Ozil contract talks: Page 112 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Ozil contract talks

Ricky1985

jones wrote:
That's very simplistic imo Ricky. There are countless examples where a new manager takes a team permanently to a higher plateau.

Loads of examples that you probably will dismiss but what about Simeone? Atletico were a moody midtable side until 2011 when Simeone took over, who got a team full of journeymen and a couple of class players to beat the two biggest clubs in the world to a league title

Simeone is one of the rare guys that can get his squad pulling in the same direction and keep that going for a prolonged period of time.

Although, two things I would say is that Atletico as a club are very serious and well run. They scout better than almost anyone and invest serious sums and as a result have always had and currently have very good players. Absolutely fantastic players, in fact.

Also Simeone's long history with Atletico gives him an edge in terms of respect and authority which isn't really transferable to the cases of nearly all other managers, and even with that it seems he's struggling with each passing season to get the same level as the season before. To the point where I can't really envisage him being there 2 years from now.

I am putting it a touch more simplistcally than even I believe it to be, but people talk so much about tactics and formations, as if managers are idiots or geniuses, but no factor is even close to as important as having quality footballers that can give anyone a match anyone on the pitch and have motivation and maturity in the dressing room.

Klaus

Ricky1985 wrote:
Players are everything.

A good manager can build a good team, help them all pull in the same direction, tweak a few things tactically, but ultimately, in my opinion, everything that matters comes down the quality of the players you have both on the pitch and in the changing room.

How do Leicester fit into this? Even as an exception to a rule they still need to be accounted for.

I think you touch an important point though: players aren't just shaped by managers, but by circumstances. By teammates, club environment and opportunity. The manager is one part, the level of the players at the time you sign them another one. There are other factors to consider too.

Ricky1985

Tony Montana wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:
It's just a decade of one mistake after another, and failing to accurately predict the ways in which football was going to develop and change. It's hard to blame Wenger too much because I have no doubt all of the responsibility has fallen on him and it has evidently been too much.

Too whom much is given, much is required.

It's true, and whilst I have some sympathy for the man, I really think the past 10 years have shown that, as clever as old Arsene no doubt is, he lacks intelligence and foresight in a few important areas that have led to very costly errors in judgment being made. And with the speed at which things change and develop in football, the level of investment everywhere, each mistake and the cumulative effect of mistakes on mistakes, have left us constantly playing catch up.

Ricky1985

Klaus wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:
Players are everything.

A good manager can build a good team, help them all pull in the same direction, tweak a few things tactically, but ultimately, in my opinion, everything that matters comes down the quality of the players you have both on the pitch and in the changing room.

How do Leicester fit into this? Even as an exception to a rule they still need to be accounted for.

I think you touch an important point though: players aren't just shaped by managers, but by circumstances. By teammates, club environment and opportunity. The manager is one part, the level of the players at the time you sign them another one. There are other factors to consider too.

A manger in Ranieri that has that has the ability to make players want to run through brick walls for him for a limited period of time, in this case just long enough.

A group that had been together for a while, that had been through promotion, near relagtion and then glorious survival. And with good quality from back to front. Especially at the sharp end of the team and through central midfield and attack - Kante and Drinkwater are quality footballers, Vardy and Mahrez the same. And they deployed very simple tactics - protect where they're weak and let their quality tell where they have it (are there any others really!?)

Luckily for them it was a season in the Premier League where Spurs were the only other team that both had quality and were a stable and solid squad, and they were a bit young and inexperience to keep up.

We were still regularly playing Ospina, Debuchy, Gabriel, Gibbs, Chambers, Coquelin, Elneny, Arteta, Flamini, Joel Campbell, Iwobi, Chamberlain, Walcott, Welbeck and Giroud - not one of which would have gotten in that Leicester team. Every single one of their Leicester counterparts was, and in most cases still is, better than they are.

Clrnc

Ray wrote:
Our "style" of play is obviously pass and move, we're just not effective at moving or passing, but it does come off now and then.

Ricky1985 wrote:
jones wrote:
That's very simplistic imo Ricky. There are countless examples where a new manager takes a team permanently to a higher plateau.

