I can't believe how few people comment on this. Reading through our financial report, it's really difficult to believe our wage outlay on this mediocre squad is over £120m annually. Spurs have assembled what most consider a better, deeper squad at near half that wage bill so we must be getting something horribly wrong. A lot of misguided people were angry that Nasri had the cheek to ask for similar terms with Cesc on around £100,000 a week but the bigger scandal is what we're paying squad players and inexperienced (or plain 5hite) youngsters. I'm aware Almunia is on around £60,000 a week. For goodness sake, wastes of space like Denilson, Bendtner and Diaby all earn more than Modric with wages in excess of £50,000 weekly. The high wages of many of these expendable players makes it difficult to move them on when no other clubs can match their wage demands. It also achieves the opposite of the intended effect of motivating the players who haven't earnt the huge paydays. The elite players in the squad are also hit hard in cases where due to the high expenditure on "lesser" players, they don't quite command the fees they'd get from other clubs. There is always upward pressure on wages and if we miss out on Champions league footy next season, it could be hard to cope with our wage structure particularly when it could be on the rise with renegotiated contracts. Intended top class arrivals would also look to milk us dry to compensate for playing at a club without Champions league football. It's a real slippery slope which we were irresponsible to get ourselves into. Wenger and the board do have much to answer for IMO.
I disagree that Spurs have a better squad of players than we do..... If they do how comes we have consistently finished above them every year? I also believe our 1st 11 is better than theirs. Now onto the subject of wages, until a couple of seasons ago, we had a team who was challenging for the Premiership, we had a team that always qualified for the champions league, you do not achieve this feat with mediocre players. I also think the wage bill is half the story, we get players like Denilson and Diaby (who I know is not everyone's cup of tea), get them on the cheap take a chance on them and pay them the going rate...... It appears the club cannot win.... We want to be a big player and we are not prepared to pay the big transfer fees to bring these players in, even if we were we are not prepared to pay them telephone number wages, we have to be prepared to "grow" our players and pay them competitively. If you look at the cost of assembling our players vs what they have delivered, you will find we are still in profit. I think the moaning is getting a bit ridiculous now..... Liverpool paid 30mill for Caroll, Chelsea 50mill for Torres.... and yet we complain about how much we are paying our players....
We do not have better players than Spurs. Both sides were already close last season. The loss of Cesc and Nasri has definitely tipped the balance in their favour and they've achieved this with a much smaller wage bill. Our players are MASSIVELY overpaid. A reason we can't get rid of deadwood who other clubs won't buy cos they can't offer our wages.
Ok lets do a first team comparison: Arsenal Szczesny Gibbs Vermaelen Mertesacker Sagna Arteta Wilshere Song Gervinho RVP Walcott Spurs Friedel Assou-Ekotto King Kaboul Corluka Bale Parker Modric Van der Vaart Adebayor Lennon Mmmmm interesting. Ok ill go for Friedel in goal as he is more experienced, but Cheesy will be better when he gets older. On form and injury free, King is better than Vermaelen and Kabul is better than the oil tanker Mertz, but that could change. Sanga is better than Corluka and Assou-Ekotto and Gibbs are around level, both make mistakes. VDV, Modric and Parker are all better individually than our 3. Lennon and Walcott are equal. Gervinho and Defoe are around the same and RVP is better than Ade. I would give Spurs first team squad the edge but we play better as a unit.
OMOGooner - you do the age old thing of going OTT to make your point .. which is still wrong anyway. Nobody says Carroll was worth £35m. Nobody says Torres was worth £50m. The FACT is we have average to mediocre players on very high wages. We don't have any superstars yet our wage bill is fourth or fifth highest in the league. This is a joke.
I don't agree that Spurs have got a better squad - and the fact is that they are finding it difficult to hold onto their best players, who are being offered bigger wages elsewhere. The ones that aren't on mega wages, I'm not sure would be an improvement or even match what we already have. There is of course an incremental effect with wages, when a club is more and more successful. Arsenal pay the going rate for a Champions league player, Spurs do not. Also, we seem to have a dichotomy between those who slate Wenger and the board for not buying Mata and then slate Wenger and the board for paying high wages. How much do you think he is on at Chelsea? I would imagine it is a lot more than we would have been offering.
people should back their arguments with proper journal link - they can't randomly name Deloitte or BBC. Arsene is not that stupid - he is the only top club manager who manages within his means.
You're being disingenious with your elusive, strawman posts which ignore the crux of the argument. We don't exactly have players on £150,000 - £250,000 a week contracts like the top 3 clubs, yet we have a huge wage bill of £124m (it's on our website before another silly demand for a link). You do the maths. It's obvious we have a shed-load of mediocre/squad players on huge wages.
Mata was on 120k a week at valencia, that's the reason we never signed him, it really annoys me when I see people in other threads asking why the hell did we not get mata, its simple, we didn't get him because we could not afford his wages, take into effect the tax rate over here and he would probably have been losing 30 grand a week if he joined us for what our wage structure would allow. I think we have the 4th or 5th highest wage bill in the league, so I'm not sure the argument that our wage bill is scandalous really stands up, we are pretty much reaching where we should if you take that wage bill as a guide to position in the league. People say money is the king in football, so by that logic the wage bill of each club could be used as a guide to where clubs will finish, we are pretty much bang on, tho this year we will probably under achieve by that outcome measure. Another thing that I notice on threads is people claiming that we need to buy players to cover injuries, particularly in central defence, this again is going to push up the wage bill and lead to us having lots of players in the one position, essentially stockpiling players. If wenger had bought players when everyone was suggesting, we would have about 8 or 9 centre half's, again this is going to push up the wage bill, and don't forget it not that easy to get rid of some players, particularly ones that are not playing as their value goes down. Therefore it is a catch 22 satiation, people think we have a large wage bill but keep wanting wenger to buy more players, this is inevitably going to lead to increasing the wage bill.
you obviously overpay, look at arsenal v swansea, you won with a fluke goal with your players on massive wages
