Edu: Sporting Director … or high-priced bagman?: Page 4 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Edu: Sporting Director … or high-priced bagman?

Coombs

Meatwad that's how everyone fixes mistakes.

Meatwad

Coombs
no. if you don't have the money you're screwed. we're lucky saka came through the same time pepe was a bust. if no saka we'd be fucked because there is no way after spending that kind of money on pepe that we would just do it again the next summer. and we're not spending another 60m plus trying to fix this havertz mistake.

goon

Coombs

Most don’t fabricate revenue to enable them to do it though.

Claudius

Meatwad this is one of those nature vs nurture arguments that casts Edu and Arteta as complete bystanders.

You will recall that when our kids were breaking through that Chelsea had possibly the most heralded academy in Europe. Lampard was brought in as coach during the transfer ban to introduce heralded academy players including Mount, Gilmour, James, Guehi, Lamptey, Broja. He also had CHO, RLC and Abraham at his disposal. Of that group, only James remains. The rest have since been turned over - a compete dissolution of one of the best academy classes in recent memory in England. That’s incredibly bad management.

It’s not just about the luck of having good players. You need to integrate and develop them. We’ve done that.

Burnwinter

I can't think of a case we've sold a player we didn't need for market value or above recently. Not all sales can be perfect, but we have very little track record of recouping money from outgoings.

It's a concern for Edu, as sustaining the quality and overall valuation of the squad is his job. He has done well on signings, especially by re-emphasising the 20–24 age bracket where value growth is the norm when your bets pay off.

Claudius

Burnwinter we sold Willock for a really good price (I think Newcastle were daft in that deal).

The simple truth is for a good deal to happen, we need a player who will make significant accounting profit for us, and one who the market would desire. Here are the candidates for that: Saliba, Gabriel, Nketiah, ESR, Martinelli, Saka, Odegaard. Which ones are you selling?

Qwiss

Claudius if Newcastle were daft on the Willock deal what does that make us on the Havertz deal?

Clrnc

That's not true at all if you look at all the other clubs.

Like I said it's how you market your player.

Willock is a one-off because we sold him at the back of a successful loan deal when his stock is high, which we didn't do for AMN and many others for example. And it increasingly looks like we are not doing it with Nketiah

Claudius

Clrnc we offered Nketiah to Palace. He refused that deal. So we extended him, which gives us the option to sell him. He’s probably even more valuable now due to Brexit actually. Same with Nelson although I think he’s worth much less than Nketiah.

If you look at our club composition now, it’s in really good shape and we have more sellable assets than we’ve ever had. But a lot of that has come from pruning garbage.

I don’t really buy the narrative that we should’ve generated so much more money from all our players. I look at all the players who left. Basically, Lacazette and Xhaka are the only guys doing something useful. Xhaka we got good money for. And we were right not to extend Lacazette. Everyone else was pretty much shit that Wenger, Emery and first season Arteta had piled on the club.

HomeSteak

Claudius I agree with you about the selling. While we have had plenty of bad deals in the past, Wenger sold world class player for peanuts so that he kept his word to them, or help them even. Under Arteta and Edu, we really had a lot of shit players to get rid of. We did make some mistakes along the way, as expected..but not that many.
And the mistakes that we made...they were the ones we resigned for huge numbers and then yeah, you are not gonna sell for a lot. Aubameyang for example. Or even Willian, who we signed for a free and gave a big contract, so you will never ever get good money for that.

We also had strange players like Mkhitaryan, who is killing in Italy for like 3 years now. Try to buy a player from Inter that scores and assists in double digits in consecutive seasons, see what they quote you for. We let him go for free...but he was so shit, it's hard to call out Edu for letting him go...

Mavaraponos was a bad deal, 3 million for a player that was sold fast for over 20 mil...I fell we could have gotten more.
Not letting AMN go and then not playing him was a strange and a bad move.
I used to think Rob Holding was a bad sell, english, young, close to 200 games for Arsenal and only 1.6 mil. But yes, he is hardly a professional player anymore...
Bernd Leno for 3.6 mil..was a bad sell.
Pablo Marí was horrible from start to finish.

