There is one question that lies at the heart of Arsenal’s transfer activity so far this summer; why have they let so many of their key players run down their contracts?

The problem

Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Özil, Aaron Ramsey, Alex Oxlade–Chamberlain, Jack Wilshere, Santi Cazorla, Wojciech Szczesny, Kieran Gibbs, Joel Campbell and Carl Jenkinson all have one year left on their contracts.

The first four started last season’s FA Cup final, the next four would have been at least in contention for that game if they were available, and the last two were youngsters who once had a promising future.

So out of 10 players, two could be considered to be players that don’t have much value to the club. But the other eight are players that Arsenal consider, or at least considered, to be important to the future of the club.

So why has it Arsenal found itself in such an unfavourable position?

If we were still being influenced by the financial restrictions that building the Emirates Stadium imposed on us between 2007 and 2013, then it would be far more understandable.

Key players were not interested in signing a long–term deal for a club that had to consistently sell a valuable player every year in order to keep up on the mortgage payments. There were just too many outside factors for Arsenal to ignore, it was impossible to say ‘Stay here, we’re building something special,’ when they were removing the best building block every year and their rivals were building far more ambitious, at least in monetary terms, projects.

But in 2016, what outside factors were there that Arsenal had to fight against?

They were second in the league, Champions League football had been attained again, and the financial restrictions that had plagued them for seven years were now gone.

What was stopping them from going to their best players and saying ‘Stay here, we’re building something special’?

It just doesn’t make sense that a club that has been haunted over the last few years by the sight of key player after key player after key player leaving the club for less than their market value because of the fact that they had one year left to run on their contract, would just sleepwalk their way into a situation that left half their best starting XI and many other valuable players in the same situation.

But here we are, in that same situation.

Yet if it’s reasonable to suggest that negligence isn’t at fault here, then the only other plausible explanation is that Arsenal have deliberately put themselves in this position, that this was the plan all along.

That seems absurd, right?

That Arsenal would purposely leave themselves so vulnerable to having their best players leave?

Why would anyone do that?

There is an answer to this, and I don’t like it. But it’s the only way I can imagine this making some sort of sense to those who are in control of matters like this at Arsenal, i.e Arsene Wenger.

So here is my theory…

The Theory

Have you ever rented a house or apartment?

Well, if you have, and I’m guessing most of you have at some point, imagine that place you’re renting is lovely. And the neighbours are lovely. And the landlord is lovely. Everything is just lovely.

But eventually, you move somewhere else, for whatever reason – a new partner, new job, doesn’t matter. I have one question;

What condition are you leaving that house for the next tenant?

It may seem like a silly question, because the answer seems obvious. You’re going to leave it in as best condition as possible, if not better.

At the very worst, it’ll look the same as it did when you moved in, after all, you really liked the place and the people who owned it. The house will look glorious when you move out.

Do you know what else the house will be when you move out?

Empty.

Will there be food in the fridge? No.

Clothes in the wardrobes? No.

Furniture in the living room? Probably not.

The house was empty when you moved in, you tried to make it a home, and when you moved out, you left it as empty as possible so that the next tenant could do the same for themselves.

What if this was Wenger’s thinking in 2015 and 2016?

That his ‘tenancy’ at Arsenal was going to end in 2017, and he didn’t want the next manager to come in and find that the fridges were full of food they didn’t want, the rooms full of furniture they didn’t like and wardrobes full of clothes they wouldn’t wear?

He has often talked about how he wanted to leave his successor with a talented squad and plenty of money to spend, but what if he went one further than that?

What if Wenger fixed it so that when someone new came in during the summer of 2017, half the squad would only have one year left on their contracts, making it easier to sell them if the new manager didn’t want them, which in turn would give him more money to build the squad he wanted instead of the squad he had?

It’s a radical idea, but if a new manager wanted to start from scratch, this would make it far easier to do so.

This would imply that Wenger only envisioned two possible timelines for Arsenal; either they would be really good and he’d be still in charge, or they would need rebuilding and he’d be gone.

If Arsenal were still in the Champions League this season, getting the likes of Alexis and Özil would not be the hardship it is now, and Wenger would be right to feel confident about getting them to stay.

But it hasn’t worked out that way.

Arsenal do indeed need rebuilding, but Wenger and the board Kroenke decided that the Frenchman’s work wasn’t quite done yet. So here he finds himself, standing in the living room of the house he was about to move out of, desperately trying to stop the removal van from taking the furniture away and ordering the first things he finds on Tesco Online for dinner tonight because there’s no food in the fridge.

This is the only reason I can give to why Arsenal find themselves where they are.

It’s either a plan that got changed at the last minute and is being desperately being redrawn as they go, or pure, unbridled incompetence.

Considering that they’ve just spent £52 million on a striker and hired Jens Lehmann to be part of the backroom team, I think it’s pretty clear that it’s the former.

One day, we’ll find out why Wenger changed his mind.

For now, all we can do is see how he attempts to sort out a situation that was made by him preparing the ground for someone else’s future problems.

It’s his house now, and the less he thinks about the future, the better.