Losing (Dead) Weight Can be Hard to Do

By: Homey | July 5th, 2011

Fatty
Many of us had hopes that we were going to do some significant house cleaning this summer, with a number of players leaving, as well as many coming in. I think it’s safe to say at this point, we’re not headed for a very big turnover. The fact that we’re likely to hang on to a lot of the so-called “dead weight” on the team has been driven home to me in a number of ways this week. Our own blogger emeritus, the Martin, blogged about it this week. I also read an article on Goal.com that touched on it as well. And then finally, seeing the photos of the “dead weight” players in preseason training with the team this week pretty much sealed it for me.

Now, I don’t think any of us want to see players leave just to see players leave. Rather, we’re hoping that new (hopefully better) players will be brought in, thus pushing the lesser players out the door. And we also realize that whatever money we can get from the lesser players, through both transfer money and money saved on wages, will only help the cause of bringing in the kind of talent we hope to see at Arsenal.

In my research for this blog, I’ve had a hard time finding a website that simply lists the salary of every Arsenal player. If someone can provide such a site, it would be greatly appreciated. But through various means, I can piece together a pretty clear picture of what it looks like.

First, from Swiss Ramble, we have a chart that depicts our 2009/10 team payroll of £111 million. Arsenal Wages
Then, we have various sources like the aforementioned Goal.com article that list salaries of the likes of Diaby, Denilson, and Almunia. What we can learn from these sources are the following tidbits: 1) Whoa, Chelsea is paying a ridiculous amount to their players; 2) Arsenal is still paying a huge wage bill, and can hardly be considered tight in that department; 3) If Cesc is our highest-paid player, and he makes “only” £5.72 million per year, then we must be spreading around pretty decent amounts to a whole lot of players in order to get to £111 million per year.

According to these sources, Diaby, Almunia, Denilson, and Chamakh are all making in the £2.5 – £3 million per year range. (Before someone jumps on me, I’m not ready to give up on Chamakh and dump him at this point. I’m merely adding him here for context.) Anyway, the point is that we’re paying a lot of guys very competitive salaries, but we’re getting little in return.

At this point, I’d like to go out on a bit of a tangent to compare the wage structure at Arsenal to a couple of North American sports that I’m also familiar with. I know I’ve gotten my share of abuse for being American, using terms like “soccer,” and being a fan of other sports. But I think a comparison is helpful. Ok, let’s take for example the salaries of the members of the Los Angeles Lakes of the NBA. For those of you who know nothing about basketball, their star player is Kobe Bryant, who is considered one of the top 2-4 players in the league. He made just under $25 million last season. Ron Artest, a guy who generally started and contributed quite a bit to the team, made just over $6 million. Thus, Bryant made three times what Artest made, and Artest was a quality player.

Now for another comparison, and this one a little more “out there,” let’s talk about one of my big hobbies – fantasy (American) football. In fantasy football, you can play “auction” style, where you start with $200 in auction money, and you bid on the players to make up a team of about 16 total players. Well, the most elite players tend to go for close to $60, or 30% of someone’s entire budget – just for one player. Why would someone do that? Well, because once you get past the top couple of tiers of players, all the talent is about the same after that. So you can round out your roster with $2 guys who are roughly as good as the $12 guys.

OK, so what do all my odd analogies have to do with Arsenal? Well, I think the point is that our wage structure seems out of line when you compare it to other sports. And perhaps it’s out of line compared to other top soccer teams as well. The point in all of this is that there are very few truly elite players in any sport. When you have a few of them, you should expect to pay them far more than double what your merely “good” players make. (And believe me, I could have given dozens more examples of other salary structures in other sports like the ones I quoted above, but I’ll spare you the boredom.) But the fact that we have mediocre, backup players making half of what Cesc makes is hard for me to believe.

In the NBA, there are quite a few Ron Artest-level players out there. And in soccer, there are quite a lot more Denilsons, Almunias, and Diabys out there. I think that goes a long way to explaining why other clubs aren’t knocking on our doors, trying to pry these guys away. Still, despite all that, I have to blame Wenger for not doing more to purge the roster anyway. For all the lip service he does about being responsible with money and so forth, the possibility that we might pay our 3rd-choice goalie about £2.5 million this year for doing almost nothing is really the height of waste in my opinion. If we had to literally give some of these guys away, I’d still be in favor of doing it. Keep in mind what a great deal clubs think “free” players are, and how much they’re willing to spend on them in wages if they don’t have to pay a transfer fee. (Yes, I’m thinking about you, Joe Cole.)

