Big bad Berta: Page 9 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One more in the Tolly

Big bad Berta

Claudius

DiabyKungFu do you even look at how much other clubs are spending. For your information, Anderson and Rogers were transferred for a combined £230m this summer. Chelsea have far outspent the entire Arteta era since the new owners took over.

Gunner89

brother he knows the FFP inside out, it's like the wenger days when he didn't pony up an extra million and some bunch of defenders would say the club is skint

Sicario2

This whole having several deals/talks spinning plates is really backfiring this summer for Berta. Just because a strategy worked in 2025 doesn’t mean it will work in 2026. Clock is ticking on the new season and we have effectively signed no one. Needs to pivot or we will continue to lose out.

CPM

Just ponying up for the big splash signing doesn't always work out. You think Liverpool would spend all that cash on Wirtz and Isak if they could do it over again?

Mirth

There’s nothing to suggest it works for Chelsea either

Source: Chelsea 2022 onwards

Klaus

You gotta have your own idea of what a player is worth when you're working with a budget, otherwise you'll be stuck with one or two expensive players that prevent you from getting anything else done. There has to be a line somewhere.

To me it sounds like we valued Morgan around 70-80 million and were even willing to go a little bit beyond to close a deal, but Villa were never in the same ballpark.

We might end up getting both Tzolis and Bruno instead for the same money Chelsea just paid for Morgan. That's better business, and it might also leave us with more to spend if someone more extraordinary becomes available.

People seem to think £100 million transfers are becoming normalized, but I think it's a pain threshold that is being reached. It's unsustainable in the long run, even for a league as irresponsible as Premier League. What we'll see instead going forward is a lot more release clauses and conditionals being inserted into contracts. No player wants to gamble his big career move on Chelsea or Liverpool having the poor judgment to pony up 120 million quid, and no club wants to be left holding the bag on the next Isak or Wirtz.

RowJimmy

Klaus
To me it sounds like Villa were willing to talk at 90M£ until they saw the Anderson fee, then said, we want that.

Qwiss

Klaus if £80m was the top of what we'd pay for Rogers then we are desperately out of step with the market. Some reports that we were willing to go to £100m which is fair enough.

Burnwinter

Klaus People seem to think £100 million transfers are becoming normalized, but I think it's a pain threshold that is being reached. It's unsustainable in the long run

It's unsustainable once these clubs have signed a couple each. This is at least a loosely revenue-capped market, so we don't have to wait for the crisis. Each club has a model of how much each other club could spend.

Going after Guimarães, even though Spurs had already paid through the nose for Tonali, is the gorilla-type move that gets us value here. Guimarães wants Arsenal because we're the gorilla. Find a little crack in Newcastle's skull, apply a bit of torque, and the whole thing splits into two neat halves, like a mutant watermelon. Something unexpected that suddenly seems hard to prevent.

Fans have it wrong. In this kind of market it's the clubs that are more vulnerable or desperate for reasons of transition or reputation that have the incentive to move first. Look what happened to Spurs when they competed on players last summer. Greater strength is more patient.

JazzG

Klaus To me it sounds like we valued Morgan around 70-80 million and were even willing to go a little bit beyond to close a deal, but Villa were never in the same ballpark.

I think Villa were probably willing to do a deal between £75m-£90m range but recent signings by Spurs and Man City have shifted their valuations. Fair enough, at the end of the day if you are looking to sell you should always try to get the best deal you can.

If we wanted the guy we probably should have pushed harder to get it done before the world cup and probably would have done a deal under £100m, the longer it drags out the more desperate clubs get and the PL is flush with cash and full of a lot of stupid people throwing money about.

Claudius

Klaus People seem to think £100 million transfers are becoming normalized, but I think it's a pain threshold that is being reached. It's unsustainable in the long run, even for a league as irresponsible as Premier League. What we'll see instead going forward is a lot more release clauses and conditionals being inserted into contracts. No player wants to gamble his big career move on Chelsea or Liverpool having the poor judgment to pony up 120 million quid, and no club wants to be left holding the bag on the next Isak or Wirtz.

Disagree with this. If you look at the most expensive transfers ever, they're clustered in the last few years. So clearly teams just have much more capacity to put money on an Isak, Rice, Morgan, Henderson, etc., than they did before. I think the other factor is as the league has gotten richer, there is much more competition for Champions League places. So the potential downside of not doing something bold in the transfer market is basically losing out on 100m+ pounds in annual income.

