Archive for Finance in Football

Keep Sagna as second choice & pay Theo what he wants

December 7, 2012 Arsenal, Finance in Football 8 comments

Contracts seem to be the flavour of the day so I thought I’d blog my two pennies worth. Sagna is reportedly in negotiations to add an extra year to his contract which some have reported as “a smack in the face”, so much so that Sagna wants to quit. For what it’s worth I think that is hokum. Bacary knows our over 30s policy and he gets paid well so would have been foolish to expect a 2 or 3 year extension. I’m certain he has been offered roughly what was expected and has no plans to leave at all. I think it’s important to keep Sagna but would not be devastated if he left because I think he is fast becoming, if he isn’t already, Arsenal’s 2nd best right-back. More on that later.

Pay the man & he’ll sign da ting

First things first, Theo deserves a new contract even if his people are demanding £100k per week. His contribution and importance to the team this season I believe warrants an improved deal.

Theo Walcott prior to this season had an average of 78 minutes on the pitch per appearance and a goal/assist every 172 minutes which is 2.2 appearances per goal/assist. That is a pretty decent return for a player who is often maligned for his inconsistency.

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Should The Ox Get A New Contract?

June 7, 2012 Arsenal, Finance in Football 13 comments

The rumours of The Ox getting a new contract aren’t exactly new, in fact they have been circulating for a while and I’ve opined over it with friends and tweeps quite a bit and now there are rumours of Arteta potentially getting a new contract I decided I’d finally get around to blogging my thoughts on the issue.

First things first, Arteta deserves a new contract. His contribution and importance to the team this season I believe warrants an improved deal if rumours are to be believed. If he took a pay cut to join us I see no reason why we cannot improve his deal now he has proven himself to be an Arsenal player.

A player who actually deserves an improved contract

Moving on to Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, I do not believe he should get a new contract. Read more

Arsenal’s Billionaire Investment aka AU = Gold

May 20, 2012 Arsenal, Finance in Football 19 comments

It has taken 9 years and the best part of £1.1b of Abramovich’s cash but he finally has the Champions League trophy.

When Drogba scored the winning penalty I felt sick but now the bile has settled back down I’m actually quite ambivalent about Chelsea’s triumph.

Sure Chelsea parked the bus but so did Inter and I appreciate that sometimes the best team loses. I know Chelsea were “lucky” to get through against Barca courtesy of a Torres clincher who despite his lack of form since making his British transfer record move is still a quality player. Last season Arsenal may have had a similar route to the final if our last minute chance had fallen to a striker of Torres’ quality instead of Bendtner.

I’m not pleased that Chelsea won the Champions League but I’m far from devastated. They’re still 10 league titles and 4 FA cups away from being more successful than us.

The potential upside of their triumph is that Abramovich may now decide that he no longer wants to pump millions into the club. He has what he came for and he may feel that the team needs to improve far too much in order to challenge for the CL again next year and indeed make the top 4. I don’t think he will continue to spend the way he has been spending. Hopefully this is good news for Arsenal.

A while ago I mentioned the idea of maybe making a move for Drogba in the summer on a free and got a bit of stick for it as I did with my Owen suggestion. After last night maybe that idea doesn’t look so stupid now to some of you.

Chelsea over the years and City recently have proven that you can buy trophies (class is debatable) and United proved that you can compete against one of them but now that there are two money clubs winning trophies to contend with the question is how can Arsenal compete? Arsenal were clearly the better team in the league when compared with Chelsea and were clearly the better team in Europe when compared with City but how do we combine the two?

We can continue trying to do things in our self-sufficient manner and let the victories taste even sweeter when they happen or we can do what many fans believe we should do and sell our soul to a billionaire to try and buy success.

Although I prefer our current model I’d like to suggest a compromise that I believe will keep in with our self-sustaining model and still have billionaire backing.

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Van Persie Contract Talks & Summer Spending

May 15, 2012 Arsenal, Finance in Football, Transfers 11 comments

Click the follow button! Or are you a Spud?

Thanks to everyone who read my piece on summer acquisitions yesterday. Sorry if anyone found the title misleading, it was supposed to do that. The idea was to impress how important it is to consolidate the team we have already and trim where we need to trim before entering the transfer market again. Arsenal have started to build too many teams over the past 7 years only to lose an important player in the summer or even a few unassuming players only to realise that we haven’t replaced them properly (Gilberto).

On May 16th 2012 at 10.30am Robin Van Persie will arrive at Arséne Wenger’s house for contract talks with Wenger and Arsenal Chief Executive, Ivan Gazidis.

I’m sure every Gooner out there is extremely nervous about this and will be keeping one eye on the sports news tomorrow desperately waiting to hear good news.

I believe these talks will be concluded quite swiftly for a number of reasons, and to the satisfaction of Arsenal supporters everywhere even if so grimly.

YES!!! I got a new contract with Arsenal

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End Of Season Fire Sale

May 11, 2012 Arsenal, Finance in Football, Transfers 9 comments

Earlier this week I focused on the financial aspects of Arsenal’s trophy drought, in particular the correlation between Arsenal being unable to challenge for the title and the rise in wages elsewhere in a fashion that best attracted top players.

Today I want to explore what clearing out the “dead wood” is actually going to do for us. Will our end of year sale actually make us win something?

As we all know there are players on Arsenal’s books that based on the quality of their performances over their entire career with Arsenal (Ramsey’s few months of bad form not considered) who most Gooners believe do not deserve to be at the club, especially if we are claiming to have designs on winning trophies. More so than that there are players being paid far beyond what the average fan would call acceptable for their worth and value to the squad.

Sell the lot?

I want to examine moving these players on but before we can examine the moving on of players we need to actually see what our squad of 25 could look like and where additions or replacements need to be made.

The premier league 25 rule is this:

A squad can have a maximum of 25 senior players. They can also use as many players as they like who are under 21 or will still be 21 or under on January 1st of the year the season starts.

Of that 25 at least 8 must be “home-grown”. Home-grown means a player that had been registered with an English or Welsh club for at least 3 years between the ages of 16 and 21 irrespective of nationality. If a club cannot name 8 home-grown players then they must sacrifice one of their 25 places in the squad.

With that in mind I want to examine who will make the squad next season, who can we afford to let go and how easy it may be to have a clear out.

It will be our intention to trim a little bit and if possible add one or two players

Arsene Wenger on the summer transfer window

These are the players currently on our books and/or in the first team squad. Benayoun is not included as until such time we buy him he is a Chelsea player next season. (Red means loaned out this year)

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