Nasri Signs Apparently, RvP & Contracts, Other Stuff

A quick addendum at the beginning for today’s post with The Telegraph reporting that Arsenal have completed the signing of Samir Nasri for £12.5m. Nothing on the official site as I type so you do wonder if the boys in their newsroom have jumped the gun slightly. We shall see. Anyway, on with the rest of today’s post as it was going to be…

And I realized then that the wages of sin
Was two bucks an hour and working weekends

– The Wages Of Sin, The Rainmakers

OK so it is a tad out of context in terms of the post but it was the first song that sprang to mind when reading the comments made by Robin van Persie. The wage demands of the players are guaranteed to provoke strong reactions amongst fans and the media know this, phrasing their reports with emotive language. The Dutchman’s comments are a thinly veiled criticism of the Board’s wage structure, in particular they are aimed at the departure of Mathieu Flamini and the same fate presumed of Alexandr Hleb, and nothing at all to do with the rumoured contract negotiations he is undertaking, if indeed he is,

Arsenal have a policy in which they will not go over a specific amount of money when agreeing the salary of a player. They won’t pay enormous amounts of money. I think that they should go to a higher level of salary. If you want to keep the group together, you have to keep them happy. If you are 27 or 28, I can understand that you would make the decision to go elsewhere if you can earn three or four times as much. If that sort of money was also paid here, I’m sure that person would stay. It is the principle. It is very important that Arsenal keep these guys. This group is unique. If a number of them leave, it will be different. I think of myself as an Arsenal man but Arsenal should also try to make sure that we all grow together

If one takes van Persie at his word, he displays the naïveté of youth. At best it is ignorance of the ‘real world’. Indeed, he raises fundamental questions about the operation of the club. There is little doubt that there is more money flowing into the game as a whole and Arsenal benefit greatly from this. However, there is a new stadium to be paid for and only one club is this world has a seemingly limitless pot of cash upon which to call. The rest of football operates on a carefully constructed budget – either well designed or fundamentally flawed with most clubs falling into the latter category. Wages in football are extortionately high yet subject to the same supply and demand patterns of other industries. It just so happens that the gene pool for employers to call upon is more limited than most.

Looking at the specifics of the current squad and Mathieu Flamini, the offer from AC Milan that he has accepted seems baffling. This is a man that has not even been called upon by his country to participate at Euro2008. He is not going to sell large volumes of shirts so – if the reported salary is correct – how do Milan make the money to contribute to the drain on their finances that he will cause. Obviously not having to pay anything other than rent on their ground is a massive boost yet with Italian attendances dwindling on a seasonal basis and the lucre of the Champions League missing, they are heavily reliant on their broadcast revenues to survive; some might argue dangerously so.

Van Persie uses the logic of ‘if they can do it, so should we’ but life is not like that and he needs to appreciate this. He is rightly concerned that the wage structure might allow others to leave but our erstwhile Dutch forward needs to recall the clubs recent history. It has form in paying high salaries from Campbell through to Henry and Ljungberg; it so happens that those deals turned out to be bad due to the poor returns received after the ink was dry on the contracts. The message is ‘we will pay if we deem it worthwhile’.

The number of core members of the squad that must be held onto is very small indeed. The majority of the squad are good players but at this moment in time, I would suggest that the ones who should not be allowed to leave are Sagna, Clichy, Fabregas and Adebayor. The remainder contribute greatly to the whole but those four individuals are a solid basis upon which to build. RvP could join that group but the past two seasons have shown him to be physically unreliable; Rosicky is in the same boat. Walcott potentially could be the same in the moving into the essential players category. The rest? Replaceable. That is not to say that I want them to go – far from it – but highlighting the essentials and the rest.

That said, the squad as a whole works astonishingly well and has a sense of unity – Bendtner and Adebayor’s spat aside. Part of the reason is that there is no large disparity in wages. If Danny Fiszman is correct and the Arsenal wage bill is similar to that of United and Liverpool, the squad are largely well rewarded for their roles. The four singled out above perhaps more than others deserve more because they are delivering on a consistent basis. The rest need to work on their game in varying forms before they can beat down Arsene’s door. 

On which subject, the vapid imaginations of the media are stirring up a hornet’s nest over Cesc’s contract negotiations. His representative is a Dein – aha, they cry. The Board will not like that! Except the Board are very likely being led by Ken Friar crooning, “War, huh? Good God y’all, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing”, wondering what the hell all the fuss is about given they have been supposedly thinking about giving him a new deal anyway. As for the assertion that Dein Jr. is more of a pain than Diaz was simply on the basis of whom Daddy is, well that I find hard to believe. Let no-one forget how Diaz was constantly touting his client around via various media outlets – will Dein do any different? No, so where is the worsening of the situation?

Just when you thought you had got to the end of the post with no substantive mention of Alexandr Hleb, up pops his little Byelorussian head to say, “Hi, Hugs, I might stay after all”. I doubt he will and more likely that the Spanish media will be right in presuming he is en route to the Camp Nou. This is starting to look like “Reyes II – The Return” in the manner of the departure with lots of claims and counter-claims coming out. Tellingly though, nothing yet on the official site, not that one expects any comment on a transfer that is being played out in the media. Still he will find friendly faces in Barcelona with Henry already there, soon to be joined by Emmanuel Adebayor. Talking of old rumours, Miguel Veloso has flitted into the limelight again with a transfer fee on his head that is spookily like that mentioned for Hleb – I wonder if they could be related? Running onto The Emirates pitch next season might not be Gary Lewin with the FA wanting him to join the national squad on a full-time basis, his replacement seems to be one Neal Reynolds so welcome to Arsenal young man whilst Gilles Grimandi is going to keep ‘em peeled for Arsene having rebuffed the seductive advances of Paris St Germain.

Right I’m off to start the repairs now that the weather has broken which has a very real possibility of degenerating into a startling accurate remake of ‘The Plank’. ‘til Tomorrow.