So if we were willing to literally gave away the likes of Almunia, Diaby, and Denilson, I firmly believe there would be plenty of interested parties out there. And with just the salaries of those three players, we’d free up around £8 million next season. To reference the Goal.com article, which was in turn quoting a “boardroom source,” if we paid Diaby £30,000 per week and not £60,000 per week, then we’d probably have the money to cover what Nasri wants. And that’s really it in a nutshell. Guys like Cesc are extremely few and far between. Guys like Nasri are a little more common, but still worth doing whatever it takes to keep. But then guys like Denilson are a dime a dozen at the top level of soccer in England. So wouldn’t we be more prudent by letting someone like Frimpong take Denilson’s place this year, and then use that money on someone who might actually make an impact? And wouldn’t Frimpong almost be willing to pay us in order to be a member of the first team?

Now let’s turn back to the question of our original hopes in the transfer market. You might be asking the question right now, “Hmm, I thought the biggest problem with our squad was lack of depth, and now you’re wanting to offload our backup players and promote unproven youngsters?” Good question. I would first go back to what I’ve written before, which is that we’ve had a problem both with lack of depth and lack of elite players at multiple positions. I think there could be two different theories on how to improve the squad this summer. To make my computations simpler, let’s assume for the moment that we keep Nasri and Cesc, and bring in a monetarily like-for-like replacement for Clichy (Enrique from Newcastle, perhaps).

Ok, so theory one on how to improve the squad would be to add depth in the areas where we were thinnest last season. These would probably be CD, DM, and forward/wing. With that theory, we could go out and buy Gervinho, Samba, and Sissoko, for example. We wouldn’t break the bank on any of them. We could still sell maybe Bendtner, Denilson, and maybe Squillaci and/or Almunia, but we’d end up in a better spot in terms of overall depth. That would make perfect sense.

The second theory would be to do absolutely anything to get maybe two players who are elite at some position on the field. And by doing anything, I mean purging the squad of as much salary as possible at our backup positions, and then trusting the likes of JET, Bartley, Frimpong, and Lansbury to fill in the gaps. If we literally had to give away the players I’ve already mentioned, plus some guys like Vela and Rosicky, then we’d have plenty of cash for both transfers and salary. Then suddenly we’re not priced out of getting maybe two of the following: Fábio Coentrão, Rossi, Falcao, Subotic, Mata, etc. I call this the “Miami Heat” approach. And frankly, I like it better than the first approach.

There are several reasons why I prefer the second option. First, I still have pretty vivid memories of the last part of last season, when we basically had our best players available, yet still couldn’t get wins over the likes of Bolton, Blackburn, Villa, Fulham, West Brom, etc. So I think we need an infusion of top quality as well as depth. Second, if the three clubs that finished ahead of us last season are all going to vastly outspend us, then we’re going to need a little good fortune to win titles in the future. That comes in the form of hoping we don’t have to rely on our 3rd choice goalie, for instance. So let’s offload his salary and keep our fingers crossed from there. And third, even if we do try to go the “big star” approach, we’ll still be helping our depth in the process anyway. Let’s say we bring in one big stud CD and one forward/wing. Well, now we’ll be going four-deep with quality options at both positions. We just won’t be able to go any further than that with well-paid players, but that’s a chance we’ll just have to be willing to take.

I’m sure none of the above dreaming will actually happen this summer. As I stated at the outset, I’m sure we’ll be stuck with most of our dead weight for the upcoming year. And at the same time, we’ll be hearing about how the transfer market is too expensive for us, and that we were priced out of getting the very best players. And then we’ll hear it blamed on clubs that spend beyond their means through debt and foreign billionaires. But just keep in mind that our financial shackles are largely Wenger’s own doing. He chose to give those sorts of wages to under-performers, and then he is further choosing not to do whatever it takes to offload those players when given the chance. So our payroll remains fairly high, we spend very little in the transfer market, and we get mediocre performances year after year. If I ever have to blog about my case against keeping Wenger, this is going to be one of the first places I start.

