Kieran Tierney: Page 13 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Kieran Tierney

Bold Tone

Klaus wrote:
We have the 5th highest wage bill in Premier League again. We're absolutely not spending too much on wages. If anything we're spending too little. We're not willing to spend enough to maintain the good players, and the few exceptions to that rule are players we've generally gotten it wrong with, like Mkhi and Özil, so they are used as a strick to beat the club with. It's the wrong approach to take. There is zero reason for the fans to cheer when we're slashing the wage bill.

If we're not willing to spend we'll never be competitive. The club saving a few nickles by withdrawing the contract offer for Aaron Ramsey doesn't look like a genius move right now when any replacement would cost £30+ million in transfer fee alone, for instance. I read the interview with Dick Law where he said that we could easily afford Özil's wages since transfer fees and wages are amortised across the length of a contract, and in Özil's case there is no more transfer fee. That means the annual fee we're paying for him is not significantly higher than what we're paying for anyone who came here with a fee attached, like Leno or Lacazette.

It's not handing out big wages that is holding us back. It's the way we keep getting all our business wrong, whether it's buying players or appointing people. We just restructured the entire club, and there isn't a shred of evidence that the new people are any more ambitious or clever than the last ones. If anything it's been the opposite so far.

Fair points.
The bolded bit is why i don't get worked up about Ozil's wages.
His 350k a week costs the club £72.8m for 4 years.
Agree they are high but that is the fault of the club for not tying him down in time as we basically lost the player for free and bought him back from himself.
If you subtract his £42.5m price tag from 5 years earlier, we are paying him £145,673 a week
By comparison Lacazette with a £47.7m price tag on 140k a week costs the club £76.82m over 4 years.

Qwiss

Klaus wrote:
We have the 5th highest wage bill in Premier League again. We're absolutely not spending too much on wages. If anything we're spending too little. We're not willing to spend enough to maintain the good players, and the few exceptions to that rule are players we've generally gotten it wrong with, like Mkhi and Özil, so they are used as a strick to beat the club with. It's the wrong approach to take. There is zero reason for the fans to cheer when we're slashing the wage bill.

If we're not willing to spend we'll never be competitive. The club saving a few nickles by withdrawing the contract offer for Aaron Ramsey doesn't look like a genius move right now when any replacement would cost £30+ million in transfer fee alone, for instance. I read the interview with Dick Law where he said that we could easily afford Özil's wages since transfer fees and wages are amortised across the length of a contract, and in Özil's case there is no more transfer fee. That means the annual fee we're paying for him is not significantly higher than what we're paying for anyone who came here with a fee attached, like Leno or Lacazette.

It's not handing out big wages that is holding us back. It's the way we keep getting all our business wrong, whether it's buying players or appointing people. We just restructured the entire club, and there isn't a shred of evidence that the new people are any more ambitious or clever than the last ones. If anything it's been the opposite so far.

Handing out big wages to the wrong players is getting our business wrong. Same as allowing players run down their contracts, the wrong signings, etc You can't remove one from the other.

Klaus

Handing out massive wages to the wrong players is getting business wrong, sure, but not just handing out massive wages. I think they're completely separate issues. There was a lot of theorising about how we couldn't possibly cope with Ramsey's wage demands if he'd been handed a payrise comparable to Aubameyang, for instance, and the reality is that it wouldn't have made him anywhere near the most expensive player on our books. Any replacement we sign is bound to be much more expensive when you factor in transfer fee and wages - and that's if we actually sign anyone, which isn't looking very likely at the moment. I suppose that's where the real cheapskating comes in.

Qwiss

I'd have happily paid Ramsey in line with Auba, the people saying he shouldn't be paid well were mostly the same people who always thought he wasn't good enough. We've made very few good decisions in recent years in how we've used our wage budget. I'd actually like to see us have more big wages for 7 or 8 of the first team and then pay everyone else a lot less. The Ozil mistake was understandable IMO, its fucked us but I don't think anyone thought he'd get even worse after he signed it the way he has. Taking Mhki on such a big wage was pretty awful though, more about saving face on Sanchez leaving than anything else.

Bold Tone

I think Mkhi was the best out of bunch of mourinho scrubs offered to us.
We should've refused him and asked for multiple young players on low contracts as they would've had resale value.

