Entitled to extinction?

OK, just a final grumpy blog entry before this blog takes a break. Read - and taste - these words from BBC reporter and blogger Dan Roan:

Arsenal fans are certainly entitled to ask why, with [Stan] Kroenke and Alisher Usmanov, two of the richest men in the world, as their majority shareholders, the club are now failing to compete when it comes to wages and transfers.

What riles me is the word 'entitled'. The full context of the quote is in this really very interesting piece on Arsenal's staff working unprecedently hard on Deadline day. The sheer amount of deals in the air kept around 20 people hard at work through the evening up until the last minute of the transfer window. And Arsenal made it hard for themselves by not conducting their transfer deals earlier in the summer.

But again, there is also a lack of context in the blog. In Premier League football the financial realities of every other business aren't in play, and Roan doesn't seem to acknowledge that. Arsenal's competitors aren't running sustainable businesses, with the exception of Manchester United.

They rely on sugar daddies.

Investors, oligharchs, even sovereign nations are behind an unprecedented disdain of economic principles: financial doping, as Arsène Wenger put it.

Of course, money which isn't stolen is fully acceptable in football as anywhere else. But too much money in a market drive up the prices. Transfer fees, agent fees, sign-on fees and of course salaries have boomed. Noone worries about the bill. The sugar daddy pays for it.

The competition is twisted not only on the pitch, but at the negotiation tables. Even so-called smaller clubs need to up their expenses to stay competitive. The news that Mikel Arteta took a pay cut to join Arsenal from Everton speaks volumes. Suddenly, his former teammate Phil Jagielka's reluctance against moving to the Emirates is shown in a new light. Won't even Everton players fit under Arsenal's salary cap?

As Samir Nasri trebled his wages when moving clubs, the Arsenal supporters were outraged. Alas, this outrage wasn't directed at Manchester City for creating inflation, but at Nasri for his greed. And after a while, they directed their bile at Arsenal for not keeping up with the Joneses of the Premier League. How quickly we seem to have accepted that football clubs aren't supposed to live within their means!

Arsenal have shown themselves steadfast, refusing to change their wage structure. Noone can claim that Wenger's players are underpaid, as the collected outlay on wages is the fifth highest in the Premier League. But it is still a structure that the club's economy can carry without needing cash injections from Kroenke or Usmanov or any others.

But are Arsenal fans 'entitled' to larger cash injections to stay title contenders? Are they 'entitled' to have the club drop the long-standing strategy of sustainable football in order to pay their players even more?

Are they 'entitled' to make their club rely on their owners for its existence? Are they even prepared to face that risk, or do they believe that any Arsenal sugar daddies by default would be less vulnerable or less crooked than other sugar daddies?

What have we learned from Thaksin Shinawatra's Manchester City, from Leeds United, or from Liverpool under Hicks and Gillett?

My single greatest fear in football is that my children and their children won't have an Arsenal to support. We are rightly proud to support a 125 year old football club. The people running the club today is also responsible for making sure the club lives on for at least as long.

Sustainability in business is more important than any cups. The hunger for silverware mustn't overshadow the realities in which the club must operate.

The UEFA Financial Fair Play rules are about to be enforced. Arsenal are prepared, while their competitors spend the final months looking for loopholes. I know who to support.