Claudius wrote:
It’s a disaster. There are so many problems with signing these old men. First, they are declining in quality. So over time, your squad quality gets worse. But it also means your asset base is depreciating and disappearing as they age and retire. So you leave yourself without people you can sell to improve your team. But you have another problem. When you negotiate a contract with Saka, you catch him as a kid and can potentially undercut his value when you give him a salary. So we are paying him £40k a week but he’s our best player already. With a 31 year old, however, you’ll end up paying a high figure based on what he delivered last season, but every year after that, his output will decline and you’ll be in the red.
It’s madness to sign so many of these guys
With Luiz, Willian, Sokratis, Ozil, Mustafi leaving and potentially the likes of Laca, Elneny and Cedric, our old man count will be down significantly compared to this time last summer and some of those guys are technically in their prime.
In fact, that would pretty much leave Auba as the only real old man left in the sqaud.
I would assume if you have a Saka or Martinelli level youth that no one has discovered, we'd go out and sign them instead, I just think if it were that easy, then everyone would be doing just that. In reality the last time we signed a really promising young 21yr old left back from an obscure league it cost us £25m. I can't imagine you're in favour of spending that much on a backup given you've been a big proponent of a lean squad.
