"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025: Page 74 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

"The journey continues" - Mikel signs extension until 2025

Qwiss

Claudius when you say that Havertz links first did you think "good man Mikel, thats just what we need"? Because I thought "what a load of shit, Arteta is many things but he's not stupid enough to spend £65m on that waster".

Meatwad

Qwiss
for me it was a tale of him winning me over after not liking him much prior to last season. i felt this is so ridiculous that he must have great plans for him and see him as the missing piece (£65m and 275k/wk is missing piece money), he's earned the benefit of the doubt. well he lost it all and is back to pre-2022 status with me: the arrogant shit who thought he knew more than everyone else and saliba wasn't good enough for his mighty squad but £50m CB ben white was.

Don Pacifico

Claudius

Pulled from Transfermarkt (caveat being that both Arteta and Klopp joined mid-season but I've done net spend for full seasons):

Net spend for us for the last 5 seasons (ie. since Arteta rebuild): -€645.5m

Net spend for Liverpool over the same time period from Klopp's first season (ie. rebuild): -€122.5m

Yes, we required a 'bigger' rebuild but I find it hard to suggest that we've been as efficient in our fund allocation.

Tam

Don Pacifico I'm not necessarily disagreeing with the point you are making, but if you're not rebasing those transfer fees to account for the crazy inflation of the past few years then your argument doesn't hold water, it's just nowhere near similar enough to compare.

Claudius

Don Pacifico so there is a massive difference - and we are all aware that a number of players left quite quickly for a low/no fee.

But a couple of important things when we throw out numbers, important to contextualise

5 years ago, Liverpool had their core squad already and was potentially the best team in all of Europe at that point. Those assets included VVD, Salah, Mane, Trent, Allison etc, many bought at great expense
we did most of our turnover during Covid when clubs almost went bankrupt and it was hard to get fees. The transfer market dynamic has changed singnificantly since 2019
we also started with a team that had a lot of veteran players with low value, which hindered our ability to sell well over and above the aforementioned.
finally, Liverpool may have turned a profit, but I also look at their team now without Mané, Fabinho, Firmino and Henderson, and can comfortably say they’ve gone backwards in terms of peak quality over that period. So more money, but worse team.

Would be worth looking at both teams to see what the squad value change is relative to the net spend over that same period. I imagine that gap will close a lot.

Coombs

Don Pacifico net spend is utterly meaningless

Don Pacifico

Claudius

For clarity, the Liverpool data is 5 years from the start of the Klopp era so it's comparable from a rebuild perspective.

Agree that COVID made things tougher, the market has moved on, rebuilding our squad was a bigger task (etc.) but our net spend is still 5x greater than theirs, which is quite dramatic. So whilst there may be externalities that have impacted our own spending, I struggle to see that as the only reason we're so much in the red.

Agree that our squad value is a plus (the positive lining of our transfer strategy) but I'm still not sure it completely offsets how much we've sunk (certainly not until we're able to sell more effectively).

Coombs

Looking at gross spend for the first 5 seasons of Klopp/Arteta is interesting too. Struggling to share the numbers but it's remarkably similar each year with the exception of this season where we spent €200m more. Total difference across 5 seasons is €269m.

I'd take that to mean (a) investment in players is similar but we've not yet assembled a team of comparable quality to the Liverpool title winning side (so maybe not as good value for money?) whilst (b) the more serious issue constraining improvement is our failings in selling players.

Burnwinter

Claudius 5 years ago, Liverpool had their core squad already and was potentially the best team in all of Europe at that point. Those assets included VVD, Salah, Mane, Trent, Allison etc, many bought at great expense

It should still give us pause if we imagine that today, or this summer, we are more or less where Liverpool were 5 years ago.

The inference is our nett transfer spending needs to decrease to a much lower level over the coming seasons—we'll need to start selling and replacing players efficiently in other words. We also need to fatten up our revenues as much as possible.

Finally, we should also be "the best team in all of Europe" or approaching that mark. For what it's worth I think we're not that far off, but we're certainly not there yet.