Loads of examples that you probably will dismiss but what about Simeone? Atletico were a moody midtable side until 2011 when Simeone took over, who got a team full of journeymen and a couple of class players to beat the two biggest clubs in the world to a league title

Although, two things I would say is that Atletico as a club are very serious and well run. They scout better than almost anyone and invest serious sums and as a result have always had and currently have very good players. Absolutely fantastic players, in fact.

Atletico is absolutely not known for these things in the past before Simeone took over. In fact they are often viewed as a joke.

A great manager is the key to everything. They have gone from a selling club to a club where good players are willing to join to win things. If they were the Atletico in the past, you would have bet all these players won't be viewed so favourably no matter how good the scouts are.

Tony Montana

goon wrote:
Tony Montana wrote:
Yeah but I remember at the time you were positive that Cech, Sanchez and Ozil in 3 windows was good despite the grave concern from many posters that bringing in nobody in 2015 was the wrong decision.

No way. Here is a couple of posts from me at the time from a quick search:

goon wrote:
We've definitely had worse windows but at least he had some excuses back then, and we probably were not realistic contenders either. This time it feels like we're actually have a good chance of being very competitive in the race, but there's Wenger near the finish line with his segway ready to take us out.

goon wrote:
Wenger's ability in the transfer market has gone from being his biggest strength to his biggest weakness.

I have made points in relation to those signings in the past but it's not to be confused with an endorsement of that transfer window.

OK. Was not trying to out you.

But I remember it was the look on the bright side type vibe I got from you at the time when assessing those transfer windows as a whole.

Klaus

Ricky1985 wrote:
Klaus wrote:
How do Leicester fit into this? Even as an exception to a rule they still need to be accounted for.

I think you touch an important point though: players aren't just shaped by managers, but by circumstances. By teammates, club environment and opportunity. The manager is one part, the level of the players at the time you sign them another one. There are other factors to consider too.

A manger in Ranieri that has that has the ability to make players want to run through brick walls for him for a limited period of time, in this case just long enough.

A group that had been together for a while, that had been through promotion, near relagtion and then glorious survival. And with good quality from back to front. Especially at the sharp end of the team and through central midfield and attack - Kante and Drinkwater are quality footballers, Vardy and Mahrez the same. And they deployed very simple tactics - protect where they're weak and let their quality tell where they have it (are there any others really!?)

Luckily for them it was a season in the Premier League where Spurs were the only other team that both had quality and were a stable and solid squad, and they were a bit young and inexperience to keep up.

We were still regularly playing Ospina, Debuchy, Gabriel, Gibbs, Chambers, Coquelin, Elneny, Arteta, Flamini, Joel Campbell, Iwobi, Chamberlain, Walcott, Welbeck and Giroud - not one of which would have gotten in that Leicester team. Every single one of their Leicester counterparts was, and in most cases still is, better than they are.

I agree Ricky, and I believe I said at the time that people were underrating the Leicester players hideously while at the same time overrating ours.

My point here is simple, and it agrees with what you wrote about Wenger being scapegoated for everything that has gone wrong at Arsenal: while clearly being a good to very good team, on quality alone Leicester weren't quite on the level of other top teams, not then and not now. They were more like an electrified Everton. Ranieri was a big part of it. The players they did assemble, and how they functioned together as a group, was a part of it. The investments Leicester made in other areas was a huge part of it.

I don't think players are everything. The interesting thing about team sports in general, and the thing that I personally think makes football in particular worth watching, is how the team can be greater than the sum of its parts. In order to create a great team you need to work on multiple levels though. You can't afford to be lured into thinking that there's a magic fix, such as a renowned manager or a bag of gold in the transfer window. Those things help, but if that was all it took then clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona wouldn't be locked into these boom-bust patterns where, every other decade, the clubs are at the brink of ruin because they've mismanaged resources and failed to handle generational shifts. There's a nasty focus on individual talent in modern football, symbolised each year by the pointless and gratuitous brand award show that the ballon d'Or has become, and I really think it misses the point.

I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that if we only had a better manager we wouldn't experience this shower of shit at Arsenal, but look at the state of the club for a minute. We are an absolute country mile behind Manchester City and Chelsea, and I'm not talking about the size of their cheque books. I'm talking about how they've built their clubs into well-tended organisations that enhance all facets of teambuilding. Arsenal by contrast is a financially responsible and economically well-managed club, but I believe - and I really mean this wholeheartedly - that we're the worst run of the 6-8 top clubs in Premier League. Fortunately we seem to have taken some small steps to address this, but we're approaching a point where we're gonna need a revolution.

