The thing to believe about Berta's regime is this: Arsenal always has alternatives.
I reckon we've been doing a more gamified and contingent approach to transfer window dealings since Berta arrived.
To my mind we likely set up sliding maxima on the annualised costs of each targeted signing in advance, together with rules about when and how those maxima would change in response to both our concrete knowledge as well as actuarial estimates of other deals proceeding or falling through, with nett spend the objective cap, and that cap also subject to contingencies, as we saw last summer when Havertz's injury rationalised the late spend on Eze for the Board.
And we very likely model as well as monitor other clubs' activity, and we were likely crystal clear that Chelsea might have incentives to go overboard on Rogers relative to our positions.
If you really had Arsenal's level of resources to maximise in the market, it's hard to see why you'd try to do it any other way. I'm not an actuary or fund manager and couldn't give a shit about stocks, but the analytical and decision support techniques are there as far as I know. Perhaps someone else on OMITT can enlighten us. If they're not, shall I just go off and become a billionaire overnight by having been the first person in history to think of them? Do we think Tony Bloom and Matthew Benham don't do this kind of thing?
Fans seem to think "moneyball" starts and ends with football data, and also seem to think Arteta and Berta are sitting about in some special "transfer den" deciding whether to "dither" or be "brave" at moments like this. Arteta's on a business holiday in the United States watching the World Cup final, mates.
Now, if "Arsenal always has alternatives" and we've had KSE's commitment to investment in major trophies demonstrated for many seasons and we've only just had the World Cup final and the worst thing that's happened in the window is very good players that still wouldn't necessarily shift the dial for Arsenal, such as Anderson, Tonali and Rogers, changing hands for obscene sums of money to our rivals … then it's early in the piece to assume we're going to fuck up the whole transfer window. I'd actually be more worried about Liverpool fucking us up than City, Spurs or Chelsea at this moment.
What else has changed? Well, Berta's not a Joorabchian protégé for one thing, so our transfer policy is less driven by anyone's little black book.
