Joao Felix: Page 4 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Joao Felix

Qwiss

How much did we pay Auba to go away? Surely Felix is worth around that to strengthen us for the rest of the season? Its low risk too, if you sign him for 100m and he bombs you're fucked. Loan him for half a season for £20m and its not so bad if he fails. If he's great then you have a good chance of winning the league and a strong shot at signing him permanently after.

Lets see just how much we want to push for the title.

Clrnc

Qwiss Exactly. 20m is really nothing to Kroenke, and anyway we will nego the price down. It won't cost us 20m.

I used to think like them, judging deals by their value because I thought our finances are limited and signing player A will cost us player B but it has been proven not to be the case so I only want whatever it takes to increase our title chances.

And having Felix on the team/bench over Nelson or Nketiah will certainly increase our chances.

Don Pacifico

Burnwinter Would've thought you guys who were around when Arsenal failed to invest in the 07–08, 10–11, 15–16 winter windows and wasted plausible league challenges would be able to remember those years.

We have been here before and the correct answer has never been to leave money on the table.

We only have the

I guess for me, the context is important and I think where we are now is different from where we were during the Wenger years you refer to. Namely:

Previously, our base position in terms of squad building was a position of underinvestment versus now (as you allude to) where we're systematically rebuilding the squad with consistent funding.
We were a bona fide top four team, aspiring for a more ambitious achievement versus now where we've been out of the CL for 6 straight years and primarily need to set ourselves up to consistently qualify again.

So for me the context is different and therefore the trajectory is different. I believe we are building the club in the right way and I want us to maintain that path as I believe it will bear more fruit in the long-term. Therefore spending £20m on Felix now may impact our capacity to bring in a better suited alternative in the summer (for example) and potentially more importantly, it risks unsettling a winning dressing room as mentioned previously.

Burnwinter

Don Pacifico So for me the context is different and therefore the trajectory is different.

Yes, coming from outside the top four to win the league is different. Probably militates more in favour of strengthening the squad if anything. And with the youngest side in the league, the potential of establishing a winning dynasty now is vast. This group of players could last one entire contract cycle longer than Klopp's Liverpool, for example—we could still be cheering many of them in 2028.

All good anyway. We've reached the huff and puff stage on this one.

I guess it sort of comes down to if you think our chance of winning the league now is greater than our chance of being on 37 points after 16 matches next season or the one after. Bit hard to say, but I would not be surprised if, despite the promise of our squad, this was our one real tilt at it.

Claudius

£20m for half a season is an insane amount of money. That’s £40m a season. In contrast, our most expensive players, Jesus and Partey are basically costing us a TCO of about £20m a season each. The super expensive Mudryk on probably a £100k salary and £60m guaranteed would cost us about £17m.

The Joao Felix fee is disproportionate to the project without the talent being similarly so. If you guys show me Haaland, Mbappe, etc and say we should make that kind of outlay, absolutely. But not for a guy who is trying to resurrect his career

Coombs

Claudius £20m for half a season is an insane amount of money. That’s £40m a season.

It's not, though. It's 20m for half a season.

I'd offer them either half the loan fee now or get an option to buy that factors 10m of the fee in up front.

Burnwinter

Claudius £20m for half a season is an insane amount of money. That’s £40m a season. In contrast, our most expensive players, Jesus and Partey are basically costing us a TCO of about £20m a season each.

It could be quite rational for a contract one tenth the length (half a season versus five seasons) to involve a higher rate. We get the resource without having to commit, that's usually regarded as valuable. His rate is still astronomical but those comparisons are not apples to apples.

In this case, we could spend £20m (it's actually €15m fee + €6m wages, and under negotiation)—and at the end of it we've had up to 20+ league matches from a star playmaking forward, and crystallised the value of making it permanent.

Don Pacifico

Burnwinter

I think it also comes down to whether you think Felix is sure thing to succeed and win us the league. I personally am not so sure.

Claudius

Coombs
They probably won’t do that. They are pushing the expense of paying off his insane transfer fee to us. If you look at the numbers I ran, the transfer fee they quoted is them basically asking us to pay for the cost of owing him. They’re not doing anything funny. They’re just saying this guy is super expensive, if you want him, pay for him.

We should wait this one out to the end of the window and see how they feel. Focus on nailing Mudryk this week

Clrnc

Don Pacifico But are you sure Nelson and Nketiah is enough? If not you take the chance to improve the team.

Don Pacifico

Clrnc

It's enough to get us CL football and honestly, that's still my primary objective mentally.

Regarding squad balance, I go back to what I've said elsewhere on Nketiah - you don't give him the contract we have done if you're going to go out and buy another player as soon as Jesus is injured. We've invested that money and we owe it to Eddie as much a our long-term plan to stick with it.

