Liverpool can call if they want to give us Trenty. They have similar production so a 1 to 1 trade is fair. Otherwise they can suck on my chocolate salty balls.

It would upset and anger me far more than when Cesc, Nasri and Van Persie left the club

Claudius wrote:

Liverpool can call if they want to give us Trenty. They have similar production so a 1 to 1 trade is fair. Otherwise they can suck on my chocolate salty balls.

Don't be greedy my friend. Salah or Mane is fine.

Despite all his talk and snobbery towards how Gazidis dealt with contracts Raul and co don’t seem to be fairing any better. Two important assets heading into their final year. The reality is players have all the power. Not some, or most, all of it. They don’t have to leave with two years left, they don’t have to sign either, they can do whatever they want including when to hold talks. The only way to have a semblance of control over these things is success, money or both. We have neither.

Giving Saka a big deal now in this climate would look terrible but it has to be done and I think they will. But we should have don’t it months ago.

This would be 100% unforgivable. Disgusting.

There's one constant in all of these scenarios and its moustache isn't subtle.

At least Robertson said earlier today that he wants to retire at Anfield. Hopefully Saka doesn't want to compete with neither him nor Mane for a spot.

Qwiss! wrote:

goon wrote:

Despite all his talk and snobbery towards how Gazidis dealt with contracts Raul and co don’t seem to be fairing any better. Two important assets heading into their final year. The reality is players have all the power. Not some, or most, all of it. They don’t have to leave with two years left, they don’t have to sign either, they can do whatever they want including when to hold talks. The only way to have a semblance of control over these things is success, money or both. We have neither.

Giving Saka a big deal now in this climate would look terrible but it has to be done and I think they will. But we should have don’t it months ago.

They said this wasn't going to happen any more and yet here we are.

They should have guys like Saka tied up before they start giving them loads of first team football.

It's happened because it's a shit place to work. Whens the  last time a seriously good player even renewed a contract here? If we discount ozil because we paid him x5 more than hes worth which tells us with certaintly, he doesn't want to be part of things here(and his effort has more than confirmed that).

It’s all about the money I believe. Why would our club be a shittier place to work than any other? We have some of the best facilities, and are located in London. If Arteta is a decent coach, and nothing tells us otherwise, young players who want to leave will only want to leave for the possibility of winning trophies now, and/or much more money than we are offering, and if that’s the case there’s little to nothing we can do about it, except hope Walmart is ready to cash in and Daddy Dangote or some other cat with money falling out the anus is ready to pay up.

It's a shit place to work because we constantly go into each season handicapped by lack of attention to key areas , and stick with players who shouldn't even play for us. Then you can add in the money factor, the fact that we want to keep wages low but still have some of the above players getting paid big money for underwhelming performances. So a guy like Saka will say either I am wasting my time here or I should be paid just as much or more than some of those players.

Not sealing Saka and Aubameyang amidst the ongoing chaos isn’t really an indictment of the Arsenal leadership. Aubameyang is especially difficult because his deal should be highly correlated to the economics of the next 2-3 years. It would be a massive disaster if we gave him a big deal and coronavirus wiped out our revenue. Saka has a bit more flexibility as his would be a longer term deal with a low base, but even then we’ve had a lot to deal with. I’m still confident we will get it done. And then we can focus on the complex issue of what to do with Lacazette, Xhaka, Torreira et al with all the corona permutations

flobaba wrote:

If Arteta is a decent coach, and nothing tells us otherwise...

Bad points per game average. Bang average attacking football. It all comes with a big caveat due to him taking over at our lowest point in decades (well, technically Freddie did, but it was just for a few games) which makes it impossible to judge him in the short term, but appointing him was a gamble and nothing we've seen so far makes it feel like not a gamble.

I agree that Saka's contract issues are purely money-related though, and I think we're going to have more cases like this soon. Maybe it's unfair, but from the outside it seems that the club feel like they can get away with underpaying players just because they're young. What I didn't quite expect was that parts of the fanbase, often the same parts who were crucifying Wenger for his 'socialist wagebill', seem to agree with it.

It's kinda retarded not to actually extend Saka's contract before he broke through this season though

He probably didn’t want to play ball. I reckon you’ll see more and more of this sort of thing. Big clubs and sniffing around players before they even get close to the first team.

Klaus wrote:

flobaba wrote:

If Arteta is a decent coach, and nothing tells us otherwise...

Maybe it's unfair, but from the outside it seems that the club feel like they can get away with underpaying players just because they're young. What I didn't quite expect was that parts of the fanbase, often the same parts who were crucifying Wenger for his 'socialist wagebill', seem to agree with it.

Is this fair? For the longest time the critique has been that we overpay unproven kids with our flat wage structure. When did we suddenly switch to underpaying them? Which young Arsenal players are demonstrably underpaid?

He's been here his whole life and has a coach who will give him first team games. His agent is just trying to get him PAID and I'm sure he will be

GooneriC wrote:

It's a shit place to work because we constantly go into each season handicapped by lack of attention to key areas , and stick with players who shouldn't even play for us. Then you can add in the money factor, the fact that we want to keep wages low but still have some of the above players getting paid big money for underwhelming performances.  So a guy like Saka will say either I am wasting my time here or I should be paid just as much or more than some of those players.

To piggyback somewhat on this - being a  declining, mediocre team kills us in negotiations. It means the club is coming from a position of desparation, and agents know that. Getting the run around by saka and his people (if thats whats happening) is another red flag on how far we've fallen

Another angle is we are a club in the football media capital of the world with a highly active online fan base. Perfect ingredients for endless rumours. Let’s see where this falls

Claudius wrote:

Klaus wrote:

Maybe it's unfair, but from the outside it seems that the club feel like they can get away with underpaying players just because they're young. What I didn't quite expect was that parts of the fanbase, often the same parts who were crucifying Wenger for his 'socialist wagebill', seem to agree with it.

