We only spend more in wages with the players that are in the first team, because of our wage strategy paying players in the first team squad the same, regardless of their market value. That has been accepted as a mistake. None of the players mentioned were lured to Arsenal by "High Wages". Yes Arsenal pay high wages, but the reality is that paying those high wages, has not helped us. In this case you have shown correlation, but not cause.
Agree with you completely, that is the point I was making, we have paid certain players too much and certain players have not been paid well enough, including potential new signings who may not have been signed due to our inflexibility with wages. Had we been distributing wages in the correct manner over the last 5 years then we would be in a lot better a position than we are now, even to this day when we are entering a supposed era of financial power we may struggle to bring in our targets due to being unable to shift high earners from the squad who take up a valuable place in our 25 man squad list.