Ricky1985

Clrnc wrote:
Ray wrote:
Our "style" of play is obviously pass and move, we're just not effective at moving or passing, but it does come off now and then.

Ricky1985 wrote:
Although, two things I would say is that Atletico as a club are very serious and well run. They scout better than almost anyone and invest serious sums and as a result have always had and currently have very good players. Absolutely fantastic players, in fact.

Atletico is absolutely not known for these things in the past before Simeone took over. In fact they are often viewed as a joke.

A great manager is the key to everything. They have gone from a selling club to a club where good players are willing to join to win things. If they were the Atletico in the past, you would have bet all these players won't be viewed so favourably no matter how good the scouts are.

"A great manager is the key to everything"...

A great manager can do what he wants but if he doesn't have people running the club that are equally ambitious and competent then he'll do precisely fuck all.

So Atletico were a joke that didn't win things and sold all their best Players? Hmmm...

They didn't win the Europa League and Super Cup in 2010 before Simeone joined? They didn't have David de Gea, Courtois, Juanfran, Diego Godin, Felipe Luis, Koke, Simao, Reyes, Forlan, Aguero, Costa....all at the club before Simeone was there to have any influence whatsoever?

Simeone is part of a project, one person among many good people at the club. They've built a new stadium, they scout like motherfuckers all over the world, they spend good money; take a lot educated guesses on young talent and, yes, they still sell a lot of players and are, even with all that good, just a few months away from having gone 4 years without winning a trophy.

Simeone is a quality manager that has shown he is one of the rare few that can unite a squad behind him for a long period of time and make a team work. Be as good as it can be. He's smart and he understands the importance of having strong personalities in his team. I'm not tying to take away anything from him, but the idea that it's about one man - a superhero manager - in these days of billion pound football clubs, of every little advantage counting, where signing emerging talent is akin to an arms race between feuding nations, sorry to be harsh, it's laughable.

Clrnc

Ricky1985 wrote:
Clrnc wrote:
Atletico is absolutely not known for these things in the past before Simeone took over. In fact they are often viewed as a joke.

A great manager is the key to everything. They have gone from a selling club to a club where good players are willing to join to win things. If they were the Atletico in the past, you would have bet all these players won't be viewed so favourably no matter how good the scouts are.

They didn't win the Europa League and Super Cup in 2010 before Simeone joined? They didn't have David de Gea, Courtois, Juanfran, Diego Godin, Felipe Luis, Koke, Simao, Reyes, Forlan, Aguero, Costa....all at the club before Simeone was there to have any influence whatsoever?

Sevilla won the Europa League for years but have never become a bigger club than Atletico is under Simeone now.

De Gea and Courtois was on loan which shows back in those days what Atletico status were. Juanfran, Godin, Felipe Luis did not have the reputation they do now, they were pretty average in the past and moved to Atletico for peanuts. Koke was a youth product so I don't see how that has come into equation. Simao, Reyes and Forlan are really good players but nowhere near the level of players we are talking about after Simeone took over. Aguero was a really smart buy but Costa? He was destined not to make it, going out on loan to 4 clubs and impressed at none before Simeone transformed him.

Having a good manager brings the best out of the players, ultimately increasing their value and reputation in the transfer market. If we have a top manager making our team functional, Ozil and Alexis for example will be easily worth much more if they are available in the market.

Klaus

Clrnc wrote:
Having a good manager brings the best out of the players, ultimately increasing their value and reputation in the transfer market.

Do you feel that Bayern improved by appointing Guardiola, or that Real Madrid made the most out of the most expensive squad in the history of football under Mourinho?

Qwiss

Clrnc wrote:
Ricky1985 wrote:
They didn't win the Europa League and Super Cup in 2010 before Simeone joined? They didn't have David de Gea, Courtois, Juanfran, Diego Godin, Felipe Luis, Koke, Simao, Reyes, Forlan, Aguero, Costa....all at the club before Simeone was there to have any influence whatsoever?

