A breakdown of Arsenal's money schemes

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

This is totally backwards because you don't need to prop up the wages of players like Denilson, Bendy, Wilshere, Ramsey or Ox to stay! Nobody is coming in for them and they're smart enough to know that they're at a club that will give them a chance to play regualr first team football. No other top Prem club is going to offer that and they themselves know this because we have a reputation of giving young players a shot.

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there is a market outside of the premiership.

and yes, teams were coming for those players at the time they signed contracts. Its not about propping up wages, its about keeping up with other CL teams. If you drop the salary of middle/young players (and I knew it was going to come to bashing the wages of middle players) then they are going to leave.

that doesnt dismiss that we need to pay more for top players tho. I have never said that. If you have a world class striker like RVP, you have to at least give him a tough decision financially. Clearly the club did not do that.

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

And with that argument and defending such a backwards policy, it makes no sense to then look at the top performers of the club, the guys that get us Champs League football and then talk about greed and disloyalty. The young kids won't leave because of their wages, they'll complain and leave if they're not given a fair shot to play first team football. Bendy, Merida, Vela, Pennant, Quincy....you can look at Coquelin' recent complaints and he mentions nothing about wages. Chesney threatened to leave if he wasn't given a shot a couple of years ago.

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there is nothing backward about it. You keep saying it, but look at United, Chelsea, City, etc. Their middle tier and young players get paid a lot too. Apparently Daniel Welbeck and Tom Cleverly are getting 60k a week. What have those two done in their careers so far, especially Cleverly?

Chesney can threaten to leave because he can get that salary somewhere else.

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

It's never about wages for these guys. But it can boil down to that for some of our established stars and it baffles me that some could suggest that it's okay to pay over the odds for the players that aren't on anyones radar while important first teamers walk season after season because the club aren't smart enough to offer a cash incentive to our top performers. It's backwards. Ice, I don't understand how you can have so much venom for guys like RVP, Theo, Cesc...etc yet excuse us paying over the odds for players who haven't even contributed half of what these guys have over the years.

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well you have made that up, no one has said that except you in this post.

Top Post there. 100% correct.

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Originally Posted by mastermind84

there is a market outside of the premiership.

and yes, teams were coming for those players at the time they signed contracts. Its not about propping up wages, its about keeping up with other CL teams. If you drop the salary of middle/young players (and I knew it was going to come to bashing the wages of middle players) then they are going to leave.

that doesnt dismiss that we need to pay more for top players tho. I have never said that. If you have a world class striker like RVP, you have to at least give him a tough decision financially. Clearly the club did not do that.


there is nothing backward about it. You keep saying it, but look at United, Chelsea, City, etc. Their middle tier and young players get paid a lot too. Apparently Daniel Welbeck and Tom Cleverly are getting 60k a week. What have those two done in their careers so far, especially Cleverly?

Chesney can threaten to leave because he can get that salary somewhere else.

well you have made that up, no one has said that except you in this post.

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Check the post history of the guys cosigning your argument and see what they have to say about players like RVP, Walcott, Song, Nasri…..it's not made up. They applaud us paying the 'market value' for young players but not for our seniors. That doesn't make sense to me. Check it out for yourself.

Also, has it ever occurred to you that we're responsible for inflating the market for young players? I remember, years ago, Benetiz was saying Liverpool couldn't offer the sort of wages Arsenal were offering to young players. I laughed when I first heard the claim, but it makes a lot of sense now.

Man Utd's players, according to this article, they're paying Cleverley, Smalling and Jones £40,000k a week. It's similar to what we pay for some of our young players, but there are guys in the squad that are supposed to be £50 - £60k a week as well.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/foo...deal-2015.html

But as you've rightly argued, we were one of the first to go younger and look for fresh new talent. Most clubs were looking for established stars that could jump straight into the first team. Man Utd have only just started to tighten their belts. Guys like Smalling and Jones are new additions and fit into their new long term strategy because they know they can't spend crazy money like they used to. Ramsey and Ox snubbed Man Utd in favour of us and maybe now so maybe they have decided to bring their wages up a bit more to compete with us. As said, this is new territory and we were the first to go this route and now other clubs are starting to follow. They're practically forced to because of the homegrown player rules and FFP ruling.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with us bringing in players like Ox, Ramsey, Wilshere, Walcott, but we had a serious imbalance. It was to the extent that we couldn't even play half of the players we bought and would have to play them out of position just so they get first team experience, or we're having to loan them out. A good chunk of the youth that played during the Chelsea Carling Cup final era have all left and things haven't gone according to plan. We should have had a team built from that phase. But now, it looks like we have the right balance with Wilshere, Gibbs, and Coquelin, playing alongside experienced players like Podolski, Merts, Giroud, Gervinho, Sagna and Arteta. The balance looks a lot better now, so it's not all bad news.

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

This is totally backwards because you don't need to prop up the wages of players like Denilson, Bendy, Wilshere, Ramsey or Ox to stay! Nobody is coming in for them and they're smart enough to know that they're at a club that will give them a chance to play regualr first team football. No other top Prem club is going to offer that and they themselves know this because we have a reputation of giving young players a shot.

And with that argument and defending such a backwards policy, it makes no sense to then look at the top performers of the club, the guys that get us Champs League football and then talk about greed and disloyalty. The young kids won't leave because of their wages, they'll complain and leave if they're not given a fair shot to play first team football. Bendy, Merida, Vela, Pennant, Quincy....you can look at Coquelin' recent complaints and he mentions nothing about wages. Chesney threatened to leave if he wasn't given a shot a couple of years ago.

