Is it fair to say that this article sums up you Arsenal fans feelings on this: http://hereisthecity.com/2012/07/24/are-the-arsenal-board-finally-learning-their-lesson/ ?
Was reading it earlier and I have to say, even as a Spurs fan, it's good to see Arsenal finally showing a bit of sense. Modric has been holding us to ransom all summer but seems to forget he still has 4 years remaining on his contract. We have little reason to therefore accept any bid that we believe is below our valuation. If Arsenal had signed Van Persie up to a new contract quicker, you wouldn't find yourselves in this situation this summer. Koscielny being signed up is a clear sign of progress and I have to say I think he's one of the better defenders in the league
It's a load of rubbish about Kolo Toure he was not in the last year of his contract and we go a good fee for him.Arsenal certainly weren't naive about Flamini either.There are some good points in that blog but some rubbish ones aswell
Hi Gio. The thing is, we can offer RVP (and others) a new contract, but cannot force him/them to sign it. Everyone goes on as if we have just let these contracts run down without trying to extend them, when I am sure the truth is very different. Even Arsene must be credited with having a little sense. What terms we should offer these players in order to get them to sign is another matter, but everyone talking as though no attempts have been made is just plain wrong. The trouble is, it has been said so often now, that too many people are just taking it for granted. Kos's signing is great news. Peace.
The flamini situation was not the boards fault, every arsenal fan was quite happy for him to leave the club with one year left on his contract, if we had got a bid for a couple of million he would have been sold, but no one wanted him. If the board had given him a new contract with 18 months left there would have been an outcry. He got into the team because diaby got injured and he played well, why didn't he play that well for the previous 3 years? RVP is similar, a lot of people thought it was a mistake and a waste of money giving him the contract he is currently on, as he was so injury prone, and I know quite a few fans that wanted us to get rid of him. As for the nasri situation, well you can't force people to sign a contract, IMO that was very deceitful of him and his agent, and the deal with city was agreed long before the end of the season. That's why we got so much money for him, as the club could have reported city for tapping him up. It appears the board are dammed if they do and dammed if they don't, if they go giving every player a long term deal we end up with a situation like bentner, we can't get rid because of him contract. If bentner had turned out to be a great player people would have been saying it was good business by the board, but because he flopped people are asking why the hell we gave him such a good contract. The truth is we can't match, nor do I want us to match wages that the likes of city pay, and we also can't force players to sign contracts, the board is not all at fault here, and people have short memories.
You could draw comparisons between flamini and denilson, they were both regarded as poor players that the club needed to get rid of. Now imagine if the board announced today that denilson had been given a 5 year deal of 70k a week, how would you all feel? I'm guessing there would probably be riots outside the stadium lol. Well people felt the same way about flamini back then as they do about denilson today. So people who criticise the board about flamini have very selective memories.
Also, Flamini has a history of running down his contract. He did it at Marseille and also did the same thing at Milan, although they re-signed him straight after for some reason.
In regards to that point, would Flamini not have been on a fairly low wage at that point anyway? Signing for security makes sense, I'd be happy if we added a year or two to Bentley's just to keep the asset worth more.
Im not so sure about this, if bentley is not going to play, would you rather not just get him of the books, for example if he was on 40k a week that would be almost 3 million a year, for basically doing nothing. Even if you did get 4 or 5 million for him a year later, by the time you subtracted his wages from that you probably would not make any real money on him. Plus clubs like arsenal and spurs can't afford to have players on the wage bill and not being used, as it means that we struggle to add to the squad. It's not so much transfer fees but about wage bills. Our wage bill is roughly 50% of our turnover, that is regarded as a healthy figure, if you have 4 or 5 players just collecting wages and not being good enough then it adds up to a lot of dross, that blocks the clubs ability to bring in new players.
is this guy rated at arsenal now? Or do you guys still want a commanding centre back? Personally i still feel arsenal need a big fcker to partner vermalen at the back.
Yup me too. I like Koscielney alot but I think Vermalen is better. ..and I think it would be unwise to play both together - both small 'ballplaying' defenders. The last two Seasons have been disastrous in terms of goals conceeded and Koscielny is part of the reason for that, any Arsenal who denies that is just not looking at things subjectively.
Kos has done a better job of marking big strikers than our big fckers. Djourou is not a small man, nor is Metersacker, but Kos does a better job than them right now. He also has the speed and technique to handle a Drogba type. Although he gives up a bit of height in the air, he can usually do enough to put them off. As they say, it is not the size of the dog in the fight, it is the size of the fight in the dog.