Sevilla won the Europa League for years but have never become a bigger club than Atletico is under Simeone now.

De Gea and Courtois was on loan which shows back in those days what Atletico status were. Juanfran, Godin, Felipe Luis did not have the reputation they do now, they were pretty average in the past and moved to Atletico for peanuts. Koke was a youth product so I don't see how that has come into equation. Simao, Reyes and Forlan are really good players but nowhere near the level of players we are talking about after Simeone took over. Aguero was a really smart buy but Costa? He was destined not to make it, going out on loan to 4 clubs and impressed at none before Simeone transformed him.

Having a good manager brings the best out of the players, ultimately increasing their value and reputation in the transfer market. If we have a top manager making our team functional, Ozil and Alexis for example will be easily worth much more if they are available in the market.

Spot on. All these things tie into each other. Wenger has so much power over things here that its impossible to remove him from things like transfer spend and contract renewals.

Claudius

Great post, Clrnc.

Ricky1985

Klaus wrote:
I agree Ricky, and I believe I said at the time that people were underrating the Leicester players hideously while at the same time overrating ours.

My point here is simple, and it agrees with what you wrote about Wenger being scapegoated for everything that has gone wrong at Arsenal: while clearly being a good to very good team, on quality alone Leicester weren't quite on the level of other top teams, not then and not now. They were more like an electrified Everton. Ranieri was a big part of it. The players they did assemble, and how they functioned together as a group, was a part of it. The investments Leicester made in other areas was a huge part of it.

I don't think players are everything. The interesting thing about team sports in general, and the thing that I personally think makes football in particular worth watching, is how the team can be greater than the sum of its parts. In order to create a great team you need to work on multiple levels though. You can't afford to be lured into thinking that there's a magic fix, such as a renowned manager or a bag of gold in the transfer window. Those things help, but if that was all it took then clubs like Real Madrid and Barcelona wouldn't be locked into these boom-bust patterns where, every other decade, the clubs are at the brink of ruin because they've mismanaged resources and failed to handle generational shifts. There's a nasty focus on individual talent in modern football, symbolised each year by the pointless and gratuitous brand award show that the ballon d'Or has become, and I really think it misses the point.

I think a lot of people make the mistake of thinking that if we only had a better manager we wouldn't experience this shower of shit at Arsenal, but look at the state of the club for a minute. We are an absolute country mile behind Manchester City and Chelsea, and I'm not talking about the size of their cheque books. I'm talking about how they've built their clubs into well-tended organisations that enhance all facets of teambuilding. Arsenal by contrast is a financially responsible and economically well-managed club, but I believe - and I really mean this wholeheartedly - that we're the worst run of the 6-8 top clubs in Premier League. Fortunately we seem to have taken some small steps to address this, but we're approaching a point where we're gonna need a revolution.

I said above I'm simplifying my argument more than I even I believe to make the point. A more nuanced opinion largely matches what you've written there.

Yes, I agree, a team can be greater than the sum of its parts, football is about more than just the techncial and physical abiability of football players, it's also about the men playing it. Their personalities and psychological ups and downs. As individuals and as a group.
A good coach can manage those aspects and keep it all together over long periods of time. He also has to build a functioning team, mitigate for its weaknesses, build on its strengths.

So, of course it's not literally only about the players. However, building a squad and a winning team is a very different thing when you're dealing with top players that are motivated by their own ambition, that have resilience and character earned through experience than it is trying to manage mediocrity to one degree or another. That's without stating the obvious that a team full of top players will have a lot less weaknesses to protect and a lot more strengths to try and maximise.

Klaus

Yep, I agree. Obviously talent is a big part of it, and we're lacking. That's why we all spend time in the wish list thread and follow transfer rumours. I feel like we have 99 problems these days though, and a lack of quality is just one.

Coombs

But our being behind these other clubs infrastructurally is also on Wenger, the most powerful man at the club. Ultimately it's the board and the owner, sure, but still he was invested with the power to make these changes and investments, hire more people, etc. He actively refuses, and even derided the idea.

It's a mistake to have renewed his contract so many times, but he also did his job, whatever you think about the scope of it, very poorly.

