Bard
Whilst we seem to be in reasonable form on the field the elephant in the room is the contract situation regarding our two top players, Ozil and Sanchez. The critical question is not so much can we afford to play them but more what would be the fallout if we don’t pay them? We are led to believe, they are asking for £250,000+ per week. This will put them on a par with other players of similar ability. The figure being bandied about in the media is Pogba’s jaw dropping £290,000 per week. It has been clear for a while that £200,000 per week is the minimum going rate for a top player.
Arsene Wenger delivered a bizarre take on this subject in the week suggesting that money wasn’t or shouldn’t be the only criteria for signing. Other factors like loyalty, the ambition of the club etc. should be taken into account. Laudable though the argument is it might have had more weight had it not come from a club like Arsenal that has sold its soul for the dollar and from a manager who hasn’t been shy of exploiting his earning potential. He speaks a lot about seeing out his contract as some kind of selfless act but it also strategically puts him in the driving seat to negotiate a pay rise should he decides to sign another deal. Incidentally it’s my view that he will sign if we make 4th spot and have a decent CL run. He just needs to wait and make sure he delivers his usual runners up slot bolstered by a CL run. I say this not from any sense of injustice or anger with either the players concerned or Wenger. After all you can’t criticize someone for wanting to maximize their earnings.
I wrote last season that the transfer fees and wages paid by City for Sterling and De Bruyne signaled a seismic shift in the amounts of money paid for and to players and would result in Arsenal being well and truly stuffed in the new transfer world. The fallout from this was felt this summer when we couldn’t buy a decent striker and had to make do with a lesser signing, Perez. There was a lot of guff about the difficulty of finding ‘top quality’ but this was no more than the usual Arsenal smoke and mirrors. We filled the gap by ‘bigging up’ Theo, nothing more than a PR exercise if we are honest and making Sanchez our main striker. To some extent this placated the believers but to my mind it was only ever a makeshift option. The truth is we weren’t willing or able to spend £60m plus wages on a striker.
To rub salt into the wound midseason our two star players are asking for huge pay rises. If Arsenal accede to their demands it will blow Arsenal’s wage structure clean out of the water. I read reports that Wenger has insisted that no player be paid more than him, although this may be no more than media mischief. One presumes the player’s agents know that someone is willing to fork out these sorts of wages. When that legendary managerial hard man Fergie was presented with similar demands from Rooney’s agent, he capitulated immediately rather than risk losing him. He was quick to recognize that the top players hold the aces these days. Arsenal being Arsenal one can only assume that the opposite is more likely to happen in which case Sanchez and Ozil might well be offski at the end of the season. How they sell this to disgruntled fans along with a vision of mixing it with the big boys remains to be seen.
But what it also means is that Arsenal won’t be buying a top class striker or any other top class player any time soon, which I am sure is a blessed relief for Stan and the board but not so good if you want Arsenal to be competing at the top level. It adds further ballast to the argument that last season was a huge missed opportunity.
