The Goon Thread

[Neymar]

I disagree that Arsenal's model is all that similar to ours. They've seemed to continued on with the model that gave them success with players like Fabregas. Look around the world for the biggest talents you can find and entice them with solid sign-on bonuses and relatively high wages. The success of this model in the last 5 years or so has been fairly limited. It's a model other clubs have struggled to succeed with too, including (imo) ourselves, Chelsea and Liverpool.

Depends how you define success. From reading what you have written you seem to have defined/judged it purely through the extent of sporting success.

I'm sure the arsenal board totally disagree, but love the fact that you and many other football fans have that opinion. Over the past decade, Arsenal have spent almost nothing in terms of transfer fees almost solely because wenger has been able to pluck youngsters from across the world and groom them into superstars. This has meant that the academy has been able to supply players to the first team, and in some cases, the sales of these players has offset any incoming transfer activity. You have to understand that the arsenal board do not care about on-pitch results in and of itself. Because arsenal have been so succesful with this model, their net transfer fees has been incomparably low when compared to any of their rivals. From a financial perspective, i suspect the arsenal board believe that this model has been an almost total success.

But fans cant see this, or refuse to beleive that the board thinks along these lines. And thats probably the way their board want their fans to be.

Our recent success with young players has stemmed primarily from players developed through the academy from a younger age, or picked up early without the added pressure and individual success for the player resulting from the early big payday. Kane, Mason, Townsend, Bentaleb, as well as Carroll, Pritchard, Fredricks and Veljkovic enjoying loan spells this season along with recent PL level sales like Livermore and Caulker have fitted into this category.

What difference does this make? "without the added pressure"? what are you on about? all players have to come from somewhere. And Bentaleb's from Lille, Veljkovic is from Basel, and we nicked pritchard from whu. also, theres a seriously high chance that mason, townsend, bentaleb, carroll, pritchard, fredricks and veljokic (and maybe even kane, GHod forbid) will not be anywhere near good enough for us in 5 years time.

in contrast, arsenal have produced the likes of gibbs and Wheelchair, if you want london english lads. but football isnt about skin color or nationality anyway. and since you've included someone like bentaleb, i dont see how hes any different from someone like coquelin, bellerin or szczesny. Then theres the likes of alex song, fabregas or clichy. A level down theres a whole host of players who are having very good careers elsewhere; djourou, bendtner, senderos, traore, mannone, vela, jenkinson. the type of career that is looking to be a pipedream for someone like carroll now. probably someone like bentaleb will end up being this level. arsenal have been able to fill up their squad with these types of players for next to nothing. and not have to be concerned about players "fitting into their style of play" or filling home grown quotas.

We have also picked up some cheaper young players either into our academy like Rose, or (a bit further back) to send out on loan like Walker and Naughton. We did of course also sign Bale, and more recently Alli for significant fees and most likely on solid wages. Bale was signed for the first team though, not the reserves/academy and I hope the same is the case for Alli.

Signing relatively expensive, higher profile, relatively high wage players for the academy and development squads as a model hasn't been as successful as I think many used to assume (and still to an extent think). To become a true producer of quality young players you have to actually produce young players yourself with a quality academy, not just scout and sign talent I think. The narrative about Arsenal and young players is becoming a bit of a myth these days I think.

you have to remember that elite english clubs will find it basically impossible to graduate a large number of players from the age of say ten into the first team. teams like barcelona, ajax etc only are able to do this because theres no laws stopping them from cherry picking the best kids from the entire country. English clubs like us can only pick up local lads. Theres only so much developing you can do. Its a wonder that clubs like us and arsenal have produced the amount of players we have.

 

[Neymar]

FFP may be a joke but the fact that Chelski and Emirates Marketing Project have to think about trying to abide by the rules has meant some effect on the bombastic signings. Chelski now shamelessly use player trading as barter as a result, showing they at least have to look like they are playing by the rules.
Oh and if Chelski and Emirates Marketing Project can manipulate their accounts, then so can others - like Arsenal, who have form in manipulating financials as was shown when the story of broke about how they paid players and Arsene millions in bonuses via off-shore accounts to avoid tax. No doubt you will dismiss this last point in your usual "Wenger/Arsenal would never do such naughty things" but here's the articles for reference:

1) Theres no need for arsenal to manipulate their accounts. Arsenal gain absolutely nothing by doing so. The only teams that would want to do this are those that are willing to pay for success. Quite clearly kroenke is not going to do that. This is another example of fans being unable to understand the mindset of the arsenal board: Football isnt a game in which they are trying to win trophies - They are merely just trying to maximise profits. And if thats their aim, what incentive do they have to manipulate their accounts? if anything, they should be lying about spending more than they have done to appease their fans.

