A breakdown of Arsenal's money schemes

[mastermind84]

Let's clear this up, noone would have paid Bendtner/Denilson and co what we pay them...that's one of the big reasons we can't get rid of them and have to ship them out on loan, subsidising their salaries to do so.

you are saying this with hindsight, my statement is pertaining to the year 2009 when those two players signed their contract raises. In 2009, those players would have got nice raises elsewhere. You have to remember that Denilson played pretty good at 21 years old for a side that made the CL semifinal and was a top 4 side in hte premiership. Bendtner was rumored to have interested clubs like Bayern, Inter, and Milan before we gave him the new contract.

We've been paying our young unproven players far too much for far too long and the reasons these kids join us?
A. A big pay day at a young age
B. Opportunities of first team football no other team gives them a hope of getting

Do you really think these kids would sign for us if other big clubs offered them the same opportunities? The few that do make it move on as soon as it suits to those big clubs they never offered them the package we offered them at a young age.

now this is an entirely different conversation, the club did (maybe still does) offer bigger wages to guys who are teenagers. I remember Traore was all set to move to Benfica, but Benfica wanted to only offer half the wages Arsenal were paying him. I think he was on 624,000 a year, and Benfica wanted to offer 300,000 a year. Ramsey is another example of that.

[Xhaka Can’t]

The FFP would probably help us and other big clubs, as it's purpose seems to be to prevent a smaller club being bought up by a billionaire owner who bankrolls it, and helping it break into the upper echelons of the league. It's a protectionist measure, and it's no surprise that the established clubs are backing it.

I think it is a side-effect rather than the intention being protectionist.

[Syn]

I think it is a side-effect rather than the intention being protectionist.

If it's a side-effect at all.

[GP]

[Joker]

I think it is a side-effect rather than the intention being protectionist.

Actually you're probably right, however I think the reason some clubs (not just Arsenal) have come out so strongly in favour of it is because of the side effects of increasing protectionism.

[IBK]

Mastermind Great points.

[Power n Glory]

well that is exactly my point. The big clubs are finding those players much sooner than they used to. And we were fortunate in the cases of Henry and Vieira that they played in Serie A which is a youth adverse league, and at the time was spending tens of millions on established players. Thats why I mentioned Hazard, Lucas, even Ox to an extent. These players are being spotted at much younger ages than when Wenger first came to Arsenal. Its why Wenger made the risk of going even younger.



Porto bought him for cheap but some 3rd party held his rights as well (and still do)

On top of that, he was seen as a bit of a fallen star at the time, he didnt set the Argentine league on fire like people had expected. I used to watch him at River and thought dude was overrated. It could have been a good gamble to take him if we believed in his talents tho.


Nasri and Hleb went for about 12 million in a pre City, Barca and Madrid mega TV contract world. That is at least 20 million now. Eduardo was not an undervalued signing no matter how much you try to project the future with him, I am only talking about at the time of signing.

Ba is a guy no one wanted, and presumably no one still wants, because of his knee issue. Cisse is kind of shit, imo but he did score goals last season for them. I think a better example from Newcastle is Cabaye and Ben Arfa. We all know why Ben Arfa went for cheap, but Cabaye was a great deal. A guy like Ba and Ben Arfa are big time gambles because of their injury or mercurial natures.

The club did not make an error going too young, the error was believing that those young kids would think of the club before money. It clearly failed.


the club has boosted its earning, but not to the extent of United, Chelsea, and City.

And Fulham, Villa, Everton? really? Everton's best player was a £16 million signing. The rest of those guys wouldnt get into our first team. Same with Fulham and especially Villa. Villa tried to run with the big boys but MON had no idea what he was doing and now they are rebuilding again.

and again, Verm, Sagna, and Eduardo types were not undervalued players. Not in the slightest.

As said before, Hazard, Lucas and all the other big names touted that we have no chance have getting have always existed. Before Ronaldinho moved to Barca, we had no chance of getting him. When Robinho was out growing the Brazilian league we had no chance. Same goes for players like Veron, Ballack, Crespo…they were always bound for big clubs and we never had a chance because they were out of our price range.

As for all this talk about undervalue, it doesn't matter. They're still the sort of players we've needed over the years to perform at a consistent level. The young players we've had haven't been able to perform at the required standard over a season and it has cost us. It was the wrong strategy because they had a losers mentality and didn't know how to win. We valued youth over experience and that was where we went wrong. Wenger went too far down the road and forgot how we were able to build a championship winning team when he first arrived. Without the old English players like Adams, Dixon and co, the new foreign players would have been soft and never would have had that strong mentality. We're now starting to see a bit more of balance now with experienced players talking on the pitch and giving orders. We didn't have that with the kids because none of them knew how to lead.

As for looking down at clubs like Everton, Fulham…they've had a few players that could have done a job for us. Fellani, young Arteta, Dembele, Baines, Pineaar, any of their keepers over Almunia….we'd have been better off buying a players that work hard and are consistent over young inconsistent players that may or may not turn into world beaters. Most of the kids we've developed have gone to lower league and small clubs and aren't even the main stars for them either. I think we'd have done a lot better if we had experienced players playing alongside Cesc, Nasri and RVP. Loyalty and money wasn't to blame for all cases. Most of them jumped ship because they knew we were a club that wasn't going anywhere. They joined us because we had players like Henry and Bergkamp and because we had a history of winning and suddenly that all changed.

[IBK]

you are saying this with hindsight, my statement is pertaining to the year 2009 when those two players signed their contract raises. In 2009, those players would have got nice raises elsewhere. You have to remember that Denilson played pretty good at 21 years old for a side that made the CL semifinal and was a top 4 side in hte premiership. Bendtner was rumored to have interested clubs like Bayern, Inter, and Milan before we gave him the new contract.


now this is an entirely different conversation, the club did (maybe still does) offer bigger wages to guys who are teenagers. I remember Traore was all set to move to Benfica, but Benfica wanted to only offer half the wages Arsenal were paying him. I think he was on 624,000 a year, and Benfica wanted to offer 300,000 a year. Ramsey is another example of that.

I don't think its necessarily an issue of overpaying our players per se - because as mastermind says, generally speaking we have to offer contracts to persuade promising young players to stay. We don't do it out of the goodness of our hearts, we do it because the club depends on developing rather than purchasing talent. It might be a valid argument to say that we trust in the potential of too many prospects, but I don;t think we can be criticised for overpaying per se.

[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.

[gooners]

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.

wait till those players decide they've had enough of the policies that many many of their predecessors took issue with! -- you know, when the replay button is pressed again.