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“…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal.” Matthew 6:20

Some Related Stories:

Category: Abou Diaby, Arsene Wenger, Denilson, Manuel Almunia, Tomas Rosicky, Transfer News and Player Movement, Transfers

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Anonymous

I'm not sure if you're of aware of this, but in baseball, there's a statistic called wins above replacement. Basically, the concept relies on the fact that there's a certain level of player performance a team can get for free or almost nothing. In football terms, this would be like having two forwards with one scoring 20 goals a season and the other scoring 30 goals a season. Suppose a team could get a forward on a free transfer any time they wanted that would be capable of scoring ten goals a season. Therefore, the forward that scores 30 goals should be valued twice as much as the forward scoring 20 goals.
Wolffy

I don't think players like Nasri are that common.
Chicago Gunner

anyone else notice that Arsenal's away kits for next season are strikingly similar to the logo for Parliament cigarettes? Hope Arsenal got some money out of that.
ak

You know, over the years, when my friends tell me how financially stable arsenal are thanks to wenger, i have always maintained that it is Wenger who has cost us tens of millions of pounds. Over the last few seasons, there have been so many times we have been this close to title, and have lost cuz of certain deficiencies in the squad that could and should have been easily adressed. We could have easily won at least 2 of those titles in the past 6 years, and the revenue those 2 titles including increased marketing revenues besides the prize money would have easily covered at least 2 marquee signings for wenger's squad.
Homey_Mills

The Swiss Ramble blog that I referenced pointed out similar things. But yeah, not winning any more than we have has cost us money. One example was blowing our lead in the CL stage group last year. Not only did we lose money by finishing 2nd in the group, but then we cost ourselves again by facing Barca and losing. If we'd won the group and then defeated just one additional team, thus making the quarterfinals, we'd have made several more million.
ak

I think the best wage structure for arsenal would be to offer low wages and MASSIVE win bonuses. I mean someone like Nasri would have much more incentive to stay and play better if he stands to gain a couple of million pounds if he leads arsenal to the title.
Homey_Mills

Wiki officially lists Gervinho as an Arsenal player. Must be close at this point.
Lonik Paerz

Season after season, week after week, month after month, Cup after
Cup, run-in after run-in I stay glued to the TV or computer alternately
surmounted by euphoria or equally often pummeled into an abyss of
despair. Where does this Gooner addiction come from and what are its
consequences?

Take right now for example…I can’t decide whether Clichy sauntering
over to our Northern reserve club for a mere 7M sterling , is a good
thing or a bad thing. Is it possible that its both? I mean everything
about the Arsenal lately is ambiguous, debatable, uncertain, fluid, like
quicksand. With this dichotomy comes a certain instability and loss of
focus….I am losing touch with the Arsenal reality and like a bi-polar
individual, feeling moments of etheral bliss and the next moment
plumbing depths even the most ardent Gloomy-doomy Gooners fail to reach.

Let me give you a perfect example; watching the Arsenal overcome a
clearly superior Barcelona team at the Emirates last season was the
equivalent of a perfect hit for a meth addict or better still, like a
night out with Pamela Anderson with no holds barred(if you’re reading
this and are a female Gooner-choose your dream date or gender) but
watching the Barcodes, with the able assistance of the referee, come
back in a game they should have been out of after 45 minutes, was the
equivalent of swallowing a gallon of petrol , shoving a lit match up
your nose and sneezing (please do NOT try this at home)!

I have come to the forlorn conclusion that I am an Arsenaloholic, the
definition of which is as follows. A deluded and often shambolic
individual, of either gender and undefined age (but must be over 6months
), with minimal ambition (other than AFC winning silverware), no fixed
address (since I troll from pub to my mates’ sofas and am rarely home),
little to recommend him or her other than a new Gunners kit every year
and a pathetic, ceaseless hope that the light at the end of the tunnel
(the one leading to the Emirates) isn’t another runaway train!

I can’t get enough of the Club, the history, the potential glory, the
moments of sheer delirium like our humbling of Real and AC Milan and
the aforementioned finger we gave Barca, the killing ground that most
blogs have become, the elegance of everything Arsenal, the media scum
dissing our Club everywhere and anywhere they can, the three-ring circus
that is the Barca-Cesc saga every year, the groans coming from La
Cantera (Barca) as we sweep another under 17 talent from their doorstep,
the divine one-touch Football, the Spuds Derbies, the MOTD morons, and
so on.

This dependence on my Arsenal fix, currently being met by
pseudo-intelligent rumours and spurious speculations of summer madness,
like Methadone supposedly alleviates a coke addict’s need, is
maintaining my mental equilibrium just marginally. THANK God that in an
other week I’ll get to see the boys in Red & White amble onto the
steppes and rice paddies of Asia to confront their hosts best 11.
Frankly I’d be satisfied if they toured Cheltenham wearing busker
costumes and kicking a recently decapitated Spuds skull around against a
pickup team of retired Aussie cricketers….cricketers, what a dreadful
thought!

My spouse, who long ago abandoned any hope of a cure for my
affliction, has (perhaps sarcastically?) suggested that I find a real
hobby like gardening, swimming and/or lawn-bowling. I did once try all
of these but the lifeguard wouldn’t let me take my trowel and bowls into
the pool.

