Other Clubs Transfers Gossip 2023: Page 65 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Other Clubs Transfers Gossip 2023

QuincyAbeyie

daredevil It's another weird take. "We spent 200m, therefore we should be successful." Ermm....every single club in the league has spent a ton of money. By that logic, there should be 20 title winners.

🧐

So you either actually think people don't take into consideration the starting point of the spending they're talking about, i.e. our team after last season was better than Luton's so if we spent the same amount this summer there should not in fact be two league winners

oooooor you just pretend to think that.

Claudius

QuincyAbeyie 🙂.

A couple of things with spending money.

Given the nature of competition, there is a diminishing return on spend as you go up the table. If you spent £200m in position 20, it might take you halfway up the league. Do the same in position 2, and it might not even budge you…
….This is because the biggest clubs in this league have spent £1-1.3Bn on their squads. If we assume a 5 year average contract then £200m is merely replacement cost at this level, not even improvement.
We’ve had to over the last 2-3 years basically redo our club. No senior player remains from when Arteta first arrived. It’s his youth and new players. So he’s had to spend. And will continue to have to spend to not only retain status quo but to build on what we have.

Stop treating spending like a vice.

daredevil

QuincyAbeyie

Our starting point was second, and it's far more difficult to go from 2 to 1, then it is to go from 8 to 5. So the expectation that we should improve from second was unreasonable. We can aspire to it, but to expect it? The pool of talent available that can turn you from also-rans to winners is so small, that it's almost impossible to capture that talent when you don't have an advantage over your rivals, which we don't have.

The second problem is the assumption that spending money should guarantee improvement. We know that spending over time usually correlates with moving up the table, we also know that spending money in a single window doesn't guarantee improvement in the immediate season.

It's amusing having to remind Arsenal fans that the season we only bought Lehmann, we went Invincible. The season we only bought Cech, we recorded our highest league finish in over a decade and the season we finally spent 100m in a single window, we fell out of the CL for the first time in 16 (?) years.

Qwiss

Havertz wasn't the best allocation of funds, but he's also the first dodgy big signing we've had in a few windows. Fuck me, you can't get every signing right. Nobody does. Another expectation/entitlement issue at play.

QuincyAbeyie

Claudius Stop treating spending like a vice.

I'm not the one making up strawmen about "if you think that, you must think that every club who spent as much as us this season must win the league".

Claudius If we assume a 5 year average contract then £200m is merely replacement cost at this level, not even improvement.

If you think the players we lost this summer required 200m to replace, then this is relevant.

Claudius And will continue to have to spend to not only retain status quo but to build on what we have.

Again, strawman. What people react to if is we spend a lot to go backwards, which isn't retaining status quo or building on what we have. If you think we're better than last season then fair enough, but then that's what you need to argue.

Those who think we've improved obviously don't have any issue with our spending. Those who think we've regressed don't have an issue with us spending a lot either, but how it's spent. You don't see anyone wishing we'd spent less money,so don't argue as if you do.

Claudius

QuincyAbeyie good lord. I’m saying, the typical big club spends around £200m a year just to stay in the game.

That’s what Spurs spent this season. That’s what United spent. That’s what Liverpool spent. That’s what City spent. Chelsea spent £400m.

QuincyAbeyie

Claudius and some of those clubs spent their money well and some of them didn't.

Like I said, nobody wants us to spend less, so it's at best a silly misunderstanding and at worst feigning ignorance if that's what you're saying. When people say they don't want Havertz for 60m or whatever they don't mean they wish Kroenke kept that money in the bank because they don't want him to part with it.

Qwiss

QuincyAbeyie its like when you say "Havertz was a waste of money" and people say "well United brought Hojlund so there". There can be many bad signings.

Claudius

Qwiss I do a lot of deal support for private equity on the continent. PEs sometimes make mistakes. But the best ones get it right more often than not. You don’t expect a 100% hit rate. What you expect is that you get it right most of the time. That’s an appropriate standard. So I prefer to look at the aggregate. What is the current team performance and the team outlook.

Qwiss

Claudius We are trending downwards.

QuincyAbeyie

Qwiss I'm also pretty certain the some of people now going "we can't expect to improve from last season just because we bought 200m worth of players" are the same ones who went "ah well too bad we didn't win the PL, but we're the youngest team in the league and we're still improving". Yet now the expectation of that youngest team + the new signings is stagnation.