2) Arsenal did do the "offshore tax" thing. But there is a high chance that they thought it was legal. Arguably it was. But furthermore, lots of of people in football were doing this (according to the secret footballer, and also it is well documented by other sources). That obviously doesnt make it right, but it didnt give them a big comparative advantage (depending on the source, it seems like arsenal "evaded" around £10m: hardly a big advantage). Opinions on tax evasion of this manner (where everything is declared) comes down to peoples political views. Rich people tend to be right wing, and so i wouldnt be surprised if they genuinely beleived that what they did was right. if so, i wouldnt blame them.

 

[glorygloryeze]

arsenal vs chelsea wages. since i made this a while back, i think chelsea have moved even further ahead in wages. ie. iirc a few chelsea players have received new improved contracts and arsenal have loaned out a couple, but brought it a new cb, rumoured to be on around 50k.

also iirc the sources that claimed arsenal paid more in wages were mainly tabloid papers or sensationalist online news outlets.

Who/what were your 'various sources' when compiling this wage figures? I straight away look at Podolski's wage figure an immediately smell a biased rat: it was widely reported at the time when he joined that they had agreed wages of £100,000 for him, whilst Giroud (signed in the same window) was getting a much lower figure, about 50/60K per week. It was this figure for Podolski that led i believe to the Walcott contrcat situation back then as i think he felt 'well if he's worth that mich, then i should get a similar package'. Bingo, Walcott signed around 2013 for a package of around £100,000.

Regardless, i find it astounding that you can take such time to compile such data/information: do you work in a sports financials role somewhere lol?
Also, are you S. Arshad??

 

[glorygloryeze]

1) Theres no need for arsenal to manipulate their accounts. Arsenal gain absolutely nothing by doing so. The only teams that would want to do this are those that are willing to pay for success. Quite clearly kroenke is not going to do that. This is another example of fans being unable to understand the mindset of the arsenal board: Football isnt a game in which they are trying to win trophies - They are merely just trying to maximise profits. And if thats their aim, what incentive do they have to manipulate their accounts? if anything, they should be lying about spending more than they have done to appease their fans.

Well as you often say, it all depends on what that 'success' is. If it means winning the very top trophoes, i agree the Arsenal board probably don;t care about that. However, as you say success to them means maximising profits and that entails always being on the CL gravy-train and the prestige, not to mention marketingadvertising that comes with that. If they have to 'spend big' to guarentee maintaining that, ten they WILL spend wat it takes. If that meant they'd spend beyond whatever FFP limits there were then they'd do it. If they could manipulate their accounts to make it NOT look like they have exceeded whatever FFP limits are in place (and hence evade any resulltant penalties) then they WOULD do it.

2) Arsenal did do the "offshore tax" thing. But there is a high chance that they thought it was legal. Arguably it was. But furthermore, lots of of people in football were doing this (according to the secret footballer, and also it is well documented by other sources). That obviously doesnt make it right, but it didnt give them a big comparative advantage (depending on the source, it seems like arsenal "evaded" around £10m: hardly a big advantage). Opinions on tax evasion of this manner (where everything is declared) comes down to peoples political views. Rich people tend to be right wing, and so i wouldnt be surprised if they genuinely beleived that what they did was right. if so, i wouldnt blame them.

First of all, why do you assume there is a 'high chance they thought it was legal' lol? Is this your pro-Arsenal/Wenger bias again? A multimilion pound corporation did this for years, before it was only revealed via details from Ray Parlour's messy divorce, and you think 'they thought it was legal'?? I'm now convinced you work for or very close to Arsenal as the constant statements you make which always seem to amount to Arsenal = Good, City/Chelski = Bad.

Secondly i love the fact tat you claim 'evading £10m is hardly a big advantage'! Do you remember the transfer feees that were being banded around in te pre-Abramocic era or te typical wage bills?? 10m is NOT to be sniffed at, so i would say Arsenal doing this was very much to increase their financial advantage compared to theor competitors, plus it flies in gthe face of the PR bunkum (which you constantly try to perpetuate here) that they would never muck in and 'fight dirty' like those other 'naughty bad clubs.'
Hilarious!

 

[Neymar]

Who/what were your 'various sources' when compiling this wage figures? I straight away look at Podolski's wage figure an immediately smell a biased rat: it was widely reported at the time when he joined that they had agreed wages of £100,000 for him, whilst Giroud (signed in the same window) was getting a much lower figure, about 50/60K per week. It was this figure for Podolski that led i believe to the Walcott contrcat situation back then as i think he felt 'well if he's worth that mich, then i should get a similar package'. Bingo, Walcott signed around 2013 for a package of around £100,000.

