Quote Originally Posted by Boss View Post
We have the fourth highest wage bill in the country.

We have never finished lower than fourth and will probably finish fourth again. Think most of you don't really understand what 'value for money' means.

If you include transfer fees in this argument, we come out a long way on top.

The fans may be getting ripped off (1300 for a season ticket to watch a club that hasn't won anything in eight years - lol) but the club's financial side is, as always, very well maintained relative to our performances on the pitch.

As for transfers, it's a lot more difficult to unearth 'gems' when you're playing around in the bargain bin of the market, but all clubs make mistakes. Chelsea have spent 100M this year to get knocked out of the CL in the group stages and are a mere two points ahead of us, Man Citeh have ended up with a far weaker team despite adding 4-5 players during the summer and we all know about Liverpool.
It's not as simple as pointing to final position on a table and equating final position with wages spent as defining value for money Teggers you simpleton.

You have to look at actual figures and differences in wages in comparison to points earned to consider whether we're getting value for money.

This is from two seasons ago. These are out of date now as it's been established thanks to some bumper contracts we've offered our wage bill is now hitting the 150 million mark. It's the best I can find though:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2...ts-profit-debt


What would be a more accurate comparison for "value for money" is if someone compiled a table (*cough Letters*) dividing Total Wages by Points acquired last season so we can a "Wages spent per point gained" figure. Because it's clear that Spurs who seem to be spending roughly 33 million less than us on wages per season yet they finished only one point behind us last year are significantly better than us in extracting value for money. Likewise even Man United who spend about 28~ million more than us yet finish roughly 15 - 20 points better every season are clearly getting better returns on their investment.

Plus you have to also consider real effects and not just maths. How can we realistically claim to be extracting value for money when we have so much dross on large contracts who are unable to be shifted out of the club sucking millions out of the club every season, yet we're unable to keep our top players because we can't match their wage demands that other top clubs are able to.

Furthermore if we didn't have such a ridiculous bloated wage structure we perhaps would be so compelled to sell our best players every summer just to make a profit. All this wastage in wages affects our ability in the transfer market when it comes to recruiting players.

Quote Originally Posted by Power_n_Glory View Post
It's really hard to believe that our scouts can't find talent and value in the market these days. I was just watching Yaya Toure and thinking how we had the inside lane for this guy and didn't move for him. It's a shocker. In fact, I'm reading that he had a trail with us! No idea why we didn't work hard enough to get deal done for the kid. Or maybe we didn't want to kill Diaby?

We also could have signed him whilst at Olympiacos. We didn't. He moved to Monaco, Wenger's former club but we didn't move for him and he went to Barca for around £7m. Maybe Wenger thought he'd kill Diaby!

That's an example of one player. There are others we've missed that have the talent but wouldn't have cost a fortune as well. The Prem is littered with such players so I don't agree with this idea that we can't find hidden gems. Wenger and scouts just aren't moving for them.
True, though as GP points out I do think we tried getting him whilst he had a trial here but couldn't because of Work Permit issues. Though we probably could have got him when he went to Olympiacos.

Still like I've said about other top players that Wenger has claimed to have "just missed out" on, I don't think he would seem as good as he is now if he joined us, with our inability to structure and organise a defence and our lack of some basic footballing principles. Essentially he would have been "Arsenalised" to some extent.