Coombs

Qwiss this really says a lot about how good of a job Arteta has actually done. It's not true, not using any reasonable method for calculating such a thing, but its interesting that this is actually an opinion considering where we are as a club compared to where we were.

Qwiss

daredevil but he's also the first dodgy big signing we've had in a few windows.

Really? I guess it depends on your definition of dodgy. He's been our most disastrous signing given his financial impact on us. There's plenty of dodginess about some of our other signings though, especially when taken as a whole.

Claudius

QuincyAbeyie anybody who wants to go into the league expecting to win it every season should go support Bayern Munich or PSG.

The cool thing about football - it’s not like wanking. The other teams do stuff too. They also buy players. They have have coaches with greats plans and tactics. We don’t operate in some fixed environment where because we spend, we are guaranteed of success. That spend has risks. And then we need to deal with issues in our club (players succeeding, injury, form) and everyone else’s own dynamics.

So no, I don’t believe anything is promised. I just expect us to do our best in all aspects of the game.

Qwiss

QuincyAbeyie that is spot on. You are pessimistic if you think we wont win and entitled when you think we should.

lorddulaarsenal

Daz I despise them mate. It’s annoying that they won’t flush away.

To be fair they’re only a couple of points off us and are playing adventurous football. Most annoying

QuincyAbeyie

I'll tell that to all the Arsenal supporters I know who expect to win the league every season. Won't take long. This obsession with putting up fictive opinions nobody has and then argue against them is really weird.

daredevil

QuincyAbeyie

The criticism is that we haven't improved after spending 200m. We finished second last season. So an improvement from second is becoming title winners, because it's literally the next position up. So being frustrated that we haven't improved is for all intents and purposes being frustrated that we aren't play like a title winning team. So it's not a fictitious position.

Clrnc

Claudius I enjoyed all the above arguments you guys are having, but this point comparing to Spuds really does not make sense given that the starting point is different and they didn't spend to aim to win the league like us. They have a new manager, they are revamping an entire squad. The 200m or so if true went on 10 players, while we went for 3 players. I don't see the point you are making at all to compare to vastly different scenarios. The fact that they are one point behind us with a new manager and almost an entirely new xi from Nuno's last season coupled with like 12 injuries shows that we have underperformed for the first half of the season.

Not to mention, people who often moan about spending poorly is also including our nett spend which Spuds has no such problems due to Harry Kane inflow cash so their nett spend is really low. We spent unnecessarily on people like Raya and that already has an impact on our future spending under FFP for real priority positions like striker for eg. If we sold well and have a good nett spend that would never have been a problem. It's 4-6 consecutive windows of poor spending and poor sales.

Claudius

Clrnc hi Clrnc. Lots of good points. My quick thoughts and then I’m done

1) we already have a great squad. The same way 16 and 17 year olds aren’t going to break into this squad the way you guys always cry for them, we aren’t going to get a bunch of £20m players to come in and do significant minutes. We have to aim for top end players to have an impact now - hence our typical £40-100m targets.

2) we signed Raya. What exactly is your alternative. We go out and get some 2nd string who we would’ve had to scout and pay £15-20m for anyway? Let’s hear.

3) Net spend doesn’t win titles. It’s a means to an end. What wins titles is the quality of your team. And that just requires you to spend, regardless of how much you have been able to raise from selling Kane or other player.

Qwiss

Claudius We go out and get some 2nd string who we would’ve had to scout

Do you not think we are scouting players in all positions all the time? Its not like Turner goes and they think "oh no now we have to start scouting goalkeepers".

@"Claudius"#p24078643) Net spend doesn’t win titles. It’s a means to an end. What wins titles is the quality of your team. And that just requires you to spend, regardless of how much you have been able to raise from selling Kane or other player.

And FFP requires you to make money to spend money so not being able to sell well directly impacts your ability to recruit and strengthen your team. You want top players to push down the squad the you always cry for then you need to make money from sales to pay for it.

Claudius

daredevil a ton of pundits have said we were playing the best defense in Europe before this December slump. And even during the slump we had about 1.5xGA and conceded 6, so we conceded way more than would’ve been expected. It’s clear as day that our defense has improved to a level we have rarely seen post Tony Adam, but somehow there is zero credit. We are this absolutely shit team that is sliding backwards into the abyss.

QuincyAbeyie

You're the one making the assumption that our team can't improve without winning the league, not me. And it was in response to Claude talking about fans demanding to win the title every season.

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