Such is life, but on a brighter note, my shrink tells me that her
husband is a Spuds fan and that, with significant medication, regular
shock treatments and the employment of elephant sized suppositories, she
has been able to, on occasion, actually recognize his speech as English
and increase his IQ to match his age (45)! There but for the grace of
Wenger and Gazidis, go I!

Thankfully and mercifully I have joined a self-help group sponsored
by the EPL and the Septic Blatter Foundation for severely disturbed
Football fans where we watch videos of Platini and Jack Warner
performing unspeakable acts on wax figures of our current FA
Board-members, all the while screaming out phrases like Fairplay and
Corruption…what Corruption? This therapy, commonly known as bizarre
rehabilitation and turgid supplication (BRATS) seems to be having some
effect. My wife tells me, in my few moments of lucidity, that I now no
longer wake up screaming ¨Buy,Buy you French fop¨ or ¨ Oh Foot ,oh Ball I
hear thy call¨ and that at work, my mates have noticed a marked decline
in my tendency to wear an arsenal shirt with a tie.

There is definitely a light at the end of the tunnel, now if I could
only figure out how I got into this tunnel in the first place?????

Don McMahon
Sicko

Where did you copy and paste this from?
ak

www dot blogphotovideo dot com/sport/best-paid-football-players-top-100-salaries

The heaviest dead weight is that of Arshavin. Check out his position. If Wenger really thinks Nasri is gonna be okay with a pay parity with Arshavin, i think he can hardly blame Nasri for leaving.
Orion

I just read it, and it really show hows Arshavin has generally failed to live up to the expectations Arsenal had for him. If today we had to list our three best performers during the past season, Arshavin certainly wouldn't be listed. And yet he is our second most paid player, less than Cesc but more than RvP. Abhorrent, imo.
ak

Excellent article btw
TJ

You don't think a "rich" team like Malaga, one of those Russian sides, or Turkish sides, can't splash 3-5 Mill for Denilson or Rosicky or 1 mill for Squillaci, and match their higher wages based on Arsenal's reputation alone? I'd think it'd be possible. As stingy as Wenger is with his purchases, I hope he doesn't hold out for 6 million when they're offering 5.5 to sell one of our "dead weights", but I'm afraid that might be the case as well.
Darren_V

I think the problem would likely be the player not wanting to go to Turkey or Russia. But then, others have gone (Roberto Carlos-turkey, McGiedy-Russia) so who knows the real story?
brenton

See my earlier comments re: Turkey. It is pretty attractive to a lot of footballers this season.
TJ

yeah, i guess sometimes I forget that in Europe the player and club have to agree to personal terms, unlike America.. it's like every player has a "no trade clause" that only they can waive.
Homey_Mills

Yeah, I think you're correct. I think there would be clubs out there willing to at least give us something for some of those players. I was writing more to say that even in the most extreme situation where we got nothing at all, it still would be better to give a few of these guys away.
TJ

I mean shit, even Blackburn said they want to bring in some dudes. If we have Rosicky valued at 5, but they can't pay his wages, knock it down to 3, and they can probably afford his wages.. I'm positive that team could use a "creative" (used verrrrryyy loosely) player on their team. I just don't believe we can't find suitors for these guys.
evovbtj

Question that may provoke your thoughts........ when was the last great player coming out of Arsenal?

I would say Henry was arguably our best player in the last decade. He was the only player that would be considered "World Class". Fabregas has that potential, but he has yet to win anything (at a club level). Otherwise it does feel the Arsenal production line has been a failure. In the last 10 years, how many "first team" players did we produce?

Furthermore, the so call first team players who left for a "top team" in the last few years all seem to perform poorly. To be specific, I'm talking about the post invincible season. Adebayor, Helb, Flamini (not sure you can consider him a first team player at Milan...) all went to a top European club. They were all undisputed first team player when they left.

Obviously, Gallas & Henry both did well, but Spurs is not a top team, and Henry was already World Class before he left.....

I think something is really wrong, we do acquire a lot of young talents, but they all fizzle out in the end.... and when our first team fail to even make it into the first team during their prime at another CL team, something just don't add up....

**yes, Wilshere may be the next great player coming off Arsenal's production line, hopefully more will come... but its too early to judge really...
mattrich

to me, this sounds like a consequence of Wenger's youth policy. kids aren't finished developing yet, and when they're put through the grind of a full season, especially in a team challenging for trophies such as Arsenal, they're more likely to get injured, and it's more likely to have a negative effect on their careers. maybe these kids are just getting tuckered out and used up too fast before they're done developing?

although adebayor has a pretty sweet deal going for him if he can stay at madrid. in my opinion he wasn't all that useful, but he doesn't seem to be going anywhere.
Harken203

Looks like you're suggesting some cousin of a Zidanes y Pavones strategy
Perry S.