Regardless, i find it astounding that you can take such time to compile such data/information: do you work in a sports financials role somewhere lol?
Also, are you S. Arshad??

when i compiled those figures, i distinctly remember trying to be as accurate as possible. looking at it again, its worth noting that koscielny and mertesacker have received new deals too i think. Regardless, i dont see how arsenal paid less than chelsea in terms of basic salary. adds ons and bonuses are likely to further increase the gap between the salaries too.

and i work for arsenal's pr team obviously

 

[Neymar]

Well as you often say, it all depends on what that 'success' is. If it means winning the very top trophoes, i agree the Arsenal board probably don;t care about that. However, as you say success to them means maximising profits and that entails always being on the CL gravy-train and the prestige, not to mention marketingadvertising that comes with that. If they have to 'spend big' to guarentee maintaining that, ten they WILL spend wat it takes. If that meant they'd spend beyond whatever FFP limits there were then they'd do it. If they could manipulate their accounts to make it NOT look like they have exceeded whatever FFP limits are in place (and hence evade any resulltant penalties) then they WOULD do it.

The point of maintaining a certain "status" to generate other revenue sources, ie. sponsorship is a good one. and very interesting. its probably too complex/nuances for us to really debate it. however what i will say on the matter is this. the very elite clubs (ie. the ones with the most glamour, and biggest sponsorship deals) are pretty much all loss makers. this is directly a result of the fact that they are chasing trophies, and not money. in short, money is the price to pay for trophies. this leads me to think that for a club the size of arsenal, it is probably not possible for them to be in profit (let alone maximise profits), if they want to consistently challenge the very top of elite european football. i suspect the position they are in now (being the ~4th best team </4th biggest spenders> in england) is a sweet spot for them. And if one more oligarch was to enter the league, i think it could send the arsenal board and financial model into turmoil.

First of all, why do you assume there is a 'high chance they thought it was legal' lol? Is this your pro-Arsenal/Wenger bias again? A multimilion pound corporation did this for years, before it was only revealed via details from Ray Parlour's messy divorce, and you think 'they thought it was legal'?? I'm now convinced you work for or very close to Arsenal as the constant statements you make which always seem to amount to Arsenal = Good, City/Chelski = Bad.

ignoring the tax debate for the meantime, im definitely not in the "Arsenal = Good, City/Chelski = Bad" boat. I actually happen to think that the likes of mansour and abramovic have been great for english football, from a fans perspective. these guys have subsidised watching football for their fans. and that is to be applauded. furthermore, i think abramovic may be the single most responsible person for the incredible rise that the epl has seen over the past decade or so. in contrast, clubs like arsenal are in some sense "leeches", who are financially benefitting from what the likes of city and chelsea have put in to the epl brand.

however, i disagree with the general consensus in english football that wenger is a "bad manager" or "lost his way" etc etc. i think the man is a genius. and i can see that a lot of people have misinterpretted this as me being a arsenal fan. simply not the case.

Secondly i love the fact tat you claim 'evading £10m is hardly a big advantage'! Do you remember the transfer feees that were being banded around in te pre-Abramocic era or te typical wage bills?? 10m is NOT to be sniffed at, so i would say Arsenal doing this was very much to increase their financial advantage compared to theor competitors, plus it flies in gthe face of the PR bunkum (which you constantly try to perpetuate here) that they would never muck in and 'fight dirty' like those other 'naughty bad clubs.'
Hilarious!

yeah actually i agree with this. £10m would have potentially given arsenal a sizeable sporting advantage. espeically when considering how long this could have gone on for. however, i still maintain that i think a lot of other clubs were doing this: in which case, it would not have given them a comparative advantage.

i dont know where you got the arsenal wont "fight dirty like those other 'naughty bad clubs." line from though.

 

[Jordinho]

and i work for arsenal's pr team obviously

Who else would spend this much time defending them? Especially on a Tottenham forum!

 

[braineclipse]

Depends how you define success. From reading what you have written you seem to have defined/judged it purely through the extent of sporting success.

I'm sure the arsenal board totally disagree, but love the fact that you and many other football fans have that opinion. Over the past decade, Arsenal have spent almost nothing in terms of transfer fees almost solely because wenger has been able to pluck youngsters from across the world and groom them into superstars. This has meant that the academy has been able to supply players to the first team, and in some cases, the sales of these players has offset any incoming transfer activity. You have to understand that the arsenal board do not care about on-pitch results in and of itself. Because arsenal have been so succesful with this model, their net transfer fees has been incomparably low when compared to any of their rivals. From a financial perspective, i suspect the arsenal board believe that this model has been an almost total success.