Tam

Rumoured wage for Tierney is £70,000 per week.

Klaus

Qwiss! wrote:
I'd have happily paid Ramsey in line with Auba, the people saying he shouldn't be paid well were mostly the same people who always thought he wasn't good enough. We've made very few good decisions in recent years in how we've used our wage budget. I'd actually like to see us have more big wages for 7 or 8 of the first team and then pay everyone else a lot less. The Ozil mistake was understandable IMO, its fucked us but I don't think anyone thought he'd get even worse after he signed it the way he has. Taking Mhki on such a big wage was pretty awful though, more about saving face on Sanchez leaving than anything else.

Yeah, but Mkhi didn't come with a transfer fee so it's not that bad in his case either. Agree that we should have just taken whatever amount United were willing to pay though. It would have made absolutely no difference in the short term and it would have left us stronger going forward, because we would've been forced to address the wings the following summer. I think Wenger wanted him for the same reason he splashed on Auba: Desperate last-ditch attempt to get Champions League after yet another bungled summer window.

If we had a bit more about us we would have pushed them harder on Martial, who wasn't having a great time at José's United either. They really wanted to snatch Sanchez in front ot City. I think they would have caved in the end.

Klaus

Tam wrote:
Rumoured wage for Tierney is £70,000 per week.

What's the general feeling in the Scottish press Tam? That this will be done and it's mostly a question of when?

Tam

Pretty much. Just read a few of the latest reports and it seems that whilst we haven't reached a deal the talks have been described as 'constructive' and it's just a matter of time. Celtic's Chief Exec Lawwell isn't an easy man to deal with but I reckon it'll happen soon.

My guess is that we would need to move away from clauses that hinge on winning things, and perhaps move to offering more based on appearances or other clauses that are more likely to happen. That's just a guess but that's where I reckon the sticking points are. That Celtic was a stronger guarantee/chance of extracting the full amount of the deal and want to leave less of it to chance.

Claudius

Klaus wrote:
We have the 5th highest wage bill in Premier League again. We're absolutely not spending too much on wages. If anything we're spending too little. We're not willing to spend enough to maintain the good players, and the few exceptions to that rule are players we've generally gotten it wrong with, like Mkhi and Özil, so they are used as a strick to beat the club with. It's the wrong approach to take. There is zero reason for the fans to cheer when we're slashing the wage bill.

If we're not willing to spend we'll never be competitive. The club saving a few nickles by withdrawing the contract offer for Aaron Ramsey doesn't look like a genius move right now when any replacement would cost £30+ million in transfer fee alone, for instance. I read the interview with Dick Law where he said that we could easily afford Özil's wages since transfer fees and wages are amortised across the length of a contract, and in Özil's case there is no more transfer fee. That means the annual fee we're paying for him is not significantly higher than what we're paying for anyone who came here with a fee attached, like Leno or Lacazette.

It's not handing out big wages that is holding us back. It's the way we keep getting all our business wrong, whether it's buying players or appointing people. We just restructured the entire club, and there isn't a shred of evidence that the new people are any more ambitious or clever than the last ones. If anything it's been the opposite so far.

Good post. A few points.

On Ozil we are still amortising the transfer fee for income statement / tax purposes. Basically, every time you extend a player who is within contract, you take the remainder of the asset value on the balance sheet and you amortise that through the income statement for the new length of the contract extension to help you reduce your tax burden. Ozil had 1/2 year out of 5, so about 1/10 of the 42m value (4m pounds) which will be around 1m/year for the remainder of his contract.
Do not conflate the TCO (total cost of ownership) and amortised contract fee. What I have above is the amortised contracting for accounting purposes. And the the TCO would then just be the contract value plus the wages (+ bonuses). Mesut's TCO over the 3,5 years of his extension is 65m pounds. You might argue that it's cheaper than losing him for free and buying a similar player, but a better comparison is the net of selling him and buying a similar player. I think that 65m pounds is gross negligence by Gazidis.
Given this, the accumulation of wages of Ozil, Mustafi, Aubameyang, Lacazette etc. while we are playing Europa has become unsustainable.
I still support not putting Ramsey on 200k/week wage under the circumstances. We would've made a 50m pound commitment to a player who is regularly injured. Given his injury situation, we still would've needed to go out and get that quality Ndombele midfielder regardless. The big error was not selling him for 30m pounds a year or two ago, but once that bridge was crossed, we could not look back. It's a sunk cost fallacy. Releasing him and not digging ourselves deeper into financial distress was the sound thing to do.

