34 - The other teams thread [R]

Net spend is effectively how much additional money the club is putting back into the squad. Its not the only thing thats important to have a good squad, but its pretty important. And Arsenal are at a negative net spend. Its hard to emphasize how important that is when you consider that the likes of City, Liverpool, Spurs and Villa have large net spends. And Chelsea have taken the idea of a big net spend to extremes with tittles in return.

Whilst Wenger was never a big spender in the transfer market, his transfer policy clearly does seem different before and after the new ground. From 01/02 to 05/06 he spends a net of +£36.8M. From 06/07 to 09/10 he spends -£34.6M. Difference seems pretty clear to me.

I have no idea if the club will continue in the same vein in the long term. But I am not so sure that they will change course just because they go a long time without a title. Past big clubs have been known to go very long stretches without success . Liverpool have spend loads of cash, are in piles of debt and have won nothing. And yet their fans still turn up week after week.

Arsenal are starting to brand themselves as the premier small club for development. Where young talent comes to get loads of first team PT in the premier league and CL. Once a player breaks through, they are sold on to a big club.

I suspect with Wenger at the helm they could happily trot along at much the same pace for five or more years. Perhaps the club will fool the fans with a token big spend now and then. Then when Wenger leaves, they will have to change policy as no one but Wenger could maintain Arsenal performing at this level with so little money.

Or they could realize the error of their ways and do a 180 and start pumping 30M net into squad every year. Or perhaps they are already planning to do so, and are waiting until they have paid enough debt down to do it.

 

Wrong.

Rafa out spends Wenger at a huge rate. Probably fair to say to some extent (hard to measure though) that Wengers squad is better than Rafas in 04/05. Regardless, Liverpool's 04/05 squad was not worse than Arsenals to the tune of £135M.

Rafa: Net spend 04/05 to 09/10 : +£108.8M
Wenger: Net spend 04/05 to 09/10 : -£26.2M

 

Yeah, Wenger will get some of that back in the years to come with medium and small signings and maybe 1 big signing. It may appear to be a splash at some point, but it will really just be business as usual.

 

Looks like they'll be getting Chamakh for nothing this summer.

 

That doesn't make any sense. Transfers are just a small portion of player costs. It's like saying that the US government is "cutting spending" when their war budget drops slightly. You're Manchester United fans, and you're biased to think that the only type of spending is transfer spending, because of ManUtd's relatively favorable transfer spending stats.
And regardless, comparing transfer spending doesn't at all account for the differences in squad values from the start. Wenger had a very valuable squad, and proceeded to sell it all off. Benitez had a **** squad, and proceeded to buy a new one.
The fact is that Wenger has spent far more on players than Benitez has.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...ues-biggest-spenders-with-172m-wage-bill.html
http://www.worldsoccer.com/news/Premiership_wage_bill_tops_1billion_news_122223.html

 

Why dont you elaborate on this right here? So what other type of spending, is relevant to this discussion?

 

Our wages as a percentage of turnover is the lowest in the league. Wages aren't such a good measure in the first place as there is a ridiculous amount of factors that go into it(admin, marketing, finance, all the other corporate brass etc.), and thats not exactly money spent on building a better squad like scout wages would be.

 

Wages + transfer fees as a percentage of turnover is indeed a very good measure of how well a manager is running the club.

Of course, it also goes without saying that, the more successful a team is, the higher the wages.

 

1. If the difference was £10-15mn between Arsenal & Liverpool on average then over five seasons that would make up £50-75mn. The total difference between Arsenal & Liverpool in nett transfer spending from 2004 is £130mn+. Benitez would still then have spent £50-60mn+ more than Wenger.
http://transferleague.co.uk/

2. Wenger built those squads himself, and he did so at a profit, so that point is utterly moot. The squad he started off with was not exactly much (if any) better than what Benitez did, yet within a few years he had bought mostly cheap & sold for megabucks, and built a team that one the league a few times out of it. Benitez' only big profit sale compared to the price they were bought for that I can remember is Alonso, and that has been pretty detrimental to their season.