On another note and I'm not sure how I let this slip from discussion recently, but did anyone know Arshavin's contract is set to expire next summer? So this leads me to believe 1 of 2 things will happen in January: He will either sign a contract extension (working both ways - if he does well, Arsenal will offer it up, and if the team does well, he will want the extension himself), or will be sold in that next window while we can recoup some $$ for him.

We haven't really discussed this much (if at all), but this makes for an interesting situation regarding our transfers. If he were to go, that would leave us with one less, lets be honest (don't bag on him for one moment), pretty good winger that we would need to replace quickly. Thoughts?
Homey_Mills

I wasn't aware of his contract status. To be honest, it's frustrating getting details of salaries and contracts. When I was doing research for this, I could just do a super fast search and get a list of salaries in other sports. But with Arsenal player contracts, I have to dig and dig.
Anyway, I'm a bit in between on Arshavin. I certainly value him above Rosicky and Bendtner (at least for the forward/wing spot). I don't like him as well as Nasri or Walcott. But he's certainly worth keeping for sure.
Perry S.

Looks as though Gervinho will be signing in the next day or two. He's in London getting a medical with Arsenal. Something to be happy about for the short while, hopefully in the very near future we hear about the defensive recruits.
Alexinho

An important step in putting my ideal tactics into place--Song at the back of midfield, combination of either two Fabregas/Wilshere/Nasri in front of him, with van Persie as a false-9, and Gervinho/Walcott to make jailbreaks when possible.

But it depends on at least Nasri OR Fabregas staying. One or the other may leave, they both may stay--I seriously doubt both will leave, because that will be a disaster. Though I feel more strongly than ever that Arsenal is close to a transfer-oriented disaster, I don't see both of them leaving. Read the Barca papers day-by-day and you see how much less likely, day-by-day, the Fabregas transfer is.

While I'm on the subject, am I the only one that thinks that under these circumstances, judging on form over one season, Nasri has to be judged as a better footballer than Fabregas?
SJGgumby

On the bright side - if it will apparently take more than $15M to sign Downing, that means Arsene won't end up buying him, right? So perhaps one bullet dodged?
Darren_V

The thing about the wages in that graph. It also includes coaches, staff and all of them, not just players, and Arsenal reportedly have alot of back room staff and scouts working for them. So it's not as clear cut as the graph makes it look.
I find it extremely hard to use the NBA or fantasy football as your measure for rating how much players wages should be. The NBA, NFL and NHL all use a salary cap, and therefore players are pigeon-holed into salary brackets due to cap restrictions that are (largely) unbreakable, except for having a massive season in your contract year. In European football, there is no salary restrictions, therefore the situations are completely uncomparible because the rules are completely different.
Something that needs to be realized is that all the players are on relatively high wages because that is how Arsenal got them to come to London in the first place. They are paid on potential, and if they hit the potential, will be rewarded with higher wages. But it's a double-edged sword as we are finding out, as if they don't hit that potential, they are earning too much to easily get rid of them. It's all well and good to talk about lowering their wages, but that's virtally impossible until their contracts run out. You cannot look at these players at Arsenal 3 yrs after they are signed and say 'he should earn this, and he should earn that' since they are only at Arsenal b/c of the high wages.
If it were so easy to offload these players, don't you think they would have been gone by now? A perfect example is Armand Traore last year. Arsenal and Benfica had agreed to a fee, and he was set to go. Except Traore didn't like the wage reduction he would have to take to play for Benfica, and refused to go, and we were stuck with him. Players in Europe have much more influence on their location of play than in North America where they are traded like commodities, and nothing more.
If payroll is your first place of arguing that Wenger needs to go, I would have to respectfully disagree with you there.
brenton

The high wages that we offered Denilson brought him to London, sure, but did we outbid anyone to get him? He had only made 12 appearances for Sao Paolo, 8 as a sub. I don't remember the transfer, but we likely offered him a significant raise.
Homey_Mills