Ray

I don't blame Wenger for signing a new contract, blame Kroenke for giving it to him. You compare our club with City and Chelsea, but compare Kroenke with Abramovich and Mansour, and you can see where we have gone wrong. For a start they most certainly would have sacked Wenger ages ago.

Ricky1985

Clrnc wrote:
Sevilla won the Europa League for years but have never become a bigger club than Atletico is under Simeone now.

De Gea and Courtois was on loan which shows back in those days what Atletico status were. Juanfran, Godin, Felipe Luis did not have the reputation they do now, they were pretty average in the past and moved to Atletico for peanuts. Koke was a youth product so I don't see how that has come into equation. Simao, Reyes and Forlan are really good players but nowhere near the level of players we are talking about after Simeone took over. Aguero was a really smart buy but Costa? He was destined not to make it, going out on loan to 4 clubs and impressed at none before Simeone transformed him.

Having a good manager brings the best out of the players, ultimately increasing their value and reputation in the transfer market. If we have a top manager making our team functional, Ozil and Alexis for example will be easily worth much more if they are available in the market.

De Gea wasn't on loan, Courtois was. I don't see the relevance regardless.

The point I am making is that people at Atletico that predate Simeone were and still are very good at identifying talent and paying what was needed to bring it to the club. The fact that they also managed to win a major European trophy shows, as it does with Sevilla, that they were ambitious and serious, even if not always successful. Did Simeone build the stadium as well btw? Or is it not reasonable to assume that they have other capable and ambitious people driving the club forward?

What kind of argument is it to say that 7 seven years ago the players that have underpinned Atletico's consistent level of good performance "didn't have the reputation they have now"? No shit. It's what tends to happen to football players that are all in their early 20s. They had quality then and they have quality and experience now.

You honestly believe Costa wouldn't be a top player without Simeone? Have you seen the dude play and the quality he has? I suppose you think Sterling was a nothing young player before Guardiola waved his arms at him in trianing? City paid £50m in the first place for him why exactly?...

Ozil and Sanchez would be worth more if they were tied down to a proper contract, so I don't see your point at all there. Unless you think Özil being the most creative player in Europe in his 4 years here and Sanchez scoring 20+ goals a season in his 3 isn't getting something like the best our of them? They certainly haven't replicated this level of productivity elsewhere.

A coach is part of a team. An important part, I agree, but still not only as good as the other pieces. The people that identify and sign the players. The people that negotiate new sponsorship deals. The people that deal with the injuries and fitness. The people that drive the club forward off the pitch and bring together all the different facets of a modern football club and move it as one.

I'll grant you that at Arsenal, Wenger is involved in pretty much everything and is therefore culpable in our overall poor performance relative to those around us, but what does Wenger doing everything say about the rest of the club and those that are running it?

Hopefully the recent additions are a sign they're getting their act together because they've done very little and relied on Wenger for far too long.

Rohit

Clrnc wrote:
Having a good manager brings the best out of the players, ultimately increasing their value and reputation in the transfer market. If we have a top manager making our team functional, Ozil and Alexis for example will be easily worth much more if they are available in the market.

Wenger did this for years and before anybody, and did it better than anyone else

Football moved on though and he didn't. All he needed to do was ask for help but he probably has too much pride. Now he will go just as he deserves to.

Arsenal were all that is being credited to Atletico. We took on Man Utd without the money. We were first before anyone else. And then we stalled.

Qwiss

Rohit wrote:
All he needed to do was ask for help but he probably has too much pride.

I think its more hubris than pride. I think he genuinely thinks his methods and his ideas are better than everyone elses.

jones

Klaus wrote:
Clrnc wrote:
Having a good manager brings the best out of the players, ultimately increasing their value and reputation in the transfer market.

Do you feel that Bayern improved by appointing Guardiola, or that Real Madrid made the most out of the most expensive squad in the history of football under Mourinho?

Guardiola absolutely improved Bayern, immeasurably so. The biggest myth I'm world football is that Bayeen were some behemoth before him - yes they won the treble just before his arrival but so did Inter a couple years before that and the difference between their fates couldn't be starker

Clrnc makes a couple of very good points. Atletico were definitely a bit of a joke even when they won the Europa League, they spent money on players but the variation in their results and table position was extreme and in fact has been so for ages. Simeone transformed the club into what it is now, no doubt about it

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