marv3llous wrote:

y va marquer wrote:

An assumption that if you offer immaculate personal terms and pay over a "reasonable" transfer fee you can buy players like Griezmann, Zlatan and Higuain.

Personally feel that its not like the club is in the dark over the terms that are needed to get these players. These 3 or any other players who we felt would have improved us. The point is, we never go public with our interest, so its easy for us in here to say "we didnt go for them" and the point is that since we dont actually know how much is exactly needed to make these players move, we cant blame the club for not paying it.

Been saying it many times over this window - out of all the players that didnt move to the "elite" clubs in this window, i probably wouldnt have any here for the prices they ended up going for, because basically none of them would have improved our situation by large enough margin to be able to mount a proper title push. So we have just ended up wasting our money. That's what Liverpool and Spurs do. We laugh at them for this. We need to be smart with our money. If the quality is not there, better save it.

Great post and I agree 1000%.

Clubs at our level. I.E. Clubs trying to break the Chelsea and Man City hegemony.

Spurs yearly, Liverpool yearly, United these last 3 years do exactly what people wished we did.

Take gambles and over pay.

We laugh at them for this. Like super LOLs every single year.

Agree that the club are succinctly aware who is available, who isn't and for how much. Seeing as we don't leak every story to the press, the fans assume the club sat on their arse.

marv3llous wrote:

That's what Liverpool and Spurs do. We laugh at them for this. We need to be smart with our money. If the quality is not there, better save it.

Thats how they ended up with the likes of Suarez, Bale, Modric, etc Their problems aren't generally their purchases but retention of the ones who come good. I wouldn't have objected to us taking a £32m punt on Benteke if Bemzema, etc weren't available. Maybe it doesn't work out but its sure as hell better than not even trying.

Tbf their purchases are shocking as well. The amount of dross both clubs have spent in the past, particularly with the Suarez and Bale money, is embarrassing.

But we're a better run club with a better scouting network and infrastructure in place so I don't see why we need to worry about signing new players. Sure we might sign a few duds for £20m but that's par for the course these days.

Thats what I'm saying, you can't win a game you wont play.

What exactly are we saving it for Mav? Do you think the kinds of players we need are going to be any cheaper in the next transfer window or the one after?

Wenger has dug us this hole and he's clearly not capable of dragging us out of it.

Dare I mention the signing of Welbeck and the fact that within months there was a backlash about the money that we spent on him?
Forget about from where he came because objectively that is not relevant.

If you go down the road of £20m here and there you'll probably end up with more Welbeck's and Chambers than anyone who's really going to turn our fortunes around.

Quite simply we're going to have to spend Sterling amounts on Sterling types to compete with City and Chelsea.

Quality is there. £50-60 mill would have gotten us a class wide forward. Guaranteed.

y va marquer wrote:

Dare I mention the signing of Welbeck and the fact that within months there was a backlash about the money that we spent on him?
Forget about from where he came because objectively that is not relevant.

If you go down the road of £20m here and there you'll probably end up with more Welbeck's and Chambers than anyone who's really going to turn our fortunes around.

Quite simply we're going to have to spend Sterling amounts on Sterling types to compete with City and Chelsea.

But that's the thing we are ignoring the middle of the market. Welbeck cost half what a decent player cost because he's rubbish.

Wenger wot risk a large sum. He wants gauranteed quality for £35m but those deals are almost non-existant now. It's £60m for a top player this summer.

Qwiss! wrote:

marv3llous wrote:

That's what Liverpool and Spurs do. We laugh at them for this. We need to be smart with our money. If the quality is not there, better save it.

Thats how they ended up with the likes of Suarez, Bale, Modric, etc Their problems aren't generally their purchases but retention of the ones who come good. I wouldn't have objected to us taking a £32m punt on Benteke if Bemzema, etc weren't available. Maybe it doesn't work out but its sure as hell better than not even trying.

But why buy a Benteke, if you already have Giroud who is 1:1 carbon copy of him in terms of output? Only one of them can play at once.

Kel Varnsen wrote:

Quality is there. £50-60 mill would have gotten us a class wide forward. Guaranteed.

