Arsenal Needs to Reinforce Team With Experience.

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger must recruit experienced players to end a run of five years without a trophy, former club captain Gilberto Silva said.

Gilberto, 32, spent six years with the Gunners, winning the Premier League title in 2004 and reaching the 2006 Champions League final. He also helped Arsenal win its most-recent silverware in the 2005 F.A. Cup final.

Since then, experienced internationals including Silva, Thierry Henry, Fredrik Ljungberg and Patrick Vieira have left to be replaced by younger recruits and players from the club’s academy. Arsenal finished fourth in the Premier League last season, 18 points behind champion Manchester United and 11 off third-place Chelsea.

“If you compare them with the other three top teams there’s a big gap,” Gilberto said in an interview in South Africa, where he’s playing for Brazil in the Confederations Cup. “The others teams are more balanced in terms of mix of young and experienced players.

Manchester United have got this mix and with the quality they have the better balance.”
Wenger, Arsenal’s most successful manager, has faced the most intense scrutiny over transfer policy since joining the London club in 1996. Arsenal was jeered off several times last season after failing to beat the likes of Hull City, Fulham and West Ham at its Emirates Stadium.

The Frenchman, whose team is captained by 22-year-old Spain midfielder Cesc Fabregas, has said he won’t change his philosophy. Arsenal last week signed Belgium defender Thomas Vermaelen, 23, from Dutch club Ajax for as much as 12 million euros ($16.7 million).

After Manchester United’s 3-1 win over Arsenal in last season’s Champions League semifinals, United defender Patrice Evra described the match as “11 men against 11 babies.”
“We have much more experience and that’s what made the difference,” Evra said at the time.

Gilberto agreed, saying the current Gunners squad lacks an experienced player to guide younger teammates through matches.

“They miss experience, somebody to help to guide them on the pitch, because they’re young and want to run everywhere and sometimes you lose your position,” he said. “This is what makes the difference.”

Arsenal’s wage structure is also different to the Premier League’s biggest clubs. Though the Gunners’ spending on salaries is the third highest in English soccer, the club doesn’t pay its top earners as much as Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea. That has led to the departures of players including England defender Ashley Cole, who quit the team in 2006 for Chelsea.

“I hope if there’s something like this they sort it out to have a competitive team next season,” Gilberto said.

Sources :- Bloomberg.com