One other thought - if we stay salary neutral this year, I assume we simply lose the 7 million increase we could have made (i.e., it doesn’t roll-over to next and we would then have 14 the following)… the whole thing is odd.
Leicester City “model” is taken out of context… he isn’t saying “we should run the club like LC” - he is giving a concrete example of a team that didn’t operate out of whack with normal financials who won the league. People really do hate on Kroenke and I just don’t get it… I don’t care for him, but only thing he has done wrong imho is keep AW too long (against his own self-interest in my economic opinion).
People who want Usmanov should just say we “want our team to operate at a loss like the other rich toys.”
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I hope that it is out of context. As the conditions that created Leicesters’ season aren’t repeatable. It was a once in a generation thing–good for them.
And they’ve followed that up with going back to the middle of the table.
What I don’t get is it seems to be mentioned only in relation to Arsenal? Is every other club managing this perfectly?
Like if City secured Alexis with no outgoings (that’s how it looked to be going down) then that would’ve been £10-15m on their wage bill, have they managed the rest of it well?
I guess they probably have loads of leftovers, e.g. topping up wages on players like Dzeko which might have freed up this year but is Walker on less than Sagna? Mendy less than Clichy? Danilo less than Zabaleta? Toure, Kompany, Silva, Aguero are still there and big earners. They must be topping up Hart.
I guess United lost Rooney but Chelsea for example never lost Costa but added Morata.
I’ve no idea if this rule is just a bullshit advisory thing. I still haven’t seen anyone state the punishment of breaching it.
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I think Wenger was saying that the Leicester model proves it can work, and it was proved because they won the PL.
But that argument is clearly false because the season before they won the title they were just above relegation, and the season after, they were mid table.
It’s a bit like saying Luxembourg drew with France so it proves that you don’t need the best players in the world to get a result, so let’s copy them.
Over several seasons, the best players with the best manager will be the most successful, and the best players and the best managers cost the most, so to use Leicester as an example is yet another excuse by Wenger to try and explain his lack of spending on players.
Arsene’, you came to the stadium without any clothes…
No, I have a beautiful new suit on - super high qualitteeeeeee…
Meanwhile, the rest of the league are sniggering, throwing parties and having fun, inviting all the cool kids…
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Again, the statement is being parsed how people want to interpret it… the most reasonable “spirit” of the statement is what I said… no one is arguing we should run our club like LC.
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Probably a far-fetched theory, but maybe the other clubs are negotiating by adding in ridiculous bonuses. Play 5 league games? Get £5m, for example? Smaller wage, higher bonuses to balance it out.
It might be that clubs like Chelsea and Man City don’t have so many average players on very high wages, but only pay top money to the players that deserve it.
We have players like Walcott, Cazorla, Wilshere, Giroud, Debuchy, Mertesacker, who aren’t first team regulars yet are on close to 100k a week, as well as Ramsey and Welbeck who often start on the bench, who are on about the same.
Which means the first team regulars must be on at least the same or more.
So our wage bill must be enormous but whether it’s so much that we can’t afford to be any more players seems ridiculous.
Either it’s an unfair rule, or someone at the club is lying.
But it doesn’t matter how your wages are structured b/c it is an INCREASE that is relevant… I mean the bigger picture, yeah… totally agree with you - our wage structure is a shambles… I have always advocated for more of a 11-13 superstars on high wages and the rest filler/young with one or two gems in there (at least directionally)…
My assumption is that Man City and Chelsea built up their wage structure BEFORE the PL change and had a bunch of dead-wood on the books, which actually turned out to be an advantage wrt this rule. In other words, they could sell the dross at a big loss transfer-wise, and free up tons of money in wages (in the case of Chelsea, I have to hand it to them, they seem to have mastered the evolving market in the last 5 years or so). Arsenal is having a harder time coming to terms with all their deadwood and moving it along fast enough to address this situation.
Would have to dig into actual books and know the finer details of these rules, but I think we can all agree it is just another set of evidence that shows how poorly we are being run under AW right now.
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By selling players and generating enough money from the Champions League and commercial deals.
They got rid of Iheanacho, Bony, Nolito, Fernando, Kolarov, Nasri, Hart, Caballero, Clichy, Zabaleta, Navas and Sagna.
There’s probably enough in wages between all of those players to manage it quite comfortably.
But it isn’t just City doing it… or Chelsea… most of the league has upgraded over the last two years and the ONLY thing financially that has really changed is the premier league broadcasting rights, which is EXCLUDED from the 7 million increase rule…
Larger point - we are the ONLY one who seems to be struggling with this… my question was more rhetorical…
We’re the only cunts paying this rule any attention cos it completely suits our manager to do so.
We should just be increasing the wage bill then Ivan should be chasing the shortfall in sponsorships. It’s beyond inane for this to be trotted out as a possible reason for our transfer window shitshow.
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It’s easier to comply with the rules when you have a much lower average salary.
Also my guess is that the ones in the top4 will all be covering an increase in wages with Champions League money or just a much better job at clearing out unneeded players/cutting off wages.
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I can accept we have no money, but not the shower of shit we see on the field. Another manager would surely do better with the players at his disposal.
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Our partnership list has been growing in recent times anyway. The deal with Universal Pictures comes to mind. It’s just such a weird story for a club like Arsenal.
Don’t think we should be renewing Walcott or Cech, we have no idea what Cech will look like this time next year.
Aaron Ramsey, Petr Cech, Danny Welbeck, Nacho Monreal and Theo Walcott are among the first-team regulars who are only under contract until 2019 and, having appointed Huss Fahmy this summer from Team Sky to work with Dick Law on contracts, Arsenal intend to be proactive with those players they want to keep.
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Pretty uninspiring players with renewing with lol
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Wenger will need to buy for Sanchez and Ozil already. Possibly Cazorla and Wilshere too. He’s not going to let Cech and Walcott walk and add another two replacements to the list.
Edit: if Mustafi persists with leaving and since Mertesacker is retiring a centre back is also on the list.
In 2018 we already need a winger, attacking midfielder, centre midfielder and, possibly, centre back. Next summer is going to be a mess.
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why cant we instead of being run like leicester be ran like dortmund. Spend some money on some exciting players for a change. Why are all of our signings mainly ‘meh’ signings…i wouldnt mind singings like dembele when he went to dortmund he cost someting like 11m why do we never take a chance on some exciting players like this they are fucking cheap enough but we seem to go for middle of the road players on expensive fees and expensive wages which we can never fucking shift when they show themselves up to be another ‘not so special’ player.
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