I think its fascinating that you only ever want to talk about transfer fees, never ever mention of the massive difference in wage bills between the 2 clubs so lets say over the last 9 seasons Tottenham have spent your figure of £75m more than Arsenal how much more have you spent in wages over the same period? Being conservative we will say £40m per season (I believe it was over £50M last season) so thats £360M take off the £75M transfer fees and your total spend is £285M more, and in that time you have won how many more actual trophies? and on average you have got 9 more points or 3 wins more per season doesnt seem that great value to me. But I am sure you will correct me!
Gladly. We play in the champions league, so you have to pay the market rate for wages, otherwise you can't retain the calibre of players needed. For clubs like Spurs who don't play CL football, the alternative is to pay huge amounts in transfer fees to try and attract players to their club in an attempt to gain CL football, hence their massive spending over the years. In fact, as far a wages and transfer fees go for Arsenal, you will find that they are significantly less than the other Champions League clubs in England. Man City, Chelsea, Man Utd and Liverpool have spent vast amounts more. Even given the extra money we pay in wages compared to Spurs, which is congruent with our status compared to theirs, our participation in the CL pays for that wage increase, so we have earned the right to do that.
Well I am pleased that you didn't actually correct me, I cant argue with the fact that your excellent record in qualifying for the champions league allows you to pay higher wages and that compared to the other sides who regularly compete for champions league your total spend is significantly smaller, but as you didn't correct the figures you have also agreed with me that you have spent close to £300m more than Tottenham over the said period and in that time actual silverware equals 1 piece each. No one can deny that your club is brilliantly run and that you can afford to pay the wages that you do (unlike some), but surely even you cannot deny that over the last 9 years Spurs have been more consistent in the league than they were previously and with there lower income streams they are punching at about their weight, (the same as you are). I do realise that this thread is something of a joke and that there are people who post here (on the site that is) who deserve all the crap that gets flung at them so I have no desire to be tarred with the same brush and will leave it there!
Nobody knows for sure how much any clubs wage bill is for players If you look on Arsenal.com you will see Arsenal's last audited accounts.It shows a wage bill of £134 million divided between 500 fulltime and 800 part time employees.It makes no mention of the wage bill for players.
As Cym has pointed out, Arsenal do not release the salaries for their players, but publish an overall wage bill for the club which includes all of it's employees. So being a bigger club in terms of stadium, supporters, profile, commercial operations, status in the Champions League and overseas it stands that we'd have more employees and a larger wage bill. But, if you were to actually break it down to individual players wages, then I don't think there would be a huge difference. We don't pay our top players anywhere near the sums that Utd, City and Chelsea do. Also we have had a very strict wage ceiling and we have got rid of a number of well paid squad players in the last couple of seasons too, so I am correcting your £300m figure as it's likely not to be anywhere near that. What does stand as fact though is that since Levy took over at Spurs, they have spent £180m more on the squad - and even taking into account Levy's much lauded 'net' spend, they have still spent £95m more than Arsenal and achieved significantly less.
http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/may/01/premier-league-accounts-club-by-club-david-conn This article shows the respective wage bills of the 2 clubs when they last published their accounts and they are both for total wage bills Arsenal £154M and Tottenham 96M, do you really think that the majority of the £58M difference is due to back room staff? If so you really are having a laugh so I will stick with the £300M figure and would suggest that you are not getting any better value for money than Spurs are. You have the 4th highest wage bill even if you are paying your backroom staff twice the going rate and finishing 4th, Spurs are paying the 6th highest and coming 6th and you have one piece of silverware each.
I have tried to point this out so many times on here, so here goes one more attempt. Wage value is a "Trailing Indicator". In other words, it doesn't mean a damn thing. If you win with a small wage total, it just means you had a lot of players on the way up. Eventually their wage will have to rise (that's the trailing part) or you will lose them. When their wages do rise, the same players will not be more likely to win now that they are paid more than they did when they were paid less. Similarly, if Spurs suddenly paid all their players double, they wouldn't (obviously) be more likely to win. Now the wage bill of a team does reflect the relative financial strength of a team, and their "size" and therefore their "attractiveness" to the top players, but that is not tied directly to the wages themselves. So in other words, Spurs wages are 6th highest BECAUSE they finished sixth, they didn't finish 6th, because they had the sixth highest wages.
And as has been pointed out to you already, nobody knows the figure that Arsenal's players are paid as they don't publish players wages, therefore your £300M and your assertion that we're not getting any better value for money is simply plucked out of your own imagination. Also as has been pointed out to you, we play in the Champions League, so we earn our revenue to pay our players the going rate, which is significantly less than any other English club in the champions league. And finally as has also been pointed out to you, it's a relative measure. Spurs are 6th, so it would stand that they pay wages of a 6th placed team. We are a top four team who play in the top European competitions, so naturally we would pay better wages for better players.
One last try to see if we can get closer to the reality. We clearly had a much worse squad than you when Levy took over and we've been catching up. How were we supposed to do that without spending more money on transfers? Levy has been successful in that he has implemented a business model which allows us to outspend you on transfers despite having lower income, partly through much better control of costs. Since Levy took over we've been gradually improving both absolutely and relative to the established CL teams. It's been a two steps forward, one step back sort of ride and there have been mistakes along the way but I still await the details of the PL club chairman over the last 13 years who has improved his club more than Levy.
On the contrary, given the level of investment in your squad you have significantly underachieved. Levy is good at one thing, extracting the best possible price when he sells players and he manages to balance the books pretty well, although not as well as Arsenal, but his track record on signings and appointments is woeful.
Much better at controlling costs as apparently Arsenal pay their back room staff so well and have so many that they account for the majority of the £58M more than you that their total wage budget equates too
Are you just being thick on purpose ? You started off by saying that our players wage bill is a certain amount,all you were told is that according to the club's audited accounts the club's wage bill is divided amongst all employees.Unless you have access to the HMRC data base and are able to enlighten us further nobody knows for certain how much Arsenal pay their players
I am not thick at all actually I am a well educated English gentleman from the Garden of England, and no I accepted the fact that I do not know exactly how much you (or Tottenham for that matter) actually pay their players but I did post a link to an article written by a journalist who I expect went through the correct channels to get his information that confirmed the total wage bill for each club (and all the other premier league clubs too) I was then told that it was likely that because you are such a massive organisation that most of the difference in wage bills between these clubs would be paid to non playing staff. I have kept my comments fairly light hearted and my last comment was actually distinctly tongue in cheek, but it seems that you have suffered a massive sense of humour failure which appears to be a common failing amongst gooners both here and amongst the myriad of them that haunt my life, I guess I shouldn't have expected anything else
I'm still not sure quite what point you're trying to make here, unless it's to demonstrate the chip on your shoulder that you have with regard to Gooners ? If you have a problem us and our board, then being the well educated chap you are, I'm certain you'll understand what the simple solution for you is.
simple really. your financial model is : step 1 train your own players or buy from another team cheaply, and then when they are good you sell them for a massive profit. step 2 spend all the money received on less talented players. step 3 repeat process till you have no more players to sell or the players you have no-one wants. step 4 then you realise that what players you have left are worth less than the money you spent on them. step 5 then sack the manager.
paragraphs would help induce people to actually read all this. 200 odd words and ONE full stop. Break it up a bit next time .
So Angel Di Maria has said it hurts to be linked to Tottenham. Does this add further proof that spurs are a small club and will remain that way for many years.
