Arsenal’s former chief negotiator has given an interview to Goal dot com which has lifted the lid on the failed Suarez bid and if his goal was to explain what happened clearly or to paint Arsenal in any kind of good light, he failed yet again.
Let’s get this out of that way first: there was no release clause in the Suarez contract. Arsenal knew that, Liverpool knew that, and it’s still uncertain if Suarez’ people knew that or not but just to reiterate, there was no release clause.
There was a clause that said that if someone bids over £40m then the club has to inform the player and negotiate. So, Arsenal’s chiefs – Ivan, Dick, and Arsene – decided to offer… one additional Pound Sterling.
What Liverpool did next was shrewd. They told everyone that Arsenal made that bid (because they had to inform the player after all), gave a public statement about “what are Arsenal smoking”, and made Arsenal look like a laughing stock.
Law seems to think Liverpool “shot themselves in the foot” by making this clause public because they lost Suarez to Barcelona the next year after the Catalans made a £75m bid for him. This is a puzzling interpretation of shooting oneself in the foot; this idiom typically means that you unintentionally hurt yourself. But here Liverpool made Arsenal look foolish, kept the player, NEARLY WON THE LEAGUE, got into the Champions League, announced themselves as a serious title contender, and then sold the player for £35m more than Arsenal offered. It sure feels like they left that with both feet firmly intact. If anyone shot themselves in the feet, it was Arsenal’s chief negotiator, CEO, and manager.
Liverpool weren’t entirely brilliant in this. They took the Suarez money and blew it on Lambert, Lallana, Lovren and Lazar. But that might sound Dickish* when we consider that they have been pretty good at buying and selling players, have gotten back into the top four, and won the Champions League.
A few more things here. One, let’s not forget that we were balls deep in Higuain before we pulled out to go after Suarez. So, let’s not forget that the club could have just landed Higuain and been significantly better off but for some dumb reason decided to trash that plan and go for Suarez – while publicly pretending that he had a release clause.
Two, Dick Law says that “Suarez and his agent didn’t want to force the move” which explains why Suarez and his agent gave an interview to the Guardian in which he said he wanted to move but also in which he gave half-ass reasons for wanting to move. But again, there was definitely something going on with Arsenal trying to pretend that Suarez had a release clause. So much so that the player and his agent went to the PFA to demand a ruling. This really feels to me like Arsenal wanted to get Suarez, but only if we could get him for £40m. That explains why there was that obfuscation about the release, why the PFA was involved, and why Suarez gave that interview. We had somehow (probably though gigantic contract offer) convinced the player to try to push through a move but his heart wasn’t really in it.
And three, that summer’s transfer dealings always felt to me like the club had a plan and the plan was to spend £40m on a big name signing. To Dick’s credit, Arsenal landed Mesut Ozil from Real Madrid. That was a bit of good dealing because Real Madrid were told that that they couldn’t sell anyone to Arsenal by Tottenham because Tottenham had just sold them Gareth Bale. Also, Law did help Arsenal to land Alexis Sanchez the summer after and those two deals probably should have won Arsenal the League in 2016/17.
Had Arsenal opened with £50 or £60m, perhaps it would have been more difficult to make a mockery of the bid. But we didn’t. We tried to get Suarez on the cheap and failed. Not sure that’s the crime of the century but it doesn’t make the club look too shrewd.
What’s slightly infuriating is that the club doesn’t seem to have learned the lessons of the past. Trying to get players cheap is admirable but it’s very difficult to do and especially difficult between two Premier League clubs over a well known player. Yet here we are, once again offering half what a club thinks the player is worth, trying to unsettle the player, and hoping the player can force the move.
One last thing here: with the Swiss Ramble’s tweets about how much money Arsenal left on the table over the last decade and with these revelations about Arsenal’s rather ridiculous transfer negotiations, it’s finally coming to light what a disaster Ivan Gazidis was for this club. Wenger, Dein, and Fiszman did an admirable job building the Arsenal brand (and stadium) in the 90s and early 2000s. But then Gazidis came along and really squandered that capital.
