I am a disgruntled Arsenal Fan and have been on Exile for about two years now: in protest against what i see as the club's greedy and ambitionless policies. I have a cousin resident in London who is equally (or more) passionate about the club. He does not share my views or my condemnation of the club. He is a die-hard supporter and scarcely ever criticizes the club or its management.

Recently i sent him a goal.com article titled -"We knew this day would come - the departure of Cesc Fabregas" - indicating that Cesc had put in a transfer request and I sought to let my cousin know that this was part of what i saw as the continuing depletion of the Club's top-level talent.

He reverted to me with the following write-up.

Although i do not agree with many of his points, I thought it so well marsharlled i could not resist sharing.

Here goes -

Indeed we did know this day would come. It was the grand plan from the on set that cesc would come and learn his trade and develop as a player at Arsenal because he would be granted the opportunity based on the culture at the club to gain all the experience he needed. Whether or not that tenure was filled with trophy after trophy winning season is irrelevant. By and large aside from African and south American players who leave their countries for obvious economical reasons most players in Europe are naturally inclined to prefer their home nation. In Cesc's case Barca is where he came from and more so they have thrived in his absence to become the finest football playing side on the planet. Wenger would always have less of an influence on his career decisions than his dad. Ferguson was surrogate father to Christiano Ronaldo but his mums dream, as well as his was that he would one day wear the Madrid shirt! We all know what happened there. As Graham Souness would say 'they are a latin kids' and invariably they will always crave going back home to sunny Espanyol. Therefore i don't blame the kid and i certainly dont blame Wenger for giving the world such a fine midfielder. That is that cleared up.

I admonish the overwhelming influence of the baying crowd and mob mentality and believe that the ideal thing to do is to take a step back and look at the bigger picture before yelling kill kill kill! One may have to live with that guilt for the rest of ones life.

I am also convinced that you are a fine and intelligent lawyer however you are an artist at heart and your knowledge of and understanding of financial accounting is limited. 'Being in the red' is a lay mans term and therefore a very effective expression therefore i crave you're understanding when i use it in this text.

Everyone is convinced that Arsene is a shylock and doesnt want to spend. You have personally labeled the board as greedy and unambitious forgetting that this is not a bunch of money miss road Nigerians who don't even know when they have stolen enough. As you know Peter hill wood is the third generation in his family to serve as chairman at Arsenal. Nothing about how the club is run stems from greed or lack of ambition. i honestly do not understand how cutting ones cloth accordingly became such a cardinal sin. The sooner football clubs are run within the financial resources at their disposal the better for the club side to be in existence 100 years on. Again i credit you with the intelligence of knowing where the bulk of football money comes from. The gates, tv broadcasting rights, shirts sponsorships and all other income generated from the football ground including hosting friendlies and advertisements and of course trophies. And this is what pays player and staff salaries from the board room to the tea lady. Ah and yes those massive transfer fees as well.

which brings me to my list of top European sides that are 'in the red'
1. Chelsea 726m pounds 2.Man united 717m 3.Barcelona 420m 4. Liverpool 394m 5. Real madrid 296m I am sure you get the picture.

The most ignorant to a clubs financial well being believe it or not are the players, whats their business as long as they get paid! But you can kind of understand why after all they do not carry university degrees and they are not obliged by society to be the clever clogs. However, ignorant fans (educated nonetheless) come a close second because until the club goes bust there philosophy is spend spend spend! Ring a bell (the mob mentality). Everything seemed rosie until Lehmann brothers went bust and Enron nearly a decade before now why do you think that is? You are aware of what is happening in Greece aren't you? Again i am sure you understand my point that when one has a superiority complex they will stop at nothing including accumulating debt to compete with their peers. I can only liken it to a father who selfishly pays 1m for his annual country club membership by dipping into his childrens university trust fund.