 

I'm tired of hearing this ludicrous defence for Liverpool. Benitez has as much money at his disposal as Arsene Wenger. You can't cherry pick certain elements and hold them up. If you want to get into thing slike value of squad and personnel when one manager took over, or wage bills you have to tie it all up and look how each has fared as a whole.

Wenger has better invested his money than Benitez. He signs young talent for much smaller fees and keeps them in the fold by giving them a strong wage. The only reason why Benitez pays lower wages is because he tends to blow 20m on a big name each summer, then pick up a bunch of bargain-basement signings, which he invariably offloads within two seasons because they haven't worked out.

Rafa has absolutely no faith, staying power or developmental inclination regarding his signings. Wenger has a tendency to sign a player for the long haul and stick with him for a few years, only unloading him if he fails to improve over time. I've lost count of how many players Rafa has bought one summer and sold the next.

Look at Keane: (I know, I know - "Rick Parry's signing")... Rafa gave him from August to January, then sold him back to his former club for LESS money. Now how much did that cost in wages, signing-on fees etc? I don't know if he did enough at Tottenham to earn Liverpool the additional 7m required to recover their fee, but it certainly cost them money.

And this "crap squad" Rafa inherited... didn't they become European Champions in his first season? Was Gerrard not present? Owen? Hyppia? Carragher? Dudek?

I hear many many excuses both from Benitez and Liverpool supporters, but to suggest that he hasn't had money or that he has used it effectively is laughable.

 

If wages were purely for football related activities (players, coaches, managers, scouts etc.) I'd agree. What a club is lumping into the wage bill, and the various ways of categorizing expenses (bonuses can be put into wages or misc. expenses) can distort the figures for comparison.

 

Did anyone happen to see the Liverpool banner this weekend from the derby ……

steaua bucaresti 1986 European cup banner

Scouse wit at it’s finest

 

Ouch.

That is pretty classless, even coming from the bestest fans in the world.

 

Am I missing something here?

 

Surely, you haven't forgotten why Platini hates all the English clubs.

 

The problem is that, in order to do this, he keeps selling his better performers and stripping his team of any core group of players that has experience playing and winning big games together. In any individual case, you could justify the sale for financial or other reasons, but cumulatively they add up to him constantly stripping away the guts of the team. If he had managed to keep his players happy and just buy Arshavin, you could have a team in the post-Henry era of:


Sagna ------ Toure ------- Gallas ----- Clichy

---------- Flamini ---------------- Song

------------------------ Cesc

Van Persie -------Adebayor --------------- Arshavin

With a bench of: Bendtner, Hleb, Denilson, Rossicky, Diaby, Eboue, Ramsey, etc.

That's a good enough squad to have good odds of competing against most top clubs.

 

^^ that is a weaker defense than what they have currently since Toure and Gallas cannot play together and Toure anyways has been shit since ACN 07 and a bout of malaria.

Midfield is pretty much the same; unless if you are going to use the one outlier season from Flamini to rate him.

Adebayor is a liability in most games.

Wenger did well to sell Adebayor and Toure to Citeh.

His transfer failing has been to continue in buying players in the mould of Nasri, Arshavin and not getting rid of his injury-prone players the moment they got fit and managed 5-10 games in a row.

 

I get the Heysel connection, but I'm not sure I get the explicit meaning.

Are they saying that Steau winning it the next year proves how weak Europe was without them???


How dense am I being here.......?

 

Many Everton fans believe they'd have gone on to bigger and better things if not for Liverpool.

OK, just got it..... duh!!

 

Obviously yeah, I just brainfarted on how it impacted Everton.

 

♫♪.. Sing a song of Chelsea and how they lost the cup, Terry jumped on Bridges bird and really ********ed her up, now he's lost his armband and he's very sad, i haven't laughed so much. since the old bill nicked his dad ..♪♫

 

Is bigsoccer starting to be Jewish about opening new threads??
Someone come up with a name already because this one is way past due!

 

"Lock up your WAGS!"