wenger's performance in the transfer market over the last 5-6 years has lead to the team being undermanned and short of quality across the board. it really started probably in 2011 with the infamous arteta/mertesacker deadline day panic after the 8-2 drubbing. those two ended up being good value for what we paid, but our business as a whole was pretty poor. we got £60m for cesc and nasri, but we wasted £31m on gervinho, ox, park, and andre santos. we tried signing some kids as well and actually the best piece of business we did that summer was signing bellerin for £400,000
the following summer, we lost van judas and we actually did great business in signing cazorla, but we also spent about £23m on podolski and giroud. we panicked and signed monreal in january that was also a nice piece of business. but the bottom line is, we got £25m for judas and basically wasted it on 2 players trying to replace 1 instead of spending on a proper replacement. that summer, we didnt sign any elite young prospects of note
then of course the ozil summer. we were crying out for a striker. it was what we needed the most. so we signed ozil, who is certainly amazing and it was a huge transfer at the time, but it wasn't addressing our glaring need. and beyond him, that summer netted us sanogo and flamini, no promising young talent, and we took a loss on gervinho.
the alexis summer is perhaps wenger's biggest failure in the market in terms of where we are now. he got that transfer right on the money. he got alexis for slightly under market value and no one questions that signing. but he basically pissed the rest of the money spent down the drain. he paid £11m for chambers, wasnt sure where to play him and now he isnt really an option at either position he was originally envisioned to be able to play in a starting capacity. he spent £31m combined on welbeck and debuchy. the rise of bellerin wasn't really expected when he signed debuchy, but debuchy had at most 3 years left at a quality level, and no one ever really rated welbeck when he was at united. then he spent £11m on gabriel in january, which appears to be money down the drain. the only promising young player we picked up was bielik, and he is probably years away from the first team at this point because he was so raw.
if you look at all of these transfers, we've spent big money on 2 players, and both of them have worked out. we've spent modest sums of money on the rest, and we've gotten modest results at best. our best transfer in the last 5 years is the guy we paid £400,000 before.
if you go back 5 years, we've spent £105m on the following: debuchy, chambers, welbeck, gabriel, podolski, giroud, park, gervinho, oxlade, and andre santos.
our haggling over prices also cost us luis suarez, and going back over the last 15 years, countless other players where we weren't willing to spend the extra few million pounds to get a deal done.
our finances are what they are. we should certainly be spending more. but frankly, how we've chosen to allocate our money is very troubling. wenger has spent on 2 legitimate world class players and both have been huge successes. in the last 5 years he found one gem (bellerin) and otherwise flushed a lot of money down the toilet on mediocre players. for so long, we made a huge deal out of not breaking our transfer record and not spending more than £15m on one player while the rest of europe was blowing past those amounts. the result is that our first team squad is woefully short on talent and we even failed to bring in elite young prospects, which was once our calling card. its been ages since we paid pennies for someone and sold them for a fortune. you probably have to go back to the nasri signing, where we paid £12m for him in 2008 and then sold him for £25m a few years later. i guess bellerin will probably be the next one, because i cant see him wanting to stay here and fight for 4th every season when his home club is regularly challenging for the treble and will soon have an opening at right back