Think Nelson is a bit of a red herring as signing Mudryk covers his squad place.

Clrnc

Claudius I do agree with your last sentence.

Big Willie

Burnwinter Klopp's Pool are a great example.

Here's a list of best ever Premier League season starts after matchday 16.

You'll notice we're at 21st place on 37 points with the Invincibles in 18th place on 38.

Of the 20 season starts ahead of our start this year, 16 are in the "post-Mourinho" era.

Klopp's Pool have two entries, one from the year they won (18–19) and one from last year when they got pipped (21–22).

In this era, you've usually got to be as perfect as we are this season (or better) to win the league. So you have to strike on the rare occasions you get the chance. Klopp's Pool prove the point: an impeccable side for years and years that only ever won the league once—and that squad's now finished.

There's no "fervour or desperation" about it, in fact that amounts to fear of success. Even the amounts of money involved (Félix's mooted €15m loan fee, or paying 30% more than expected for Mudryk etc) are modest compared to the financial benefits of victory, let alone that this Arsenal squad should be here to win the league …

Whilst I agree with your point on the whole, and agreed it will be difficult to get this chance again, your point would be even more emphasised if the numbers were correct in that list. We have 43 points from 16 games, meaning we are joint 3rd on the list with only Liverpool 19/20 and City 17/18 ahead of us on that list. For some reason they've counted our points after only 14 games.

Burnwinter

Big Willie Hmm, thanks: how weird. I was thinking we were doing better than that, but credulously believed the data! 🙃

However, to me it just says: don't fuck this up, don't skimp and save at this point.

RowJimmy

Big Willie It's "after game week 16." Not so much wrong as a pointless way to set a data cut-off point.

Pepe LeFrits

Felix doesn't strike me as someone who'll do much in his first six months in the PL. I'd still like to get him if the price is right, but mainly as it'd give us a chance to look at him more closely and strengthen our bargaining position in the summer if we want to go for a permanent move. Even if we got him now I'd still expect Eddie to start most of the games while Jesus is out; I think he'd used mostly off the bench and we'd be doing well if we got a couple of telling moments between now and May.

Coombs

Pepe LeFrits Even if we got him now I'd still expect Eddie to start most of the games while Jesus is out;

Absolutely. What someone like Felix gets us is control late on in games we are winning, or stability in games that are slipping away. For all of Eddie's abilities, keeping possession is not one of them. We need an option like that, especially if we get to a point this season where simply not losing could push us over the line.
Even if Felix doesn't pan out long term, he's guaranteed to at least help us keep possession higher up the pitch in a few games this season.

Big Willie

Burnwinter honestly as soon as I was reading your post and saw 21 teams have bettered out start this season I was quite shocked. There are only 2 possible ways our results could have been bettered. With 14 wins and 2 draws or with 16 wins. I struggled to believe there were 20 other side's who did that since the PL. Low and behold it's true.

Looks like 2 games are missing but seem to be from earlier in the season somewhere as even at 14 game mark, they have us down as 10 wins 1 draw and 1 loss.

Claudius

I was a bit surprised as well to see us so slow given that we’ve had one draw and one loss. We are having an incredible season , better even the Invincibles, save for the whole invincible thing. Definitely must bring forward investment and lock down this title. Who knows what Pep and the Saudis will do next year

Big Willie

RowJimmy so until we play the games from those exact weeks it doesn't count in that table? Even if we have played 2 extra games from round 17 and 18 bringing us to 16 games? Pretty stupid way of tabulating that rather than just saying after X number of games if you ask me.

Burnwinter

RowJimmy Yeah that's fuckin' stupid. @Big Willie

RowJimmy

Big Willie It's like saying "On Jan 1st," which you see all the time. Different teams have played different numbers of days. I agree it's stupid. Jan 1st is clearly arbitrary, everyone knows it. This makes it sound like it's removing the arbitrary character, but really it's not.

RowJimmy

I don't think that we should be buying someone to replace Jesus. We should be buying players who we want as part of the team going forward, looking to play CL and compete for the league title again next year. Even for a loan for Felix I think that's the criterion. The point of bringing him in on loan is less this spring (it may help but I suspect he'll take time to work out his role in our system) than the sort of extended date we had with Ødegaard. FWIW, I think he'd fit in well long term because he could play in any of the front 4 positions. But I think we'd have to insist that the loan fee counts toward eventual purchase fee.

Big Willie

RowJimmy probably even worse than that though because it says matchday until matchday 16, and we had a couple games postponed during that period but still we've played more games in the meantime. So even though we played 16 games, like mostly everyone else, the system says "nope, can't count those last two games because they were part of GW17 and GW18, we'll add them back when you have played both your double game weeks".

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