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Wages

Good Morning!

So a friend of mine who is a Chelsea fan sent me an article last week which states that the Arsenal wage bill has overtaken that of Chelsea.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/arsenal/11110007/Arsenals-annual-wage-bill-moves-ahead-of-Chelseas-for-first-time-in-more-than-a-decade.html

Now I think this article is fairly poorly written and based on numerous assumptions. Unless its an opinion piece I think you should have all the facts if you are going to write an article like this. For example the writer is comparing Arsenal's wage bill from last season with Chelsea's from two years ago. An odd comparison.

However it doesn't escape the fact that Arsenal are either paying very close to or more than Chelsea in wages. This begs the question are we overpaying our top players. Szczesny is rumoured to be on £100K a week which compared to Courtois on around £60K is a bit of a joke. Or Oscar on £70K while we are paying Arteta £80K a week. Schurrle on £70K while we pay £100K to Podolski.

Have our wages spiralled out of control? And should we be expecting at the very least a title challenge and Champions League quarter finals, paying our players as much as Chelsea who will certainly do both?

posted on 26/9/14

comment by What would Stuart Pearce do? (U3126)
posted 3 hours, 26 minutes ago
The Godfather

Having circa £200m in the bank is not going to score goals or keep clean sheets.
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It does make a lot of money in interest though.

posted on 26/9/14

comment by What would Stuart Pearce do? (U3126)
posted 1 hour, 27 minutes ago
Jenius99

Not sure why you feel all those players were a waste of money?

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Quite simply their wages + transfer fees coupled with the fact that they have little or no sell on value is not justified when you also look at their output on the pitch.

Dein agreed to a formula where you could spend high on transfer fees as long the players were young or had a sufficient brand to recover the fees quickly. That mitigates risk if they do not provide the output required.

So for example if you spend £16m on 23 year old eg Welbeck, you should still be able to recover most of the outlay if he doesn't develop. Or if you spend £42m on a Ozil you can still recover most of that (because of his brand) if the player does not work out. Chelsea use that model quite well in recent years.

Those 4 players in my opinion did not deliver their promised out put and then because they did not conform to the model they have blocked wages that could go to better players thereby weakening and unbalancing the squad. Keep in mind its wages that have the greatest effect on ffp.

As long as your squad is out of balance because of 'wage blockers' you can never build it to sufficient strength to win trophies. This is why Wenger's social wages model was so damaging to the club.

posted on 26/9/14

comment by The Godfather (U10154)
posted 1 hour, 35 minutes ago
comment by Sheriff John Brown - bring back David Dein (U7482)
posted 1 hour, 9 minutes ago
And the worst part about overpaying players is that it's difficult to move them on if it doesn't work out. What club would like to buy Podolski or Rosicky or Arteta on the kind of wages they earn? Why would Schalke or Wolfsburg or Cologne who operate at less than half our wage budget want to pay Podolski £100k a week? Except we're lucky and the player agrees to take a pay cut - which is rare.
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Have you ever written anything positive about Arsenal on this forum? In fact do you actually enjoy supporting arsenal?

You should seriously consider getting a new hobby.....even I feel down on your behalf, when reading your negative spin on everything Arsenal related.


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Better not read anything Castor posts then...

posted on 26/9/14

I doubt it's higher than Chelsea but it's normal it should be close, we have a deep squad of quality players and if we want to keep them we have to pay the going rate. We have the cash to pay it now so we don't need to lose players, the problem Chelsea have is they need to sell to buy.

posted on 26/9/14

Chelsea made money selling all the players they had on loan which they bought before FFP started. They could struggle struggle in the next few years because they always bought a lot of flops since Abramovic took over.

posted on 26/9/14

We have the cash to pay it now so we don't need to lose players, the problem Chelsea have is they need to sell to buy.
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Unfortunately so do we. If you look at our wage/turnover ratio is now pretty poor and FFP is calculated over two years of profit/loss sheet. Reserves only help to write off wages. But we do not do that as a club. This was the problem with Podolski and Arteta in the summer. No wants them at their demands. So we will have to write-off a percentage of Pods wages to move him on and possibly all of Arteta's before we can buy a Carvalho. And Wenger just isn't very ruthless so we are stuck with players even though their legs are gone or are less than productive eg Pod, Giroud or Flamini.

posted on 26/9/14

I thought we were meant to be sorting out our wages, clearly not

posted on 26/9/14

"Have you ever written anything positive about Arsenal on this forum? In fact do you actually enjoy supporting arsenal?
You should seriously consider getting a new hobby.....even I feel down on your behalf, when reading your negative spin on everything Arsenal related."

Can you stick to the topic, you idiot? I have no interest in burying head in Wenger's ar.se with you. I prefer breathing in the fresh air.

posted on 26/9/14

The reality is our wage model is very inefficient. There's much greater disparity between our wages and Spurs/Dortmund/Atletico Madrid than there is between our wages and Madrid/Barca/City/Man U etc. Yet, we're far closer in level to the previous group. Our wage bill is even higher than Bayern's. Like I said previously, I don't mind us spending the big money that we have, but it should be on proven, consistent performers that are worth it - not over the hill players like Rosicky, Podolski and Arteta or players who have proven nothing like Wilshere, Welbeck, Szczez, Ox etc.

posted on 29/9/14

Not really appropriate to contrast AFC’s wages to that of non UK based clubs, as they are not equally comparable, (for numerous reasons) however at circa 55% to turnover, wages are well within normal expectations for a PL club.

Again inaccurate to compare AFC’s wage bill to Spurs as they are not a CL club.

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