Quote Originally Posted by gooners View Post
And what role exactly was denilson paid for? --- none; we were paying him for his supposed talent. It turned out he had none.

This is the stupidity of it all. And then IF their talent actually develops and they want big boy wages we start fobbing them off ala song!
It's a stupid structure and it has cost us a lot. Wenger has used the youth policy to justify letting certain players go or not buying and then it comes back to haunt us. I think of the many years we've gone without buying a striker because we've had Vela and Bendy but we then end up getting rid of them anyway. Song's sale is baffling because he's a success story but we sold him off anyway. We've lost our way.

The logic behind this structure is flawed. We pay over the odds for kids because we seem to think we it will keep them content and shield them from big club poachers but if one of oil rich clubs wanted one of our young stars, £50k a week won't make the slightest difference. If City put a crazy bid in for Ox and saying they'd pay him £100k a week, we're stuffed because we won't match that. Why pay so much when it's not necessary and doesn't protect us? For a young player, there focus is breaking into the first team and improving their game.

Then on the flipside, because we pay so much on an average, it restricts us from topping up our star players wages. Say we have 5 key players in the squad and all are demanding over £100k a week. With our structure, we're bound to lose all 5 players because we're so rigid. But if we had a sensible policy and we lowered the average we're paying out to squad players, we could actually afford to pay maybe 2 or 3 out of the 5 players big wages. At least we retain some of our key players and not lose them every season.