EMMANUEL Adebayor ponders his future and the prospect of life away from Arsenal, but would do well to heed the sobering words of chairman Peter Hill-Wood and the drastic financial change occurring in the game.
After a stunning 30 goals in his first full season in English football, Adebayor is after a hefty wage rise – taking his weekly salary up to six figures.
If that fails to materialise, both Barcelona and AC Milan are ready to do transfer business, but not at Arsenal’s £35million valuation.
It is one of a clutch of potential big-money Premier League moves involving Cristiano Ronaldo, Robinho, Dimitar Berbatov, Robbie Keane, Gareth Barry and others, with figures to make your eyes water and which could yet take place before the season starts.
But the global credit crunch has impacted heavily, and Hill-Wood, chairman of Arsenal since 1982 and former vice-chairman of Hambros Bank, believes football’s financial climate has altered irrevocably.
Hill-Wood agreed players now have a lot more power, but said: “Maybe people need to wake up to the realities of the world and that the days of easy money have come to a pretty sudden end.
“There is an awful lot of talk about big transfers and major demands of players, but you will find throughout the UK and Europe that money is not quite as easy to obtain as it used to be.
“So I feel a lot of these stories emanating from agents may not actually come to fruition. There is a lot of talk but no action. It disappoints me because a lot of people don’t seem to realise that, in the long run, you must run a football club on a sensible commercial basis.
“A lot of the figures bandied around at the moment don’t make commercial sense to us.”
While Hill-Wood accepts recruiting the best talent requires big bucks, he feels success generated by the non-profligate philosophy of his manager, Arsene Wenger, is infinitely more preferable.
He said: “Buying a whole lot of stars and hoping to mould them together is one way of doing it, but it is not Arsene’s way. He prefers to build long-term as best he can and develop young players in the way he wants them to play, and I am very much in favour of that.”
Midfielder Alexander Hleb is set to sign for Barcelona for £15m, but Hill-Wood said there were no developments on the Belarus player’s move or Adebayor’s situation.
He backed Wenger’s purchases of Aaron Ramsey (Cardiff, £5m) and Samir Nasri (Marseille, £11.5m).
He said: “Arsene has very high hopes for both of them. They are pretty young, but are two very exciting prospects and will strengthen the squad in a big way.”
Arsenal have gone three years without a trophy, but substantially closed the Premier League gap on Manchester United (four points) and Chelsea (two) last season and Hill-Wood remains optimistic.
He said: “I am a patient man and so are my colleagues. As long as we are doing what we think is the right thing on the field then we are relaxed about it.
“But at the same time we are not complacent. We want to win trophies as much as the players and the fans. Hopefully it will be next season. Everything is very stable and we are in good shape.”
Part of the reason for that is the association with American billionaire businessman Stan Kroenke who owns half of Arsenal broadband as well as a stake in the club.
Hill-Wood said of Kroenke: “We have have got to know him over the past year and we feel he and his associates are people we could do business with.”
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