Big bad Berta: Page 22 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One more in the Tolly

Big bad Berta

awooga83

Meatwad yeah but the point I've heard made is that's what Arteta wanted whether we all agree with it so we failed to deliver the player Arteta wanted for the attack which is an area we've been weak.

Meatwad

awooga83
if arteta desperately wanted him as a winger then i'm more convinced he would be B tier at best (god forbid even lower considering arteta's track record with attackers) and his price should have reflected that.

Klaus

Gurgen If you had asked most fans back in may very few would have cared at all about Rogers or Alvarez. Then the summer circus blew into town and suddenly everyone's convinced that these guys, who would be bit-part players at best at bigger clubs, are top tier. There's talent and potential in them but we have that too, and the fees were frankly insane for players we'd be gambling on to step up their game significantly. The same could be said for Barcola although I think he's more talented than the former two.

We could easily have fucked up Liverpool-style this summer if we had worse people with less ice in their stomach making the big decisions, and I'm glad we don't and didn't. It doesn't mean we couldn't have done more, but this was easily a 7-8/10 transfer window and people behave like it was 2/10. Genuinely baffling to me. There's a process to how we do things and it has already paid off. Give it another year or two and we'll sign Bellingham as our first true galactico while Liverpool will still be waiting on Isak to develop traits he has never had.

RowJimmy

Klaus
Alvarez and Rogers are totally different situations in every way. Alvarez is widely considered to be a top 10 CF talent and has been for some time. He most likely starts at CF anywhere but Real and City (I think PSG would move Dembele back to the wing; I don't know what Bayern would actually do but given the ages they would do well to jettison Kane in favor of him).
Rogers is a good and physically robust player whose desirability got blown out of proportion by the PL specific transfer circus. I'm glad we didn't get him.
Barcola would have been a good fit for us and I think we should have tried to get in between Liverpool and him despite the price, but he's not more talented than Alvarez.

QuincyAbeyie

Klaus We could easily have fucked up Liverpool-style this summer if we had worse people with less ice in their stomach making the big decisions, and I'm glad we don't and didn't.

It's kind of funny that you shit on Alvarez in the same post as saying this. The only reason Alvarez isn't here right now is because he didn't want to, the people in charge that you're praising were clearly ready to pay Atletico's asking price.

Bring Back Kerrea Gilbert

It remains to be seen if the elite forwards actually want to come to Arsenal. None of Arteta's purported first choice players have joined us so far in his tenure.

lorddulaarsenal

All in all a good job done this summer.

There aren’t many if any players in the squad now we’d moan about getting minutes. Next step is an obvious one and we’re well placed to get the talent went it emerges and becomes available.

I don’t like the PSR rules. That’s why the MLS sale was explored in the eventuality we could do agree and fund a deal for Vini

We had the best window out of all the clubs in the Premier League

RC8

My only gripe is selling Trossard. Our squad + Trossard would be excellent, and it's not like he was on astronomical wages or that we got paid a lot for him. I don't like that we sold Martinelli having sold Trossard, but the amounts of money involved make that a more sensible move in general.

Coombs

The guy sold Gabriel Jesus...

Build him a statue.

JazzG

Interesting article and some views on Berta.

Burnwinter

JazzG Thanks for that mate—easily the best roundup I've read about our summer.

From a transfer tactics point of view there are a few points reinforced:

our shortlist was every top club's shortlist
if (unlike me) you think Rogers would've been a big transfer coup, then you will regret we could've had him for £90m if we'd had the transfer locked away before 2 July when City announced Anderson
the club anticipated signing a left-sided forward, so we let Trossard go early, then we sold Martinelli on the basis of his £60m club record fee … in an ideal world perhaps Trossard could've been kept around while we sorted Martinelli and a new signing
we fucked around to a great extent pursuing long shots Vinicius Jr and Alvarez with very little encouragement
Berta was more involved in Guimarães coming here than it first appeared

If the wrap understates anything, it's the hand of KSE in our changing processes. Sounds as if they've been increasingly clear they want the club to focus on signing valuable players and selling players while they still have value … or this "clear remit of ensuring the club become more sustainable and adept at trading".

We've gotten rid of the current batch of "shitsters" and made a club record sale, I'm pleased about that. We will never be in the sweet spot of the transfer market unless we're selling players who are actually desired by other clubs.

Claudius

Good assessment , Burnsy. One other positive is that we didn’t not feel compelled to fill left wing when we couldn’t land our targets. It shows clarify in buying strategy. And it leaves us in a position to try again in just 4 months.

awooga83

Claudius I think Arsenal might have to get real about valuations as well particularly for players we want in the attacking area as there is likely to be interest around them. Saying no this is what we think is fine but that means your probably only going to land players when nobody else is sniffing around which probably is not as likely a at the top tiers of talent.

Also there is a lot that Berta didn't lock that Rogers deal down is pretty bad because internally in the club that seemed like the guy they wanted and assumed would come to Arsenal. After that it was pretty panicked and clearly we had LW as the priority and we are weaker there at the end.