QuincyAbeyie

If this generation of players doesn't win a CL and a league title it won't matter much if we top the squad value table against Liverpool. That's what Liverpool got for the money they spent, so if we don't then nobody can say that they spent their money worse than us.

Clrnc

Coombs It is when it affects our ability to spend now due to FFP.

We are not broke, but because of bad sales we can't buy and not for foul of the rules.

RocktheCasbah

Meatwad the arrogant shit who thought he knew more than everyone else

Do you not think there might be a reason the Spanish media are linking our boss with Barcelona? We haven't had these sort of links for the last 20 years. Arteta might not know more than everyone else (difficult to quantify that one really), but he knows a lot more than someone with just 4 years managerial experience has a right to.

banduan

Clrnc We are not broke, but because of bad sales we can't buy and not for foul of the rules.

yeah but that's nothing to do with how well we spend. That's why Pool's net spend figure being used as a yardstick is spurious.

Clrnc

goon What internal solutions did Klopp use?

Newsflash, pretty much every manager wants new signings and to improve the team all the time. I was speaking to a couple of Liverpool fans who think it’s one of the main reasons he’s leaving.

You just need to look at both our respective squads over the past few years and see which one is made up more of unknown academy players rather than old squad fillers.

Meatwad

RocktheCasbah
well i feel arsenal would be much better if he was just the head coach and that's what he would be at barcelona so being linked to them doesn't surprise me because he's a damn good head coach.

RocktheCasbah

do you honestly believe that his being a head coach rather than our manager would result in any significant output other than simply a cosmetic one?

Meatwad

RocktheCasbah
yeah maybe he doesn't get to decide to spend 50m on a position we already invested big money in a highly regarded prospect and at a functional barca and real madrid he would be told this is who we bought (real doesn't ever sign varane if jose is dictating transfer signings). havertz definitely is not on the team. we probably still have emi martinez. just off that our keeper position is still sorted and we have 55m not spent on keepers, 65m not spent on havertz and 50m not spent on ben white. 170m extra and the team isn't worse off. hey maybe we waste that on some other position but i would have liked to see how it went down.

QuincyAbeyie

Meatwad is probably saying that his tasks/responsibilities should be those of a head coach rather than simply his title, which would be the cosmetic output you're referring to.

RocktheCasbah

Meatwad My question to you - and I agree with some of what you've said - were any of those decisions made really likely to have different outcomes with Arteta having head coach on his office door instead of manager?

Meatwad

RocktheCasbah
yes. it signaled an expansion of duties. we went down that route after wenger with emry (and in that first year with arteta) because our new way of operating was the director of football handled player personnel decisions and the head coach handled training and match day. when arteta's head coach title was replaced with manager it said to everyone that he will be making player personnel decisions as well. i'm reminded of the old NFL coach bill parcells: "If I'm going to be asked to cook the meal, I'd like to be able to pick the groceries."

Claudius

Don Pacifico agree with a lot of what you say, ie, we need to prove we can sell better.
But I do think the comparison is not a good one given a) Covid and b) rising costs c) rising inequality amongst European clubs

A better comparison is to look at other teams undertaking large squad investments at the same time as us, eg Chelsea, United, and more recently Spurs. They’ve had to dispose off players under the same conditions as us.

What you will see is basically it is easy to sell or buy highly desirable players at a big fee. But then you end up with a lot of challenging deals, and all these clubs are dealing with post-Covid realities of burning cash.

Don Pacifico

Claudius A better comparison is to look at other teams undertaking large squad investments at the same time as us, eg Chelsea, United

Maybe although both those clubs are poster children for institutional disarray so not sure they're who we should be benchmarking ourselves against.

Claudius

Burnwinter squad is stable and full of valuable players. Good sales for me will come from amongst the following: Ramsdale, Kiwior, Martinelli, Jesus, ESR, Nketiah, Patino. That is players we can get more than we paid and could l be replaced with good scouting

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