Arsenal Outs 2024: Page 30 - The Arsenal discussion community: One More in the Tolly

Arsenal Outs 2024

Big Willie

Burnwinter In Ramsdale's case it was foolish to re-sign him on wages boosted from £60k per week to £85k per week in May 2023, just weeks before we signed Raya and benched him.

Ramsdale is making 50% more than Raya or Ederson without playing.

Wait, those numbers don't look right to me. Sure there isn't a 1 missing at the start of each number? How is Ramsdale being paid 85k being talked about as one of the highest in the league? Also how is Raya and even worse Ederson somehow getting paid even less?

Claudius

Big Willie I think that £85k might be net. Ramsdale is one of the best paid goalies in the league.
Clearly what happened is they signed Ramsdale and then Raya became available. And they had to decide whether to stick with their earlier decision or go with the guy they always wanted.
A lot of things come into play here. How long Ramsdale had the contract for, how suddenly Raya became available, and their calculus on how much he was a must have.

Big Willie

Claudius I think that £85k might be net. Ramsdale is one of the best paid goalies in the league.

Keepers get paid like shit. Relatively speaking obviously.

Qwiss

Claudius I still think that whole deal was a big mess. And its still very messy because I don't think we'll be able to move Ramsdale this summer and I don't think he'll stay here as number 2. We'll end up loaning him that will not be good business for us. For the level of improvement I don't think it is worth the hit.

Claudius

Salaries are tricky. You can see how we went and resigned all our young and important players in a 12-18 month period. Obviously that process has an inflationary effect. The minute one person goes from £30-£100k, the others start benchmarking their own wages, and using the newly increased wages to position their own demands.

We’ve been top 2 in league for two straight years, with 5th and then 3rd highest wages in the league. So our wage situation is definitely not a big problem. It’s only an issue because of the combination of 1) this internal benchmarking that happens amongst our players, and 2) the rich teams being so disastrously wealthier than even the mid tier teams. So you end up with people who are hard to sell.

The alternative is to have a weird salary mix where a big star makes £300k a big week but someone like Nketiah who still plays 1400 minutes at a top team only make £40-50k because that’s what his best alternative is at Bournemouth. Which would again cause stress in the system. In any case, Bournemouth would probably take him on a free, and still make him whole on the arsenal wage with a signing bonus. So I don’t think it’s as simple as “we need to pay these guys less”

Burnwinter

Claudius We’ve been top 2 in league for two straight years, with 5th and then 3rd highest wages in the league. So our wage situation is definitely not a big problem.

Sort of is, sort of isn't. There are two league changes to financial rules coming in which will back us into a corner a bit by depressing squad spending everywhere.

Firstly PSR is cutting the appetite of PL clubs to buy our players if they're on high wages that need to be matched. It's already being enforced in a straightforward and punitive manner (Everton, Forest etc).

Secondly, the incoming 70% (for clubs in Europe) or 85% (for clubs out of Europe) cap on "footballing costs" (player wages, amortised transfer fees and agent fees) in relation to revenue is a fresh constraint.

Our footballing costs are currently about 68% according to one analysis I saw. Close to the wind already. We're not the worst off but this rule will suppress wage and fee offers throughout our league.

Thirdly there's this "anchoring" proposal which looks likely to come in. I think it's a less restrictive guardrail than PSR or the 70% cap for now, but it's another factor.

The downward pressure this stuff creates on wages and fees is gonna make it more of a problem shifting guys like Ramsdale and Nelson out.

RowJimmy

I find the habit of expressing salaries as weekly amounts incredibly frustrating. Makes it impossible to compare with fees to come up with a true cost, which is fundamentally yearly.

HomeSteak

Houseboat, Football london do get things right, but they are quoting football transfer, who I no know nothing about. I for one think he gets one more year and then we sell him.

Burnwinter

HomeSteak Wouldn't be surprised if it were true in concept—what kind of offer? He's rated at €35m on Transfermarkt. I reckon we'd take that if another club offered it. It's just a scenario that won't happen.

Don Pacifico

You can't sell someone that's injured.

HomeSteak

Don Pacifico didn't we buy a bunch of player that were injured ?

Don Pacifico

HomeSteak Lolz. Most clubs aren't that daft though!

Clrnc

Qwiss it's horrible planning because Brentford was okay to sell Raya at the right price the summer we bought Ramsdale.

Qwiss

https://www.arsenalinsider.com/news/arsenal-player-wages/

Here's a list of our wages, not sure if its 100% accurate but it seems to be mostly in line with what I've seen elsewhere. Seems to me we do have issues on wages but Nketiah is far from the problem. Jesus as a back up on a quarter of a million per week. Partey on 200k per week. Tierney on £100k. Those are serious issues. Especially given their inability to stay fit and their fading status in the first team. You could add Zinchenko on £150k too. Nelson on £100k is too much too, I agree on that.

There is a reason Nketiah has suitors even at £100k and a reason no one want to buy the others I listed here. If you are giving out wages to retain value then the player has to remain a saleable asset on that wage.

RocktheCasbah

Clrnc I'm not sure that's right. I mean Brentford started last summer wanting £40m for him, despite Raya only having one year left on his deal, which is why Spurs ended with Vicario. I might be wrong, I can't see them being prepared to sell Raya 2 years earlier for less money - that's not really how they roll.

Clrnc

RocktheCasbah That's because he had sorta an impressive season. The season before that they were a newly promoted team. Their highest ever record sale is Watkins for 28m pounds. I don't think he could have commanded 40m.

Everything is negotiation tactic. Of course they were going to put something ridiculous like 40m so they can end up selling him for 20-30m.

How much do you think they would have bent over for Raya the season before when they were newly promoted? Certainly not more than what we paid for Ramsdale. Look at the historic fees for keepers and you get the picture. Both our keepers are one of the most expensive ones.

Qwiss

I just think they need to be more realistic on Ramsdales fee now. We bought him for £30m, replaced him with a guy who cost £27m and yet we think Ramsdale is worth £50m? That doesn't add up. No one is going to pay that. Its just not realistic money for a goal keeper that we don't even want to keep.

RocktheCasbah

As you might remember, I had a vested interest in this one given Raya's previous club and the fact I grew up around Brentford and I have one especially annoying friend who kept going on about Raya going to Arsenal. I'm pretty sure that Arsenal were looking very seriously at Raya over the summer of 2021. My understanding of the situation at the time was very much that having been promoted, Brentford absolutely did not want to sell Raya, hence Arsenal pivoting to Ramsdale.

I think we're all agreed the decision to give Ramsdale a new contract seems absolutely loco given the subsequent signing of Raya - I just don't think we should retrofit the initial signing of Ramsdale as an exercise in bad planning. Arsenal went for what was available at the time.

Claudius

RocktheCasbah this is also the way I see it.
Overall, it’s a suboptimal outcome, but I believe they made the right decisions along the way given what they knew at different points.
And funnily enough, it was consistent. We know they’ve always loved Raya. The minute he was available, they acted quickly and secured him. It sounds like we track a lot of these transfers for a long time, eg Calafiori sounds like it’s been in the works since last summer.

Clrnc

Claudius I would be very impressed if we were tracking Calafiori from Basel and let him go to Bologna for 2m, then decided to buy him for 45m the year after.

Burnwinter

Clrnc It would have been a similar story with Sesko had our approach been considered. We're definitely not omniscient with our scouting.

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