Is this fair? For the longest time the critique has been that we overpay unproven kids with our flat wage structure. When did we suddenly switch to underpaying them? Which young Arsenal players are demonstrably underpaid?

We were willing to pay youngsters more than rivals would that's how we were able to steal players from barca youth who refused to give youngster crazy wages at that time. Because wenger also factored in the resale value. Obviously every club has caught up with his thinking. 

I think we should be fine. He’s going to go to Pool now to slow down behind Mané and Robertson?

spaceman spiff wrote:

He's been here his whole life and has a coach who will give him first team games. His agent is just trying to get him PAID and I'm sure he will be

Claudius wrote:

Another angle is we are a club in the football media capital of the world with a highly active online fan base. Perfect ingredients for endless rumours. Let’s see where this falls

This and this. The fanbase is highly sensitive to this stuff if not sore at the moment but there's really very little to be worried about right now. Saka's agent would be a complete moron to tell his client to sign anything at a point in time where his performances have been steadily improving and the kid is making a name for himself. Very little the club can do about it. The calls that he should have been extended before the season started are ridiculous, nobody thought he'd start the season like this. Every single club has these same issues.

goon wrote:

Despite all his talk and snobbery towards how Gazidis dealt with contracts Raul and co don’t seem to be fairing any better. Two important assets heading into their final year. The reality is players have all the power. Not some, or most, all of it. They don’t have to leave with two years left, they don’t have to sign either, they can do whatever they want including when to hold talks.

Except when they're doing bad. Then you have the likes of Mustafi being thrown on the market against his will by Emery, Markovic and God knows how many others being publicly thrown under the bus by Liverpool or Schweinsteiger getting his locker trashed by Mourinho and being sent to train with children, the notion that it's somehow lopsided in favour of players is ridiculous. Especially since on their part it's actual people having to relocate their entire lives and families when they're struggling, facing abuse in the ground and online while for clubs the big issue is that star player X doesn't want to hang around with guys who are slowing him down, and half the time having already dumped another club to come to us in the first place.

Although I agree with your overall point, I think you're also proving Goon's. Mustafi is still here. Özil is still here.

I think the bottomline is there's very little a good director can improve on if we don't improve on the pitch. Puts us in severe disadvantage.

Quincy Abeyie wrote:

Although I agree with your overall point, I think you're also proving Goon's. Mustafi is still here. Özil is still here.

Yes but only because the club signed them and gave them contract extensions which to be added at the time looked like great decisions. Every party will always do what's best for themselves and there's usually little wrong with that. I don't begrudge Mustafi wanting to stay because he's in a much worse position now than he was when he came in and therefore will most likely go to clubs and wages worse than here, and I can't say I blame Özil for not throwing away millions and leave the club and city he's been at for the last seven years. I do blame Özil for blatantly not giving a fuck on the pitch though.

Looks to have grown even more during lockdown - proper athlete now

Just sign him up already

Top, top talent. We cannot fuck this up.

on Bukayo Saka's contract situation...
We are trying, as a club, to finalise the deals that are more urgent and are a priority for us. The ones you are talking about [Bukayo and Auba] - they are both really important, not just for now but for the future of the club as well and if the club has something to announce, they will do it in the right moment.

Maybe reading too much into this but I actually think this sounds quite positive.

Saka ain't signing anything unless we pay him massive wages.

Why would he, or anyone stay if they have the opportunity to join a proper club?

I reckon he'll stay. He'll get plenty of opportunities to play for us and can still get to another club in the future regardless.

If he's playing further forward because of this contractual issue I'd be furious. This kid should be playing at left back or nowhere in the PL. He was a weapon for us and the position allows him to play to his strengths, he doesn't need reinvention.

The 8 position could be dangerous as well. He’s still able to get forward and create chances and goals. He has the skill and power to play in there, and might be the Ramsey replacement we’ve been crying out for. If Tierney and Aubameyang / Martinelli can be effective out wide, and he combines with them, we could have a very deadly left side of the field. I wish we could try all 4 together. It feels like that might be a source of strength. The types of combos Pépé can only dream of

There's just no basis for it other than theory, and it's not even necessary at this point. Why are we breaking the only part of the team that was kind of working? How does he solve any of our midfield's problems in defense or possession? It's just weird and I really don't get it.

Coombs wrote:

If he's playing further forward because of this contractual issue I'd be furious. This kid should be playing at left back or nowhere in the PL. He was a weapon for us and the position allows him to play to his strengths, he doesn't need reinvention.

this is kinda funny cos earlier on in the season him playing at LB was seen as another one of our stopgap measures - he'd been playing LW all this while.

Saka in the whole has everything to do with us missing a guy in the hole.

He was discussed as a left back since he played there in youth teams. He broke through as a winger but his skillset is everything you want in a modern fullback. He was crushing it, we have wingers, and Tierney is further behind in terms of fitness and integration in the squad. Less said about Kolasinac the better.

Playing him anywhere else at this stage is stupid, and the last two games bear that out, especially if it's not even at LW! Maybe he'd become a good midfielder in 2 or 3 years, but he's so young it seems ridiculous to crowbar him in to the worst Arsenal midfield for decades.

I don't really know what the best position to play him is, I thought he'd be a great left back but maybe he can be even better further forward. What I don't think is good for him is playing in a multitude of positions, 4 by my count. At 18 any game time is good time, but he needs a set position by the start of next season, assuming he's still here.