I don't see why comparing a league with a salary cap with one without a cap should be so different. If you look at baseball salaries (no salary cap), you'll see the same point playing out there as well. The really special guys at the top regularly make 10 or 15 times more than the guys filling out the bottom of the rosters.
Furthermore, even if there is no cap on what Arsenal can pay, there are still monetary limitations that the club can't go over. That works itself out in roughly the same way as an actual salary cap. And even if the graph of wages includes coaches and staff, that is beside the point again.
The basic point is this: Wenger has been given a certain budget for wages and transfers. Rather than spending that money on elite guys who can make a difference, he's tied up mediocre players to long-term deals. Then when it comes time to either bid for a player in the market, or extend a player like Nasri, we're told that it would exceed our budget. That's my point.
Darren_V

Salary cap league give you a pool of money that you may disburse to players as you see fit. So the more your stars get, the less your role players and depth get. Another difference is in NA is all leagues draft the players and the keep the right to the player. In Europe players sign with clubs and to move to another, there must be a deal between all three parties, not just two clubs. It makes a massive difference. The point about staff being included is part of the point, in that Arsenal state the staff in the wage bill, and not all other clubs do I believe. As well, Arsenal are said to have more staff than most, so you simply cannot just say they pay as well, per say.My basic problem with it is this. It seems you are looking at the wages reto-actively. Looking at players after they are with Arsenal and trying to determine what they are worth. But they are only at Arsenal because they had huge potential at first and failed to live up to it. If this is your issue, would you rather Arsenal not sign potential youngsters? Because the reason they come to Arsenal is for large wages, just like why Nasri wants off.
SJGgumby

I think the Traore situation is a good example, but of a differnet point - if this happened in N.America, Benfica would be forced to pay his existing wages no questions asked. But its more common in Europe for buying clubs to ask players to accept reduced wages, and I don't blame players for resisting an paycut from the contract they had previously signed.
Gigi_man

sigh.
sigh, sigh, sigh.
sigh.
sigh sigh.
I am trying to get myself together...trying hard.
Well this comment was to say that I still read you every day, but I am so down that I rather not write too much.
Benjamin Dockter

I think Martin put it best when he said he's worried. I could not be more worried about the upcoming season right now.
Homey_Mills

Ah yes, Martin always puts it better than I do. I see. :-\
Orion

Chill, Homes. You get better at it the longer you do practice.
Homey_Mills

Oh I'm fine. I was just faking like I was a drama queen. I know the Martin will always be the king around here.
Georgedb1

I like your posts much better Homey, thanks for sticking around when others packed up. I have to ask though, why do the hosts feel like "blogging" has to be a full time job?

All that nonsense a couple of months ago was so idiotic and melodramatic. Last blogs, then second last blogs, boo hoo hoo, what is this some sort of fake star wars convention.

Instead of writing essays or Dickensian chapters, just limit the length of each post, and don't write every day. Most of the worthwhile discussion is in the comments anyway (from my point of view).

Anyway, good stuff dude.
Homey_Mills

Thanks for the kind words. Just got a new one up. It's a weird thing, this blogging. I really feel a sense of obligation to the readers now that I'm part of the group that took over. So I hate seeing a day or two go by without new material. But it's been tough with no matches to discuss and no firm transfer news either.
I think with Martin, and to an extent Sairax, they felt like they raised readership and expectations to an enormous amount. I know that I, for one, expected quality blogs on an almost daily basis. So rather than feeling like they could scale it way back, it would be better to make a clean break. Of course in my opinion, I'd love for either of them to come back and write just once a week. Then the rest of us could do the rest. But I think that ship has sailed. I wish them both well, and thank them for their great service to us as readers.
Georgedb1

I'll tell you this, the reason why I come here is that I can read something, comment on it, and get a response to my opinion. I love talking about Arsenal, but I certainly don't expect the people I converse with to have read each and every article that came out today and be up to date on absolutely everything Arsenal. I'm also an attorney and I couldn't imagine doing it, nor could I imagine sitting through too many long-winded opinions that really count for nothing (since we're not in management, and have no say on anything that goes on in the club). So, the real joy in it for me is the conversation, my advise to you would be to pack your posts with conversation starters, and less with time consuming research. It'll make things easier for you, and I think it will continue to raise readership. Thanks again for taking over, be seeing you.
Homey_Mills

We certainly have a bunch of lawyers in the group, what with you, me, Martin, and Gigi. If this blog ever gets sued for some reason, I think we'll be ready to rumble.
SJGgumby

Massive post (see what I did there?)
Homey_Mills

I think it's a personal record for long-windedness.
SJGgumby

I choose to take that as a bad bag-pipe pun (to go with the picture above) - and applaud you for it.
Homey_Mills

Ahh... very nice. Totally unintentional.

