Steven Howard: Now Robin van Persie will join Arsenal exodus

Posted Friday, August 12, 2011 by thesun.co.uk

Steven Howard: Now Robin van Persie will join Arsenal exodus
FLYING ROBIN ... Van Persie is likely to be next Gunner goner

Cesc Fabregas is finally off - and who can blame him?

Now Samir Nasri looks set to follow him out of Arsenal to Manchester City.

If he does, it could herald the start of the biggest evacuation since Dunkirk - with Robin van Persie joining the exodus next summer. Then where will it all end?

With Arsene Wenger being helped round the garden by attentive, attractive nurses in the seaside retirement home for managers who have stayed on just that little bit too long.

Going on wistfully, no doubt, about his lovely boys, all under 23, the most talented team in the country and one that will dominate European football for the next 10 years.

Time for your medication, Mr Wenger.

Already, exasperated Arsenal fans are talking of the Europa League and new manager by October.

This is the awful reality for a club for failing to keep Nasri out of the arms of Manchester City - and, most ironic of all, their chief procurement officer Patrick Vieira.

With the Frenchman likely to join Fabregas in the out-tray, Arsenal's hopes of qualifying for the Champions League next season will take a huge hit.

It will also impact on their chances of getting past Udinese and into the group stage this season - even though Nasri would have been suspended for the first leg at home to the Italians next Tuesday.

Two seasons without Champions League football will cost Arsenal a minimum £50million.

If that's the scenario they have no one to blame but themselves.

It's claimed Nasri has been "tapped" more times than Fred Astaire's dance floor.

That he was hell-bent on going and why keep a player who doesn't want to stay?

And that he wasn't all that popular at the club anyway and, hey, £20m is a great deal for a player who would have gone for nothing at the end of the season.

That Fabregas, too, was always going to leave this summer.

OK, we accept all that. So why the hell were contingency plans not laid?

And why on earth are people at the club still talking about the August 31 deadline?

Since Arsenal always had an August 16 Champions League qualifier, their own deadline should have been July 31 at the latest.

For God's sake, Alex Ferguson completed his buying before the end of flamin' June.

Had Wenger made some early market moves he might even have convinced Nasri to stay. And it wasn't as if he had to sell Nasri and Fabregas to raise funds anyway since Arsenal have been sitting on a £100m cash reserve all summer.

Arsenal should never have got themselves into the situation where they have to beat Udinese without Fabregas and Nasri for starters plus Van Persie, suspended for the first leg, and the injured Jack Wilshere.

At the root of it all is Wenger's stubbornness and the compliance of a board who never say a word against him.

Equally muted is majority shareholder 'Silent' Stan Kroenke.

As I said some years ago, it would have been far better had the Alisher Usmanov-David Dein consortium taken the club over.

Proper money would have been released and Wenger, now an increasingly isolated, frustrated and frazzled figure, would have continued to use his close friend Dein as his sounding-board. Now look at it. The transfer market policy is a shambles. Mistake has followed mistake, starting with the failure to sign goalkeeper Shay Given.

Now there is no alternative if they want to rescue something from the situation.

They up the bids for Valencia's Juan Mata and Everton's Phil Jagielka and get their men.

It's the least they can do for a set of supporters who have been through quite enough, thank you.