Exactly. Ya what Jitty said. While the fans look at cash accounting, the club and FFP go by accrual or whatever it’s called and follow GAAP. I’m not saying that this is definitively what is driving our xfer policy right now, but it is a possible explanation. As for the Ramsey situation, I just think that was a cost/benefit analysis done when Gazidis left. That’s true for our GAAP sheet and gel what I read “player amortization” is one of the line items that counts against the FFP valid revenues. So yes, both. What’s also crazy is that I was looking at the squad and nearly every player had their contracts renegotiated/extended in calendar 2018.
Yep, in addition to Suarez, the other one is alleged to be James Rodriguez. You know --- a brilliant offensive player when he's on, but a bit mercurial and not known for his defensive work rate. We could use a player like that, amarite? [h/t: Tim Stillman]
OK - so then as the club is now essentially private, Stan probably does not worry about massaging the P&L But the FFP issues could be significant given the big name onboardings and Ozil renewal yet with no big sales and no CL rev.
I'd actually love us to sign James in theory - just because he has some quality and if a loan, its a cheap way to find out. But when we already have Ozil and Ramsey is leaving on a free - it makes no sense.
rumor this morning is that we will go ahead and sell Ramsey to Juventus this window for 10m GBP if we finalize both of our target loans in time.
I do get the feeling the main issue Arsenal have is that we can't raise funds via sales because we ballsed up the Ramsey situation and have no one else to dump
Oh okay, I see. I should have read the thread. I don't see how anyone would know whether we are affected by FFP given that it's a bit ambiguous. My understanding is that it is the consistent overuse of spending over many seasons. I don't really know what that means. And trying to understand the financials of a private company is a fool's game. Also, it takes into account money made from the sale of assets, and Arsenal owns a lot of real estate. I think it's all a guessing game, which is why I tend to stay out of it now that its private. My guess is that they just don't think January is the best time to be trading, which I agree with in theory, although I think it's a mistake this time around.
The writing is on the wall. Ozil is gone - most likely in the summer. He is looking for his replacement.
That's basically my point. It was a cost benefit analysis, not purely a financial decision. Assuming the same GAAP analysis would have applied to Ramsey's contract, unless they were completely incompetent, i. e., negotiating a contract they couldn't afford, they had the money to extend him, but decided not to.
I can't imagine we would get a sniff of James Rodriguez. Great player but damaged goods at this point. Perhaps that's all we can do for now. Suarez is happening. I'd imagine we would bring in a defensive cover.
Yes. Probably useless for Stan, but important for FFP assuming Stan doesn’t want to pay fines and have roster/xfer limitations. They just became private and even private companies have to file with the companies house. This has enough info to do the FFP analysis. So being private doesn’t matter. You may be right, but given what’s happened the last few seasons we are definitely in an FFP danger zone. Which is silly bc I think we have 100+m in the bank and bumper commercial deals coming next season. Ya, the hit would have been manageable I think. For contract renegotiations near the end it’s basically just a 2X hit for wage increase. So Ramsey would have only cost a few extra million this season with his new deal.
Is it two times the wage increase or two times the new salary? Earlier you used Ozil's new salary of ~£350k/week, not the wage increase of ~£200k/week. If the analysis used of the hit is two times the wage increase, then the the hit for Ramsey would be about 75% of the hit from Ozil, approximately £140k per week vs £200k per week. If it is based on the new salary the hit from Ramsey's proposed contract would be about 70% of the hit from Ozil's contract. In addition if it's based on the new salary, not signing Ramsey would appear to allow Arsenal to pay Suarez's rumored transfer fee of £20m, while signing him to a four year contract at £100k per week, while still keeping Ramsey until the end of the season.
BTW, re wage bills, Hudson Odoi, with three substitute appearances this season, reportedly turned down a contract offer of £85k per week from Chelsea.
Don't think it is about the money. He has been trying to push a loan to Germany in the hopes of getting regular minutes like Nelson & Sancho.
I know a little bit about James Rodriguez and therefore I'm completely meh about him. I know virtually nothing about Dennis Saurez so I'm having to give benefit of the doubt to him, or others who say he's decent and a good fit for us. But neither of these 2 signings is what I think we've needed most this season (seasoned ready-to-go defenders) and with Hector going down, that only seems to enhance that need. But, at this point 75% through the window, I feel pretty pessimistic that we will sign a vital defender.
ArseBlog reporting the Suarez deal is off due to Arsenal having no money and Barca wanting guarantees we'd actually buy the player once the loan is up. The more things change, the more they stay the same.... https://arseblog.news/2019/01/report-barcelona-and-arsenal-break-off-negotiations-over-denis-suarez/
Isn't that just protecting our interest though? Essentially, Barcelona wants to sell us the player, and simply loaning him to us for 6 months before they actually get paid. What we want is essentially a 6 month paid trial of the player before deciding if we want to spend money on him.
Putting more data and context around the (lack of) transfers issue, here are the 12 teams with the largest Net Transfer spends in the last 4 years. Depressing.
The 2x is just how it works out often for renegotions near the end of contract because you pay them once and then amortize the contract by their annual salary each year unless they were purchased. Iirc we gave ozil a 250k raise vs Ramsey wanting a 75-100k? Anyway, the calculation actually is that you add the remainder of the old amortization to the total value of the new contract and divide that by the number of years of the new contract. So for Ramsey when it was negotiated he had about 9/12ths of a year remaining I’d guess? What we don’t know is if there was any carry over from previous contracts. So this will only give the minimum amortization. So he was on 100kish with about 4m left to be paid. So you’d add about 4m to the new deal @175/wk over what I suspect was 3 years? Total about 30m. Divide by 3 and it’s 10m per year. The charge for this season would have been prorated I guess so 9/12ths again. So I think Ramsey would cost an extra 3.5m in amortization over previous terms if he was retained on top of his extra salary (3mish) and whatever the signing bonus and agents fees are? Likely in the millions I’d guess—not sure if that would be booked this year or next though or possibly amortized as well. The 10m hit also comes each season over the next two seasons. So not only do you have to pay him the extra 75k/wk or whatever, you have to take the ~10m charge each season. As I see the numbers, more and more I’m thinking we won’t do anything until someone moves. In summer we will dispose of quite a few registrations one way or another so that could open up things.