In other news, we're again reading that Gervinho is in London undergoing a medical. I read that a few days ago and nothing came of it. But it's being reported by Sky Sports this time. Hopefully it will be official soon.
Jay Wright

Funny enough this has been a major concern for myself and many other fans of Liverpool also (as I am sure it is with the likes of Chelsea and Spurs too, who have also allowed their squads to be filled up with players lacking the quality to move the clubs forwards).

My own opinion conincides with yours that the big earners should be those expected to make a big contribution on the pitch, and any 'squad' calibre players (Denilson, Squillaci, Rosicky etc in Arsenal's case; Cole, Poulsen, Jovanovich etc in Liverpool's case) should be young players on low earning contracts, rather than players that are earning similar amounts to what the major contributors are earning. The main difference between are two clubs is that your dead-weights are young, and with that always comes the (often naive) belief that the player will improve over time, whereas the majority of the dead-weights at Liverpool are ageing and/or injury prone players that would struggle to convince prospective buyers that they maintain any value.

Eitherways, imo both clubs would be best served to cut the deadweights loose even if it is messy short term, rather than allow those players to continue slowing the clubs' progress in the longer term
Parryglover09

In the last two days, I have many questions posed my way about the much hyped Arsenal Exodus – many people asking me why I refer to it as an “exodus” as it’s clearly not. Why am I bothered or worried about Clichy leaving, after all, he’s error prone right? He’s made too many mistakes and cost us too many points. That is the opinion of many and furthermore, many people think the former Arsenal left back will be rubbish for City.
Let me remind you of something Arsene Wenger once said…
Apart from the special talents like Messi and Fabregas, the majority of players learn their trade from 20 to 25 and reach their peak between 26 and 30.
For the last 8 years, Clichy has been playing for us – over 250 appearances, a host of great interceptions, and quite a few mistakes. Well, Clichy is 25 now and according to our manager, he will now enter the peak of his playing abilities. For that reason, it’s very confusing to see everyone so happy about his departure.
We’re going to replace him with our next in line youth product, Kieran Gibbs, who will surely going through the same learning process as our dear Clichy did. Don’t forget our dear Ashley – we dealt with his mistakes and we put up with his inadequacies and right about when he become the best left back in the country, we sold him on to a title and top four rival in Chelsea.
The problem with a youth policy which is not supplemented with a experienced title winning mentality and players to go with it, is that the club becomes a feeder club for all the big clubs in and around Europe. We took Adebayor, who was absolutely rubbish when we signed him, and polished him into a decent player and then sold him on. We did the same with Toure, Vieira, Overmars, Petit, Anelka… the list goes on. If Cesc and Nasri do leave, I really think it will be a massive statement to the world that we are in fact a youth academy for top European clubs.
Alex Ferguson managed to win the Premiership with kids at a time when the gap in quality was much bigger. Nowadays, you can’t win anything without experienced players. At Barcelona, for every Pique, there is a Puyol, for every Pedro, a Xavi and for every Busquets and Iniesta – quality youngsters, supplemented with experienced players.
And the problem will only self-inflict – if we continue to not invest in our squad and we continue to sell our best players, then we won’t win anything for a long time. Nasri summed it up last week, when he talked about not signing his contract – it’s clear that money is everywhere for you if you are a decent player – but trophies aren’t.
“The priority is to make a big career and to win titles. This is more important than everything else. With no titles under your belt, you can’t be in the list for the Ballon D’Or. I came to England to get trophies because I haven’t won anything in my career, apart from an Under-17 European Championship in 2004.”
Arsene has played down the need to win trophies and that 4th is like a trophy. Maybe that is true for the club, but it is certainly not true for the players.
“Trophies are one way to judge a club. They’re not overrated as it allows you to say you have won a trophy, but would you swap winning the FA Cup for playing in the Champions League?”
For a player, knowing that the mentality of the club is not to win titles, but to be all right, is not the motivation you need or want. I am sorry to say, but any player at Man United, Barcelona, Real Madrid or Chelsea goes there thinking they will win a trophy and if they don’t they’ll be sold.
Down at Arsenal, we reward mediocrity, and do not demand excellence - we need change, simple as.
I’m not a doom and gloomster (check out previous “Why it’s not all doom and gloom”)… but certain things must change soon for us to stop collapsing every season and being the laughing stock of Europe.
Orion

About the fact that "the our financial shackles are largely Wenger’s own doing. He chose to give those sorts of wages to under-performers..", there's something to chew on. Upon the signing of the contract, the club takes a gamble on the player by tying him to a long-term contract with very decent wages. If he turns out all right, the player cannot leave and cannot say he's a victim of fiscal drag and has wages that are a poor reflection on his ability - cos they aren't. What's more, he's in a long-term contract so we can plan in the long-term with this sort of player.

