Wenger admits Arsenal are now a selling club
Sunday, 06 Jul 2008 12:04
Wenger is frustrated at losing some of his best players
Manager Arsene Wenger has admitted Arsenal are now a selling club due to the repayments they must make on the Emirates Stadium.
The Frenchman says he is resigned to losing his best players if top clubs from around Europe make the club an offer that is too good to turn down.
Last summer Wenger was forced to sell Thierry Henry and now faces the prospect of losing Emmanuel Adebayor – the player who stepped in to Henry's boots last season.
Although Wenger has always targeted promising young players he claims the Gunners' financial situation is imposing this transfer policy upon him even more.
He explained to the News of the World: "The strategy of the club is to sell every year and to buy less expensive players.
"We manage at Arsenal to maintain all our football ambitions — national and European —while having to free up - for 17 more years - an annual surplus of £24 million to pay for our stadium."
The Gunners boss admitted he was frustrated with the situation but felt the conditions which have created it are more to do with the global transfer system than a specific problem at Arsenal.
Wenger claims the best players are encouraged to move clubs often and that loyalty no longer exists within the game.
He said: "If I had the power to change anything basic in football, it would be the transfer system which makes mercenaries of players.
"If they are bad ones, they stay and, if they are good, they think only of leaving."
Meanwhile, Wenger says he is not interested in managing the French National team at the minute, following the sacking of Raymond Domenech, and will see his current contract through to it end in 2011.