Given that a transfer fee is amortized in your financials over 5 years, the tradeoff is easy if you are a marginal team like Chelsea, Spurs, Liverpool etc. You pay the big fee and hope it pays off.
That just creates inflation for everyone else.

SimplyTheBest

Desperate clubs do desperate things and Chelsea are desperate.

Kinda glad we missed out on Rogers. Good player but seemed an attempt by Arteta at acquiring an English big bopper without knowing exactly how he was going to use him. He's no winger and not what we need in midfield.

Hopefully we've got some shrewd business up our sleeve that will strengthen the team in the right areas.

lorddulaarsenal

How we approach this window is quite intriguing

samthegooner

I still feel like in 40 days we will be looking back on this window as a successful one. Still lots of irons in the fire and I have faith we will bring in a couple of very good players, ideally at slightly lower fees than our rivals are paying.

lorddulaarsenal

£117m for Teemu Bellingham is crazy

Rohit

Rohit Just get Bruno, and then do a madness to bring over Vinicius Jr. so Bruno has another compatriot to settle into London with and add to our Brazilian contingent.

We are a rich club now, we won the league, made it to the CL final, we have significantly augmented commercial revenue, time to really make a statement. I know it's not the wishlist thread, but still.

Come on Arsenal!

Qwiss

Claudius much more capacity to put money on an Isak, Rice, Morgan, Henderson, etc.

Burnwinter

Claudius Disagree with this. If you look at the most expensive transfers ever, they're clustered in the last few years. So clearly teams just have much more capacity to put money on an Isak, Rice, Morgan, Henderson, etc., than they did before.

Nah, this is an argument that the normal fee of a transfer is rising consistently, but not that £100m transfers are normal.

Going by Transfermarkt there have been 15 transfers over £100m (give or take) in the roughly 15 windows since the first one in 17–18. The average transfer in the Premier League in 25–26 was still just under €10m. Wirtz and Isak were the only two transfers to clear €100m last season, 0.25% or so of the total number. Rogers, Anderson and Tonali so far this summer.

It's fine to grasp we might need to spend that much at times, we would have to on Vinicius and we already have on Rice. It's another thing to think loosely with fees and wages by treating £100m as normal when it's maybe three sigmas above normal for the league.

Claudius

Qwiss we don’t know yet how many clowns and soldiers there are

Qwiss

Claudius you said Henderson instead of Anderson, that what I was joking about.

Claudius

Burnwinter Burnsy, please see below. These transfers are not the norm, but clearly they are increasing. Total transfer spending in Premier League has gone from £1.2Bn to £3.2Bn from 2016 to 2026, around a 10% growth per annum. Big transfers, while NOT the norm, are also becoming increasingly frequent with . 5 of the 10 biggest deals in history having happened in the last 3 years. And none are from before 2017. Ib

Neymar, £200m, 2017, PSG
Kylian Mbappé, £165.7m, 2018, PSG
Alexander Isak, £125m, 2025, Liverpool
Morgan Rogers, £117m, 2026, Chelsea
Elliot Anderson, £116m, 2026, Manchester City
Moisés Caicedo, £115m, 2023, Chelsea
Ousmane Dembélé, £114m, 2017, Barcelona
João Félix, £113m, 2019, Atlético Madrid
Antoine Griezmann, £107m, 2019, Barcelona
Enzo Fernández, £106.8m, 2023, Chelsea

What's also interesting is if you go back to the 2000s, typically the biggest deals were for absolute bangers of players - Figo, Kaka, Cristiano, Zidane, in the 50-60m pound range. We are well past those small amounts and big transfers being reserved for proven superstars.

Gurgen

Claudius How many on that list were worth the money? Bar Mbappe it's basically a long list of flops and the best argument against spending that kind of money on one player.

Burnwinter

Claudius Burnsy, please see below. These transfers are not the norm, but clearly they are increasing.

You've cited the same data I did to make the same point? Each window there are a bare handful of transfers over £100m out of many hundreds across the top leagues. Such transfers aren't normal, not even for the biggest clubs, but fees are rising.

I don't disagree another £100m transfer could be a thing we do. But we've only ever had one, and don't need to beat our player valuations to have another. Cannon Stats walked through Chelsea's overpayment on Rogers the other day. Evidently Vinicius Jr is a different case.

Your stronger line from before is that clubs contending for Europe have greater spending incentives ... I agree, but by that line we might have lesser incentives.

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