mdgoonah41

Qwiss! wrote:
I'd actually like to see us have more big wages for 7 or 8 of the first team and then pay everyone else a lot less.

this is pretty much how i feel.

https://www.spotrac.com/epl/arsenal-f.c/payroll/

i have no idea how accurate those are, i assume some are a bit high/low, but that site is fairly good for other sports, so i doubt they'd have just made up the numbers.

kola, for instance, is supposedly on £100,000 per week, which is just insane. sure, he signed as a free agent so we didn't have to pay a fee, but he wasn't a nailed on starter when he signed, and hes been very inconsistent. he was inconsistent before he came here. but we're paying him like hes a top level starter.

chambers and el neny on £50,000 per week. carl fucking jenkinson on £45,000. the "socialist wage structure" that wenger implemented was a really bad idea. and it still is. you cant fix this in one summer, but the best way to fix it is to not compound the issues with further mistakes.

MuswellHillGooner

Kola is in the same boat as Ozil and Mkhi so the 100k may work out to be the equivalent of 60 or 70k.
The rest i agree with you
Laughable when you see what a supposedly wasteful club like RM pays
https://www.totalsportek.com/money/real-madrid-player-salaries/

Klaus

Tam wrote:
Pretty much. Just read a few of the latest reports and it seems that whilst we haven't reached a deal the talks have been described as 'constructive' and it's just a matter of time. Celtic's Chief Exec Lawwell isn't an easy man to deal with but I reckon it'll happen soon.

My guess is that we would need to move away from clauses that hinge on winning things, and perhaps move to offering more based on appearances or other clauses that are more likely to happen. That's just a guess but that's where I reckon the sticking points are. That Celtic was a stronger guarantee/chance of extracting the full amount of the deal and want to leave less of it to chance.

Cheers Tam.

I was thinking it's a shame we couldn't make this happen in time for him to join in on the preseason tour, but then I realised he wouldn't have played anyway since he's recovering from hip surgery.

Anzac

Re wages

was reading something recently (SR???) that was saying that as atop4 contender we're not paying enough so far as our total wage bill is concerned. Rather the issue is that we have too much concentrated in too few players with Ozil representing too big a %;
the other issues re Ozil & Co's wages is that it pushed us to the limit re STCC meaning we had no room left for player additions. This was more of an issue when none of Ozil, Mkhi, Mustafi or Kola were nailed on starting players;
as Dick Law said in the recent interview the club can afford Ozil's wages in terms of finances, and probably those of the other highest paid players, but it's when you place them in the context of everything else going on around them at the same time that then makes them an issue.

HomeSteak

Celtic are bracing themselves for a third offer but Arsenal won't go above the £25million already offered as they look to restructure the deal.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/arsenal-make-third-kieran-tierney-18297564

THIRD TIME LUCKY? Arsenal set to launch THIRD transfer offer for Kieran Tierney as Celtic play hardball

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/sport/football/4487309/kieran-tierney-third-transfer-celtic-arsenal/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1563195413

[@TheScotsman] Sources close to Kieran Tierney have indicated he is enthused by the prospect of joining Arsenal if the clubs do reach an agreement.
It is understood Arsenal will offer the 22-year-old Scotland international a five-year contract which would see him earn close to £80,000 a week.

80.000 ?? Jesus.

Gazza M

No wonder he's enthused

jones

Starting to cool off on this. 25m is a massive fee for us, 80kpw is probably what our other LB makes too. Tierney looks good but a) seems injury prone and b) LB isnt our biggest weakness at the moment.

Put it this way our centre backs are Mustafi, Koscielny on strike, injury prone Soktatis and Mavropanos and Holding coming back from an ACL tear

Jed

Did you see how bad Kolasinac looked against a bunch of nobodies last night? I would argue LB is a major weakness.

jones

No I missed the game. I'm not going to judge a player on his first game in preseason though, Kolas form nosedived a bit tbf but he was our best player in the first couple of months last season while our centre backs were pretty consistently shit.

Claudius

Kola is a certified problem area. I’d dump him next summer. Book the capital gains and keep it moving.

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