Meatwad

Claudius
well they must have learned from last summer. buying shit for the sake of it is how you end up with madueke doing madueke things and semenyo at city doing semenyo things with them instead of with us. that's the kind of lesson that gets seared into you.

awooga83
when you have the gall to tell somehow how much they should be selling you their thing for it means you don't care if you get it ... simple. they rated who they rated and weren't going to bend over unless they felt the player was a must get. if they panicked we would have bought fofana on deadline day. instead they told lyon what he was worth and moved on.

Panda

Yildiz, Paz and Kroupi the ones to keep an eye on for now.

Don Pacifico

So we know that:

The contacts based approach that Sanellhi (and to a lesser extent) Edu were derided for is actually a big part of the way Berta operates. The only (debatable) difference is that he's better at it than them (or that Arteta now has more influence to veto the deals he doesn't rate - Fofana).
Tzolis was not part of the plan. He was a market opportunity as was originally reported (and was most likely not earmarked to be our starting LW).
We reacted efficiently and effectively to bring in Guimaraes when it became clear that was a possibility.
Konsa wasn't part of the original plan and was a reaction to Saliba at the World Cup.
Berta was at best naive in his commitment to bringing Alvarez in and wasted too much time on that deal when we could have been making moves for someone else (eg. Ndiaye).

As an aside, Mokbel references the age of the players we've brought in a couple of times - whilst the policy to bring in experience has made sense when helping to secure a PL win, I've been saying for a couple of seasons now that we need to start refreshing the squad with younger players. A lot of the players that we used to think of as youngsters are now in their mid to late 20s and our age profile has now tipped into 'above average'. Win now but also plan for the future.

Burnwinter

Don Pacifico The contacts based approach that Sanellhi (and to a lesser extent) Edu were derided for is actually a big part of the way Berta operates. The only (debatable) difference is that he's better at it than them

Berta's a renowned spreadsheet guy which Edu and Sanllehi certainly were not: he's an ex-banker into parallel valuations and so on. In theory he's motivated by discrepancies in valuation across multiple models. But I'd say in practice (and based on that reported shortlist) when your squad's as stacked as ours you're not signing on too many nailed-on elite players moneyball style.

Burnwinter

Too many fans want us to buy and sell well but don't understand this means passing on a few overpriced signings and selling a few decent players. Just because the fees leapt over summer doesn't mean the football did. Eze would've been been a £95m signing this year.

As @Claudius has been preaching to the faithful, the appetite among the second tier to pay enormous fees has a lot to do with the heated competition to become incumbent in the Champions League places. That's not the cycle we're in. Last thing we need is to be adding £100m players who don't start. Aspects such as signing a trio of elite youngsters early who might wedge into our level in a season or two are encouraging: that's something we've needed to get back into.

Klaus

Burnwinter Too many fans want us to buy and sell well but don't understand this means passing on a few overpriced signings and selling a few decent players.

Just gonna leave this here because it sums it up perfectly.

Burnwinter Aspects such as signing a trio of elite youngsters early who might wedge into our level in a season or two are encouraging: that's something we've needed to get back into.

Martinelli is a good example of the kind of deal we should try to make more frequently: came here for peanuts, had a strong development that helped us climb in the table, suffered an injury that meant he never fully developed like he was supposed to, but still left for a transfer record. I'd sort Tzolis into the same category, maybe that young Kvara clone we just pinched too. Getting these lads a year or two later, once they cost 80-90 million and are no better at football, is pointless.

Don Pacifico

Burnwinter I'd add to that, that it's abundantly clear Berta is far more a spreadsheet man than he is a football man. As you allude to, he's happy to propose market opportunities whether or not they're the best suited option available to us. And as you say, when it comes to attackers, you're going to be hard-pressed to find cost-efficient buys at the top level.

Still, the fact we were willing to fund a £160m deal for Vinicius gives me some hope. Just that those kinda players aren't available very often.

Burnwinter

Don Pacifico As you allude to, he's happy to propose market opportunities whether or not they're the best suited option available to us

I don't get that impression and wouldn't endorse that view.

Locating players on the market who are somehow cheaper than they should be is very useful, but we don't need that now, we need to carve out the space in our budget to sign a player like Haaland or Vini Jr for £150m then pay him £500k per week. Evidently if we are to do that, the player must be guaranteed: if we're being honest, it can't just be Bradley Barcola.

That's why I think it's a positive we're speculating on a few unknown youngsters: the intensive analysis of known quantities will have become too evolved for us to maintain any obvious edge. Even then though we're getting into madness with mere teenagers like Monga who enter the spotlight.

awooga83

Don Pacifico this for me. I don't think anyone disputes the idea that many of these attackers aren't going for prices you consider "value" so the value aspect isn't an issue. It's just that no top players that we would be looking at will be going for that and we've been trying to improve that aspect for nearly 3 seasons now.

Of course you can point to Mbappe or Vini but they aren't coming here so what's the plan in your recruitment keep waiting for the perfect storm?

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