If you were to look at the audited accounts on Arsenal.com you would see that Arsenal have a wage bill of £135million divided amongst over 500 full time employees.There is no mention of the total cost of players wages only.If Arsenal don't show the cost of players wages in their accounts I would love to know how some American sports website knows the cost of players wages. Arsenal also employ 800 temporary staff on matchdays
Buy success? Using money we earn from our club is not buying success. This is money WE GENERATE ourselves.
And as Bonstar just said, by your own logic, you just bought success too, since your players 1) don't play for free, 2) your 2 best players were both bought for big amounts of money. Unless I missed out on something and you paid 0 for SAS and don't pay them any wages.
To the tune of Itchy and Scratchy: They bite They dive They dive and bite and dive. Bite, bite, bite. Dive, dive, dive.... The Sturridge and Suareeeeeeeez shoooooooooooooowwwww. Unrelated to the topic in every way but it's what I think whenever I watch Liverpool. That, or "Brendon Rodgers has a portrait of himself in his own hallway"! I can't get beyond either issue to appreciate them as a football club.
Modern day equivalent of Tom and Jerry. That moving pictures programme your grandchildren loved! I'm not sure if that's been done before or if I came up with it. I was certainly shouting it last night but had consumed a lot of alcohol...Also, me shouting things loudly when drunk does not necessarily mean I came up with said ramblings.
I always wondered about the name, it's like a gift to anyone you have a row with on here? - PRick by name.....etc
I'm sort of struggling to understand this discussion, because it seems obvious to me that although a team's wage bill is a good indicator of a team's performance, it is more of a trailing indicator than a leading one. In other words, if a club sign the best players, or even if they have some young players come good, and they have success, that club will then pay higher wages. In Arsenal's case even the top 4 is success, because it means that at least some of the Arsenal players are capable of playing for Chelsea and City and being poached. As we have seen to our cost even any top 4 finish will attract attention for that team's stars, and having even 2 or more years on a contract is no protection. But even if the wage bill accurately reflects the number and quality of the top class players you have been able to produce and attract, any attempt to raise it in any other way (other than signing or developing players), doesn't make any sense. Talking about it as if raising it is some kind of objective, or saying that if Arsenal paid their existing players more or less that it would somehow influence their performance is I think obviously wrong. I don't think either that Everton or Liverpool doing well on a lower wage bill necessarily means that they are doing "Better" than Arsenal. It just means that (on the whole) they have developed better players instead of buying them. This supports the theory that wages are a trailing indicator. In future years it is likely Liverpool and Everton will have to pay those players more or lose them. This would actually support Wenger's point that the only way that Arsenal can compete with Chelsea and City is by an aggressive youth program that finds new stars and gets good performances out of them while the club can still afford them. I realize in a fan banter zone any perceived success is fair game for a dig at the other teams, but I am a bit worried that not everybody appreciates that this is not a serious issue.
I never believe these reports in their entirety, I know for a fact that back in 1997 (pre Russian) Chelsea were paying Gullit and Vialli £100k a week and paid them both a £1m signing on fee, both net (after tax), this never appeared in any company accounts and avoided the papers but would have been jaw dropping numbers 17 years ago.
This whole article immediately falls into the crock of **** category by virtue of the fact that Chelsea have spent a billion pound on their squad. Liverpool haven't done it on the cheap either, they are up there just behind Chelsea, City and Utd on transfer spending since the PL began. Whereas Arsenal have spent less than those four as well as Villa, Spuds, Sunderland, Newcastle and even Fulham. http://www.transferleague.co.uk/league-tables/transfer-league-table-1992-to-today.html
