Ousmane Dembélé

I’m really unsure how Everton mopping up overpriced PL midfielders = more ambition than us. West fucking Ham bought two of our cast offs ffs. This is just pure bs to be honest.

5 Likes

That’s true, but we have also sold a lot of our high earners since the start of last season, like, Sanchez, Chamberlain, Walcott, Gibbs, Giroud, Szczesney, Gabriel, Coquelin and got about 150m for them as well as a few others, so our net spend is relatively small.

Wenger and Gazidis liked to talk big, saying we could afford any player and weren’t afraid to spend, then supposedly making record breaking bids for Mbappe, Lemar, and others, but realistically it was all nonsense and we are never going to spend big on a world class player, without selling to pay for it.

The fact is, as a top European club, we should be spending more than lower level PL clubs, every season and there is absolutely no reason why we can’t, which made the disgraceful window, when we only bought Cech, obvious that we have a board with no ambition other than to make a profit.

Dembele is potentially a top player, and he isn’t going to be attracted away from Barcelona to a club who are happy competing in the Europa League.

But for a mid table club they have shown a bit of ambition and so have Wolves, Fulham, Everton, Watford, considering they are no where near the level of profitability and stature of us.

What ambition have we shown?
We were desperate for a top quality CB, LW and Cazorla replacement and who did we get?
An old Greek CB, a free transfer LB, no LW and no Cazorla replacement.

Torreira was a decent signing but it stops there.

I think we could probably spend a shitton on bums like Everton have (Richarlison aside) but what’s the point in that.

At least if we’re signing bums, we sign cheap bums. The guys worth the top money will come when we can offer CL football and have the revenues to match up with that.

At least that’s the way I see it

1 Like

That’s true, but unless we invest to get to that level, we are going to drift along in around sixth place and not only become unattractive to prospective world class players but will lose the ones we have, like in previous seasons.

Until Kroenke goes, we just have to get used to not seeing anything more than adequate, rather than ambitious windows.

Hmm I guess.i hope he can surprise us, but I do think this team is adequate to get into the CL and then we shall see what happens.

Have they matched our 270m spend over the last 3 seasons?

1 Like

I’m talking about this transfer window.
Fulham and Wolves weren’t in the PL three seasons ago.

As for the 270m, we have also sold around 150m worth of players, including several of our best first team players.

Net spend is more like £150m.

We actually made a profit in transfers last season, Auba transfer included. Actually according to transfermarkt’s guesses (as good as any) Everton actually spent as much as we did (maybe even a tiny bit more).

1 Like

We haven’t actually re-couped that much in the transfer market compared to other teams though. When you look at it over the past 4-5 years we barely made anything through player sales last season aside. All the other seasons we barely sold anyone of value.

As for investment, 350k a week on Ozil, 200k on Aubameyan, 200k on Lacazette and 180k on Mikhitaryan might not show up on the transfer budget but all are big investments for the club.

3 Likes

Yet Liverpool who everyone is envying has a net spend of only 140m or there abouts. And we’ve had 2 seasons out of the CL, meaning less income.

Everton are now running on oil.

1 Like

Absolutely. My point of view was just that we seem to spend pretty much what we make. After we built the stadium that was ~£0/season, now that we’re done with the bulk of the debt it is more like maybe £50m/season or w/e and I don’t see it changing bar some surprising safe bang-for-the-buck deal (as it would be financially sound anyway), and it is the same regardless of manager (even though I would expect a new manager to get some extra initial money to set his style in terms of player material). There will be no larger type of “we have to keep up with the big spenders” type of money, so for us net spending is maybe better for reference when comparing to other clubs, it seems to rule our transfer method.

Net spending on transfers combined with total wages are best way for comparisons. Pool and Spurs have certainly benefitted from selling a couple of massive fee players. In many ways, Pool today exemplifies the downside of holding onto AW too long.

We could have Klopp, Salah, Sane for example - all totally gettable.

3 Likes

Absolutely. And according to this https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/06/premier-league-finances-club-guide-2016-17 Liverpool have a thicker wage bill than we do, albeit if you look at the numbers in the article, the £10-20m more that Chelsea and Liverpool spend each season on wages barely buys us a squad player while the £60m more that United and City spend each season would buy us a top quality starting player (and the same argument ofc goes if you look down the table to f.e. Everton which was used in the transfer net spend argument).

2 Likes

But we have also have several players that were earning more than 100k a week like Sanchez, Cazorla, Mertesacker, Walcott, Chamberlain, Giroud, that are off the wage bill.

I’m not saying we don’t spend or don’t pay high wages but we are always short of real quality, and our transfer windows are the worst of all the top clubs apart from spurs.
We only do the bare minimum, which is not good enough and is the reason we have dropped out of the CL places.

But my main point is, we aren’t going to spend what it takes to get a player like Dembele, even if he wanted to come here, while Kroenke is the owner.

People were saying we would never get ozil or auba either.

Dembele would probably be a less costly transfer than Aubameyang was in the long run. The same as Mbappe would have been if we’d got him.

2 Likes

But then there’s Torreira, Kolasinac, Leno, Lichtsteiner and Sokratis are coming in probably all around 100k a week on there abouts. The wage bills gone up quite a bit.

Also you said no Cazorla replacement but Toriera is a replacement of sorts.

I think in the last 2 windows we’ve done better than United

If we got Aubameyang, Mkhitaryan, Torreira, Leno, Lichtsteiner and Sokratis all in 1 window we’d all be very excited.

We only got those because they were relative bargains, rather than Wenger identifying a player to fill a position we were desperate for, and also after our best players leaving in previous seasons.

There is no way we would have got Aubameyang if Sanchez had stayed and the sales of Chamberlain, Walcott and Giroud meant the net spend on him was very little.

We rarely buy a top quality player to play alongside the top players we have, they are usually replacements and that’s the reason we hear supporters constantly saying we are always two or three quality players short of really challenging the top clubs.

If anything, we are falling further behind our rivals rather than competing with them, and yet some people still seem to think everything thing is ok with our transfer strategy and Kroenke.

At the time those deals went though I believe they were something like the 2nd and 4th highest transfers in PL history.

5 Likes