Other then that, we did what we had to do. We had shit players on big wages...and nobody was ever gonna pay for them.

Big Willie

Claudius Everyone else was pretty much shit that Wenger, Emery and first season Arteta had piled on the club.

Late stage Wenger had less control that Gazidiz did anthis can be seen by the players bought that he didn't want and didn't play. Emery, despite not wanting Pepe and with Raul calling all the shots, just took what was given to him and worked with it.

If Arteta's role can be overlooked because of the Raul influence and his time separated between that period and the period afterwards where he had full conteol, the same courtesy should be given to Emery who had no say in signings and sales and to the final Wenger years where Gazidis forced the likes of Lucas, Park, hell evem Laca onto us when Wenger didn't want them.

Qwiss

Claudius City have always done bad deals but they throw so much money at it that it doesn't matter. We need to be a lot smarter.

Claudius

Qwiss I don’t get this. We are competing with City. There has always been a very clear correlation between total spend on the squad and footballing outcomes. So we need to go out and buy players.

City have managed to accumulate a lot of incredible talent and good prices or through the academy, eg Alvarez, Bernardo, Foden etc. But clearly there is no silver bullet for purchases at the top of the table. Every club is filled with good and bad purchases. The only way to avoid making bad purchases is to not make any purchases at all. The key is to minimize the number of bad purchases.

goon

Anyway, no mistakes is an impossible standard to live up to. Peak Liverpool made plenty of their own, not least £35m on Ox.

I’m happy as long as I think the squad is getting stronger, and it is.

QuincyAbeyie

goon but it's more nuanced than either "no mistakes" or "mistakes". The scope of Liverpool's mistakes was small enough so that their funds were still enough to land them a a squad that won the title and the CL (and even a couple of seasons where they didn't win the title where they still performed better over a season than what we've done post-invincibles). We need to limit the scope of ours similarly.

Burnwinter

goon I’m happy as long as I think the squad is getting stronger, and it is.

It's about efficiency, which is why I'd like to see nett spend charted versus estimated squad value and trophies. I think we'd do quite well on such a chart, though—we're definitely not the least efficient.

However, the onus is on Edu to make sure every transfer makes sense. He's done well but last summer half our business was questionable, and that's a problem. If it's a quarter, that's normal I reckon.

Qwiss

Claudius I don’t get this. We are competing with City.

yet when the argument suits you come with "oh we are competing with City and their 115 charges" etc

City have bought loads of poor players and just replaced them when it doesn't work out. We can't do that.

You can't avoid bad purchases but you can avoid insane risks like thinking you can take a player who's been poor for 3 seasons in the Premier League and making him your highest earner on a hunch you might be able to fix him.

Claudius

An alternative view on Havertz. If I am the CFO of Arsenal, and I go to Arteta and ask him what the hell he did with my £65m, do you know what he might say to me? He might say, oh, I used it on a player who has already accumulated 2000 minutes this season, in line with the most used players in the league.

QuincyAbeyie

Claudius playing 2000 minutes is only a good indicator if we are where we want to be. We could've bought a squad of players capable of 2000 minutes each if performance wasn't a part of it. I'd laugh out loud if ten Hag was asked about Antony's price tag and replied that he's capable of playing many minutes.

goon

QuincyAbeyie

For sure, but that's sort of covered under the squad and first 15 or so getting stronger in my book. I'm confident Timber and Rice have done this this summer.

Claudius

Big Willie hey my man. I don’t think we should overlook any of these guys. Wenger’s late stage transfer policy was an absolute dumpster fire.
Arteta’s first 12 months he got some things right: Gabriel and Odegaard (exceptional), and Partey (good).
But he also made some bad decisions driven by him and the club continuing our policy of investing in old and mediocre players, including Runarsson, Willian, Soares, and Mari; and re-signing Aubameyang.

Btw, credit to @flobaba who was the first to call out many of these moves

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