On the other hand, if he does not turn out all right, or only had a good start as their contract played out, the club is stuck with a decent-but-not-very-good player that's getting wages that are much higher than a reflection of his ability. He's warming the bench, but he won't leave. Of course he won't, he's being payed almost twice as much as he would at a club suited to his ability (Yes, Diaby, I'm pointing at you).In the end, Wenger has turned out to be a gambler. This method has proven to be brilliant at times and disastrous at others. Every one has his or her own opinion. But from the huge number of dead weight I saw yesterday on the Arsenal pre-season photos, and all the other top clubs getting in top players, Wenger as a gambler has not been getting the results he used to get back in the days when we, you know, won something.
Benjamin Dockter

Everyone is making very good points here and seem to be hitting the nail on the head of our transfer trouble this summer. Most likely the reason we haven't signed anyone yet is because we haven't been able to move the "dead weight" players on. We're limited with squad size and we can't buy a bunch of players until we sell. I, for one, would like to see us just bite the bullet and either offer our crappy players as makeweights for the deals we're trying to get through or to just release them. We hardly payed anything for Denilson, Almunia, etc. They make too much in wages to go to lesser clubs so we should just let them go. If it's true that they're making 3mil a year, that's a huge amount back in the bank for players that deserve to be on the pitch.
cain

Good post..
let me add here that one of the biggest issues i see in English football is the squad size..it's bloody overrated..i don't see the point of having 30-35 players on your roster..last i heard liverpool had 48, united had 41, chelasea 27, city 35 and arsenal what 30!!

in contrast to these say barca had 19 first-team players and called up as many as 8-9 barca b players when required..now the wage structure for barca b is around 10% to that of barca, when you look at the financials..so a lionel messi equivalent in barca b(say thiago till last year) would only get 10-12% of messi's salary(which is no peanuts either)..they are incentivized to be part of barca first team

the problem is too many players..noone can ever justify how were ppl such as lansbury, eastmond are part of first team!!..this can be acceptable at chelsea and city with their sugar daddies and united with their gate revenues and worldwide presence(hate to admit but they have more fanboys) and liverpool with having crappy players..but not for ARSENAL..we need 25 players max..
Georgedb1

Actually Arsenal have much more fans worldwide, MUCH more - Chelsea's money is 99% sugar daddy
Alexinho

Great point.
sofreshnsoclean

great read. The NBA comparisons do not fit exactly though because you have to remember that NBA teams are only 15 players. However, in football, the teams are EXTREMELY deep once you consider reserves and such. Therefore, the disparity between someone amazing like cesc and someone who is mediocre should be greater because there are so many other players.

Also, a side note. the NBA is locked out because of bad contracts haha, so maybe the owners don't like the idea of overpaying players that don't deserve it (shout out to rashard lewis)!!

Also, you have to remember that guys like diaby and denilson are fairly young, and thus, they were expected to grow into their contracts. I am sure at the time when denilson was starting every match for us, he was worth the money. The game of football is largely based on confidence, and unlike basketball, where there may be one or two people trying to take your spot, in football, there's a LOT more...so confidence plays a lot bigger role.

With that being said, I think we need to increase our wage bill. I understand that we do not want to spend loads on transfer fees, but at the end of the day, you gotta pay someone what they are worth. In the 'real' world, I am sure anybody would jump ship if they had a chance to make 40% more elsewhere, and thus, in order to get the best talent, you have to pay the best talent....which I feel like Wenger does not do. He's fickle, and stubborn, and it prevents us from taking that next step, or even worse, discourages players to come/stay on the team because of more fruitful opportunities elsewhere.
Jay Wright

The NBA comparisons work pretty well I think, with the main problem being that footballers get to renegotiate their contracts every time that they have a couple of good games, whereas in the NBA they're locked into the contract for several years - for better or for worse. Where Arsenal seem to have totally gotten it wrong though is that those young players would be on rookie scale contracts in the NBA and so be underpaid for several years while they learn the ropes, whereas it seems that Arsene rushes to hand his kids not only first team football, but first team contracts at the earliest opportunity also!

It's no wonder that a lot of your youngsters seem to stagnate after a short while though, as they get everything handed to them on a plate so early (i.e. first team place, first team wages, plus the added bonus of playing regularly in a top team while maintaining the excuse that results can't be demanded due to their youth) and so have no real motivation to continue working at their game.

I'm not saying this to knock Arsenal or turn this into a 'my team is better than yours' type b*tch fest; that's just my honest interpretation fwiw...