It's never about wages for these guys. But it can boil down to that for some of our established stars and it baffles me that some could suggest that it's okay to pay over the odds for the players that aren't on anyones radar while important first teamers walk season after season because the club aren't smart enough to offer a cash incentive to our top performers. It's backwards. Ice, I don't understand how you can have so much venom for guys like RVP, Theo, Cesc...etc yet excuse us paying over the odds for players who haven't even contributed half of what these guys have over the years.

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I think you have misunderstood the point. As Masterminded has explained, we are talking about the time when either these players are signed, or when they are offered contract extensions. It just doesn't make sense to argue on the one hand that the club and the board are obsessed with making money rather than achieving success on the pitch, and on the other hand to suggest that they are paying over the odds for young players and their subsequent wages for the hell of it. Any contract extensions that these players are given are on the basis of the market, and either the existing or potential demand from elsewhere for their services.

It is misleading to apply hindsight, to point to the current crop of players who have underperformed and can't be shifted because of their wage demands and to conclude that we paid over the odds at contract time. This is the same as looking at Cesc or RVP at the date they left the club and concluding that their original contracts were too low. Generally, players are paid what the market dictates at the time they sign.

What Arsenal, as a developmental club, may have done is to stick too many eggs in one basket - hence the current glut of difficult to shift players. What they cannot be accused fairly of is willfully paying over the odds at contract time.

The other issue that needs to be remembered is that we are Arsenal centric, and dwell on our players. Every club in the league has players whom their managers hoped would succeed, but who have failed to do so. We may have more than most, but in a sense that is because of our fairly unique position - rich enough to be able to pay for prospects - not rich enough to reward the best talent. Sure the club can be criticised in hindsight for taking too many risks on unproven players, but its a criticism that relies largely on hindsight; forgets that despite noteable failures, one of the manager's greatest talents is creating top talent, and ignores the inescapable fact that players sales are and have been crucial to the club's financial stability.

Finally, I am a football fan and have venom for players that are disloyal to my club. Simple, really. I have always said that its a free world and players are entitled to chase whatever money is available. Doesn't mean that I like it, though.

As said, we practically created this market. We were aggressive with our approach and search for young players when nobody really cared that much about it. There weren't that many clubs doing what we do now and now most are having to play catch up because new Fifa and FA rules have made it that way. We weren't paying out of the goodness of our own hearts but thought we were being smart by paying young players with longevity low first team wages. We may pay more but we get more bang for our our buck, as they say.

It's not hindsight because a lot of us have said we need to a balance of youth and experience for ages. Now that we're seeing our wage bill sky rocket and it's clear that this stratgey doesn't come cheap, we're right to question the logic in all this. Certain players have never convinced the fans of their quality and the fact that we can't shift them on to other clubs is further proof. It's not hindsight at all. These discussion have been going on for years and now we have reached another layer of problems. On the pitch, our strategy seemed naïve and shortsighted and now it looks that way for our longterm financial strategy. I mean, what the heck is going on? It seems like we've been sold a crock of crap from these guys.

I'm a football fan too, obviously and I'm pissed about the way the club is run. Forget players leaving, I used to get upset about that each summer when I was younger but our problems now seem a lot bigger. I can understand why people get upset when players leave for selfish financial reason and lie about never wanting to leave. But we're now talking about a deeper level of deception here. The whole purpose for moving to the Emirates was based on a lie and the fans have been bamboozled. That pisses me off more than any one player leaving will. I used to think we're a club doing things the right way, but this looks like an elaborate long con.

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

I'm a football fan too, obviously and I'm pissed about the way the club is run. Forget players leaving, I used to get upset about that each summer when I was younger but our problems now seem a lot bigger. I can understand why people get upset when players leave for selfish financial reason and lie about never wanting to leave. But we're now talking about a deeper level of deception here. The whole purpose for moving to the Emirates was based on a lie and the fans have been bamboozled. That pisses me off more than any one player leaving will. I used to think we're a club doing things the right way, but this looks like an elaborate long con.

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this is exactly it. once the next stage of securing bigger all singing, all dancing investments has been wrapped up, watch that share price grow and we will be flogged off to some other set of owners when the time is right to maximise the sell value. end of year accounts mean fuck all in the bigger scheme and analysis will always bring up either a positive or negative spin, depending on who is selling it to us. the whole club has become rotten from the root upwards and all we can do is sit back, watch and hope for the best.

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Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory

Check the post history of the guys cosigning your argument and see what they have to say about players like RVP, Walcott, Song, Nasri…..it's not made up. They applaud us paying the 'market value' for young players but not for our seniors. That doesn't make sense to me. Check it out for yourself.

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Why should he check the post history? If you make an accusation - back it up.

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Originally Posted by GB.

Why should he check the post history? If you make an accusation - back it up.

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Because that is what it is there for and it's not as if I'm trying to catch anyone out. Ice and GP are more than welcome to explain their views right here in this thread. Ice has already done so in fact. It's not an accusation either. If anything, I've been accused of making something up, when I know what certain posters have said in the past.

Nah. If you are going to attribute things to people in such a general way, it is up to you to be more specific, rather than require someone to trawl through a bunch of posts from unspecified people. If you make an assertion, back it up.

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Originally Posted by GB.

Nah. If you are going to attribute things to people in such a general way, it is up to you to be more specific, rather than require someone to trawl through a bunch of posts from unspecified people. If you make an assertion, back it up.

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No. They are big boys, they know what they have said and they don't need you to fight their battles. If Mastermind doesn't want to check for it, that's his choice.