At the beginning of the season you urged me to enjoy another trophy less season and i did. I endured a few embarrassing defeats and applauded every team that did well when they deserved it because my love for the game comes first. You also deemed man city and Real Madrid as ambitious because of there irresponsible expenditure,  remind me how there seasons went. Blackpool just won promotion to the premiership. A club side with 13,500 ground capacity they did it by winning the play-offs with a team of which nine of the first eleven are on loan. They still clean their own boots and re-wash their jerseys for the next game how is that for ambitious?

By the way our debt is 26.5m and WE most recently borrowed largely to build a new ground now whilst you might not consider our standing in club football as remarkable, i do because victoria concordia crescit!

A fitting response culled from Telegraph.co.uk -

Football’s vocabulary is constantly shifting, evolving, as the game itself changes. Fans now blanche at the prospect of being taken over by a multi-millionaire chairman, knowing that only a billionaire will be able to compete. Over the last three years, combative has lost its status as a desirable trait, now being synonymous with violence. Very few players are ever described as exotic – an adjective once applied to anyone from the other side of the Channel – thanks to the carnival of nations that the Premier League has become.

There are few better examples than the phrase “typical Arsenal.” Twenty years ago, typical Arsenal meant resolute, solid, defensive. A typical Arsenal win was by a single goal. A typical Arsenal result involved at least one clean sheet. Today, it means something entirely different. A typical Arsenal goal is one with countless passes in the build-up, the ball eventually tapped in from a matter of yards. A typical Arsenal performance prides aestheticism above almost everything else. That is Arsene Wenger’s legacy. In his spell in north London, Wenger has changed the club’s philosophy, its identity, completely.

So far, so obvious. But typical Arsenal has morphed more than just once, has taken on more than one meaning since Wenger stripped the club of its defensive hue. Six years ago, typical Arsenal did not mean what it does today. Take the goal that helped the club win its last league title, Patrick Vieira’s opener at Tottenham in 2004, created by Dennis Bergkamp and Thierry Henry. It was swift, beautiful and ruthless. It was direct, though not in the long ball sense. And it was devastating. Typical Arsenal.

It was the apogee of Wenger’s blueprint for success. His side possessed endless pace, in the likes of Henry, Freddie Ljungberg and Ashley Cole. Bergkamp boasted a profound awareness of how to use space, Ljungberg an inexplicable instinct for when to attack it. Their play had all the hallmarks of the cobra style Brazil will take in to the World Cup this summer, waiting, holding, and then striking. And they were physically imposing, too. Lauren, Vieira, Edu, Bergkamp, Henry, even the likes of Jose Antonio Reyes and Robert Pires. All stand at more than six feet tall. All relished physical confrontation.

That was Wenger’s true Arsenal. Compare and contrast to the clutch of players – a squad entirely constructed by Wenger – that Cesc Fabregas, his protege and masterpiece, seems convinced he will have to leave if he is to enjoy the success his talent deserves.

The average height of the side – Andrei Arshavin, Samir Nasri, Tomas Rosicky et al – has reduced, as has their appetite for what the aforementioned football lexicon might describe as an old-fashioned tear-up. They do not possess such power and pace – Theo Walcott apart – as their predecessors, and the wait-and-pounce technique has been replaced by simply waiting, passing opponents into submission. There is no ruthlessness to Arsenal. They are aesthetic, yes, but there are question marks over their effectiveness, or certainly its consistency.

Wenger’s original blueprint was copied throughout the Premier League, most notably by Harry Redknapp. His sides boast tremendous physical characteristics, but marry it with technical excellence, though perhaps not on the same scale. Even Roberto Martinez’s Wigan have the air of the Invincibles on a budget. Yet Wenger has torn it up and gone another way, no doubt convinced what works domestically would not bring him success in Europe.

In the end, it has done neither. Perhaps, then, should Fabregas decide to leave, Wenger may choose to look at his masterplan again, to learn from the mistakes of the present and to seek again the glories of the past, bringing in the sort of players that brought him such success. If not, typical Arsenal may soon mean something else again.