Quote Originally Posted by IBK View Post
Good points. But on the other hand I suppose we need to look at on costs. Pepe costs £100K per week - making him our 10th highest wage earner, but the 7 next highest earners are all within 20/25K of him. We overpaid for Pepe transfer wise, undoubtedly, and there is a good argument that he is not a good fit for our system, but which of the players we have would we like to see play instead of Pepe on the RW. Definitely not Willian. I would like to see AMN tried there more regularly, but after that?

We can no longer look at the player's transfer fee. This is water under the bridge and not really relevant going forwards.

Would the money we are likely to get for Pepe in the current market, plus 100K wages buy a better player? Perhaps - but unlikely that this would get a ready made player in his prime who would not be first choice.

I still think that Pepe could make the breakthrough, given that following a period where we have not played with the fluency and imagination that would suit Pepe's game, we are starting to become less rigid and predictable. I would like to see Pepe used more for the rest of the season before writing him off - and lets face it it is only playing time that will potentially preserve some of his re-sale value if we do decide to sell.
Oh I'm in total agreement about the fee. That money's gone. We're not getting it back. Forget it and move on. This is now purely about whether we're getting value for the ongoing £100k/wk wages.

Honestly, I don't know whether we could get better than Pepe for the same money... but I certainly think we could get someone of a similar standard for considerably less. Maybe it wouldn't amount to a huge saving if we were just talking about Pepe, but it starts to add up when you go through the squad and apply the same rule to everyone who's not delivering. This is where the club need to start getting ruthless with their self-imposed 'final 2 years' rule (which is usually about the mid point in a players contract, so a good time for a review): if a player is hitting their KPIs, extend their contract; if they won't sign the extension, move them on and reinvest; if they're not hitting their KPIs, move them on and reinvest.

Fwiw, I also think Pepe could still make the breakthrough - I'm just not sure we can afford to wait much longer for it to happen? Maybe if we had a few less other problems to deal with we could see where it goes, but atm I don't think Arteta has the time for quite this many project-players. Summer would be my cut-off point - if he hasn't clicked by then I'd put him back on the market. 2 years is long enough to wait for a senior player to settle in and find themselves.