so they shouldn’t be surprised, if the ban is upheld, to see top players seduced by more appealing projects elsewhere.
Wenger, the philosophical purist, may not have grasped that most basic of modern footballing realities, and it partly explains Arsenal’s decline over the past decade, but City certainly do.
It’s dog eat dog out there, and the the top dogs are the players.