But fans cant see this, or refuse to beleive that the board thinks along these lines. And thats probably the way their board want their fans to be.




What difference does this make? "without the added pressure"? what are you on about? all players have to come from somewhere. And Bentaleb's from Lille, Veljkovic is from Basel, and we nicked pritchard from whu. also, theres a seriously high chance that mason, townsend, bentaleb, carroll, pritchard, fredricks and veljokic (and maybe even kane, GHod forbid) will not be anywhere near good enough for us in 5 years time.

in contrast, arsenal have produced the likes of gibbs and Wheelchair, if you want london english lads. but football isnt about skin color or nationality anyway. and since you've included someone like bentaleb, i dont see how hes any different from someone like coquelin, bellerin or szczesny. Then theres the likes of alex song, fabregas or clichy. A level down theres a whole host of players who are having very good careers elsewhere; djourou, bendtner, senderos, traore, mannone, vela, jenkinson. the type of career that is looking to be a pipedream for someone like carroll now. probably someone like bentaleb will end up being this level. arsenal have been able to fill up their squad with these types of players for next to nothing. and not have to be concerned about players "fitting into their style of play" or filling home grown quotas.



you have to remember that elite english clubs will find it basically impossible to graduate a large number of players from the age of say ten into the first team. teams like barcelona, ajax etc only are able to do this because theres no laws stopping them from cherry picking the best kids from the entire country. English clubs like us can only pick up local lads. Theres only so much developing you can do. Its a wonder that clubs like us and arsenal have produced the amount of players we have.

Is that your measure for success then? So who are these "superstars" Wenger has produced pretty much without a initial transfer fee over the last decade? Fabregas... and? And you know just as well as I do that the reason he signed for the scum was largely influenced by Spanish regulations at the time. But you feel the need to defend Wenger because of the current English regulations? Such a double standard.

Bentaleb and Kane might not make it, but you feel confident about Bellerin? It's interesting that the latest players you've mentioned were coquelin, bellerin and szczesny. Surely you're not including those in your superstars description?

I have no idea where your skin colour comment stemmed from? WTF?

 

[dawaxman]

Who else would spend this much time defending them? Especially on a Tottenham forum!

I really wish people would stop encouraging him, and he'd just do one back to a scum forum

 

[El Guepardo]

Giroud's recent form for them is up there with the best at the moment. He is their Kane at the moment, keeps scoring the important goals for them.

 

[Yiddo]

Giroud has always been a fantastic striker and he is one of there most important players.

 

[El Guepardo]

Giroud has always been a fantastic striker and he is one of there most important players.

Yes, he goes through purple patches though. If you watch the way that he finishes, his technique, then you know that he's a born goal scorer. So just consistency missing.

 

[Gazza Dazzla]

Fantastic is a bit of a stretch, he is a very good player though, but a title challenging/champs league club needs better than that, look at aguero, Costa, RVP (before this season), Rooney, Kane you need that top class player and unfortunately for the Arse Giroud is on the next rung down.

 

[Mumorn]

He misses as many sitters as he scores. I don't think he'd get into Chelsea, Man Citys, Man Utds or Liverpools team for example.

 

[Gazza Dazzla]

Agreed mumorn, doesnt make him a poor player or anything just not the outstanding one you need. He wouldn't be first choice at any of those clubs.

 

[El Guepardo]

He misses as many sitters as he scores. I don't think he'd get into Chelsea, Man Citys, Man Utds or Liverpools team for example.

Not sure about that. I'd rate him at least on a par with Dzeko & Dzeko gets in the City team. Plus, I think Giroud could play for Man U, after all they seem to be stuttering with striker choices this season. If Giroud had that consistency, I think he'd have a chance of getting in the other teams, after all he's not had the best of seasons and still isn't that far off the top goal scorers.

 

[Mumorn]

I think Dzeko is miles ahead of Giroud. I'd also Bony over him.

 

[El Guepardo]

I think Dzeko is miles ahead of Giroud. I'd also Bony over him.

I would have Bony too, I don't see what relevance he has though as I haven't said that Giroud is better than Bony?

What makes you say that Dzeko is better than Giroud?

 

[El Guepardo]

I've just looked & Giroud has scored 13 goals in 14 Premier League starts this season.

 

[Mumorn]

I've just looked & Giroud has scored 13 goals in 14 Premier League starts this season.

with who's supplying him, i'd be quite disappointed in any striker if they didnt have a strike rate like that at arsenal.