Really? Which one of the big teams sells their star players for money? Every notable upgrade on Giroud, costing this much, is already at a top club.

Götze who is at best 4th choice out wide, Costa before he signed for Bayern, Sterling before he signed for City, maybe Reus, Griezmann and then there is Draxler and Pedro.

...but I know. If they were available, Wenger would have signed them. (This is called begging the question)

Again ... big clubs do not sell their players for money. Its impossible for us to go in and outright buy a player from Bayern, Barca, Real, PSG or City. They only sell them, in case they dont want them anymore. If that was the case, you would see transfers like City trying to buy someone off Bayern for £100m. They have the money. They need the players. But it doesnt work like that. Instead, they also have to rely on having to bottomfeed on smaller fishes. So they cherry pick the best ones and get Otamendi from Valencia, De Bruyne from Wolfsburg and Sterling from Liverpool. All for very big fees, fees which we would be able to replicate, but the success will always swing it their way.

Second ... players like Sterling or Pedro or Costa are not options for us, if those same big clubs come calling. We are not in consideration, since we do not match their glamour, their success or their wages. Of course, we could match their wages, but the first two aspects will still swing it their way.

Third ... as i already said - every big club in the world knows an outlay it would take to get a top, top player to join their side. If someone from a slightly smaller club (Reus, Griezmann etc) didnt move, its for a good reason. That reason being, that the outlay is way too big to justify the risk. Or the fact that a player doesnt actually want to move, as moving from clubs like Atletico or Dortmund to Arsenal for example is a lateral move and they may be angling for a bigger move instead, next summer.

That's the whole reason why Wenger is so secretive and so stingy with the money. He knows that as soon as there is a world class player who is semi-available, he will get gazumped by one of the big boys. He needs to calculate, not panic, keep getting the results and add whatever quality he can. If we starts blowing our transfer budget on average players, he will never have any money to do the big deals, should they become available. It worked the last two windows with Özil and Alexis, didnt quite work this well this summer, although Cech is pretty much in the same category in terms of quality and impact on the team. People are only hysterical, because unlike last 2 windows, we ended up with money left over.

Like I said, begging the question. Look it up.

marv3llous wrote:

Second ... players like Sterling or Pedro or Costa are not options for us, if those same big clubs come calling.

Well Pedro was looking for a club all summer so if we acted quicker he could have been had.

Qwiss! wrote:

marv3llous wrote:

Second ... players like Sterling or Pedro or Costa are not options for us, if those same big clubs come calling.

Well Pedro was looking for a club all summer so if we acted quicker he could have been had.

Maybe, but he suddenly became FOTM again, only because he signed for Chelsea. If you go back 6 months and look up our own history, then you would only find Dules seriously advocating him. Most of us were never sold on him coming here and having a meaningful impact. Most of us basically rated Alexis, Theo and Ox to start over him. But hey, people always want what they cant have. Now that he's at Chelsea, its just a perfect stick to beat Wenger and the club with.

Qwiss! wrote:

marv3llous wrote:

Second ... players like Sterling or Pedro or Costa are not options for us, if those same big clubs come calling.

Well Pedro was looking for a club all summer so if we acted quicker he could have been had.

I hate this defeatist attitude. It is also inconsistent with our Sanchez and Ozil acquisitions. If we had bid early this summer, we could have taken Vidal and Pedro for less than £60m. Two experienced winners who would've walked into our starting lineup. The price excuse is based on the dealings of United and City, who are living in a parralel universe. Everybody else, Chelsea included, is paying appropriate prices for talent. For example Barca bought Vidal and Turan for a combined £34m. Ineptitude!

I'd concede blurring that up a bit, and admitting that in the case of any individual deal it's difficult to know if we could have been in on it or not—every player has personal preferences after all.

However there's no way to accept that there were no players available who could have improved our front three. That's blatantly bullshit.

And in general, Arsenal should be an attractive destination for a lot of players even at top clubs.

Didn't want Pedro then and don't want him now. I'm also one of the dwindling number of fans who actually rates Walcott.

It's still negligent to have not completed a deal for at least one signing in the forward positions.

We've mishandled Theo the same way we've mishandled so many things.