Wenger's transfer policy is also down to a couple of reasons that are not entirely down to him however.
- lack of own talent coming through the youth academy, although this may change over the next few years.
- the price of English players, as mentioned by Shinobi, is just ridiculous. There is no way that Arsenal can afford to pay the same price for a slightly above average young English player as they would for a grown world class player. We can't play that game, or at least not anymore.
Let's not forget that Wenger did try to get this overpriced players in and they were with very few exceptions disasters. Let's just talk about Franny Jeffers for instance, for the 10 million he cost we could have had an actual world class player instead. There is quite a few examples that went the same way, it's a high risk game.
West Ham for instance just have the luxury of an incredibly well run youth program, and they have to be congratulated for that.
Let's however just take some top clubs as an example, say Chelsea and Manu. Where is their homegrown talent, except for a very few players? Chelsea have Terry and a few others, but as you know best yourself the majority of their English players come from other clubs.
Manu of course had quite a few of them, but I can't think of many except for Richardson that are under 30 now. They are doing the exact same thing as Arsenal with their youth program, the players come from all over the world. The only reason they are able to field English players is that they are able to buy them for a shitload of money from elsewhere. Also, same deal. Few of them succeed in the long term.
There's plenty of other things to say about this, but I should really do a bit of work now
