Talk, as we often remind the chatterers, is cheap.
Anyone with a mouth can make a pronouncement. One doesn’t require talent, or even a plan of action, to be loud and boastful.
But backing up those words? Now that’s another matter entirely.
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These days there is plenty of noise about Arsenal coming out of Emirates Stadium—no shortage of pronouncements.
“I definitely think we can win the league,” crowed Arsenal midfielder Aaron Ramsey this week. “It’s a title I would love to win,” contributed Mikel Arteta, adding, “We want to put in maximum commitment and try to do it because that’s what this club deserves.”
Ahead of previous seasons, such forthright confidence would be taken with a grain of salt.
Arsenal, after all, went nearly a decade between trophy successes and still haven’t won the English top flight since 2004. In the years that followed an exodus of high-profile players threatened to turn them into a laughing-stock, and manager Arsene Wenger seemed to fumble time and again in the transfer market.
No one is laughing now.
With just over two weeks remaining in the current registration window, the Gunners have already set a club record for spending, with Alexis Sanchez, Calum Chambers, David Ospina and Mathieu Debuchy joining an outfit that lifted the FA Cup last May.
The Sanchez acquisition from Barcelona indicates a particularly ambitious signal of intent. It also represents the second time in two summers that Wenger has broken the £30 million barrier.
The 64-year-old means business, and with the 2014-15 Premier League season about to begin it is hardly business as usual at a club whose recent reputation is one of underachievement.
Financially speaking, Arsenal are thriving.
Emirates Stadium is nearly paid off, and a new kit deal has reinforced the power of the Arsenal brand. Revenue streams have never been more lucrative, and after posting an operating profit of £22 million in 2013 the club announced a cash reserve of more than £120 million.
“When I was appointed chairman last summer,” explained club executive Sir Chips Keswick back in February, “there was good reason to believe that the hard work which has been put in…had created the momentum for a successful season in every respect of our activities.”
In other words, the accepted thinking was that Arsenal’s financial muscle would be strongest in 2014, when debts would be mostly repaid, revenue opportunities exploited and UEFA’s Financial Fair Play regulations enforced.
They’re flexing those muscles now, and contention in both the domestic league and Europe will be the likely result.
Incredibly, they may even be stronger going into September.
According to several reports, Wenger may be poised to land his first £50 million player in the form of Paris Saint-Germain forward Edinson Cavani. He is also thought to be eyeing Olympiacos defender Kostas Manolas, who so impressed with Greece at the recent World Cup.
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Both players, and Cavani in particular, would serve to bolster a squad that already has an imposing look about it, and one in which so many key contributors are at or entering the primes of their careers.
Crucially, many of those contributors have now won a trophy at the club, and last weekend’s victory over Manchester City in the Community Shield match only churned out more images—previously the stuff of history—of Arsenal players drenched in champagne and posing with silverware.
That sort of thing gets addictive, and at a certain point it’s what the players, management and fans expect.
Such are the expectations at Arsenal this season, and this time nobody is laughing.
Jerrad Peters is a Winnipeg-based writer. Follow him on Twitter