The state of this club is a much bigger mess than many of us realized.
*an idiom I just coined, which means “dumb as someone who thinks shooting oneself in the foot means coming out way ahead on something, like Dick Law”.
John Henry lied at the time there was a clause in Suarez contract that a bid over £40 million opened negotiations.
Stupid stupid call to add that pound. But you’re likely right. They didn’t have much more to play with (Ozil was 42.5?) and tried to force the issue. That’s what caused it. They saw it as an opening offer and probably would have gone to 45 or even 50, but didn’t want to offer that straight up. Then Suarez backed down.
Personally, I never wanted Suarez here, so I can’t be too upset about it. But it’s never nice to see that your club was stupid.
I’m somewhat less harsh on Gazidis. I don’t see him as great, and I don’t think he’s as bad as Swiss Ramble makes out. Some of our sponsorships are just on a cycle that makes it appear we’re way behind. Our biggest flaw was not spending the cash reserves after we signed the new, liberating deals with Puma and Emirates. That’s the reason we’re now here while Spurs and Liverpool have overtaken us. But I don’t think that was on him. More like Kroenke.
For all his faults and mess ups, I’d rather Gazidis at Arsenal than Raul.
Ivan– and Mikel…
Wenger was as much at fault as Gazidis. The results on the field led to less opportunities for sponsorship money. The recruitment was confused and chronically too little, too late. That summer we lost on Suarez we also abandoned Higuaín at the altar (he would have been just a more expensive version of Giroud) and got outright rejected by Gustavo who wanted to stay at Wolfsburg of all places.
The club was at the centre of a Venn diagram of change-we-couldn’t-cope-with; big money coming into the Premier League via Chelsea and then City, mediocre results on the field, mediocre recruitment, mediocre academy development, a conservative use of cash on hand, bad management, negligent ownership and a radical upsurge in the quality of coaching at other clubs (Klopp, Guardiola, Pocchetino, Conte, et al).
I have been saving some gift cards that didn’t get used during the holidays. I’m sure a couple of 10 quid Amazon cards will put us in the running for a decent, reputable footballer. I’ll let the club know at once as they clearly need help.
(what.a.f^&king.joke)
I am sorry for this, but I still cant see why Gazidis is the villain of our current state. It feels like the tweets from Swiss Ramble are just used as confirmation bias by most. It is because of the following, that confuses me:
1. Recruitment wasnt down to him right? I doubt he is the one who decided against continuing negotiations for Mata, Hazard, Higuain and many countless others. He didnt scout the clubs transfer failures and I coudnt believe that he only allowed Arsenal to sign Petr Cech alone during a season where we could have made a big step up.
2. Commercial performance under his stewardship clearly takes a nose dive compared to our competitors when our football started failing and our competitors started improving. I still feel like Arsenal’s commercial reach is far bigger than many think. In Africa alone, Arsenal are the biggest supported English club. Its basically akin to the national team in Nigeria and Kenya, and we don’t even have a single Kenyan player to have played for us. People just stopped buying merchandise when Arsenal stopped performing. You cant sell failure, especially when there isnt potential to even succeed.
3. its hard for me to distinguish his role from Arsene’s reach.
Maybe I am missing something huge here, but can someone explain for me why there is such a hatred towards one individual for something that looks like a huge collective failure, within which he doesn’t even seem like the biggest factor of that failure.
I only somewhat disagree with #2. Other teams in similar positions(competing in UCL, top 4 in EPL) managed to handle business side of things better and managed to produce a revenue that is not related to transfers(our financial looked decent only because we were selling our best players and replacing them with cheaper and less capable ones) was mediocre and didn’t improve. And I believe that’s totally on him, I don’t think as much influence as Wenger had, it wasn’t up to him to improve marketability. Can’t sell failure? Maybe. But Arsenal was less of a failure than now and were still capable of playing some attractive football, something that brings more attention than trophies coupled with a boring arse football. I think as a brand of football goes, Arsenal were quite damn sellable, but our dear CEO failed at the only job he was given. Even had a nerve to get a bonus and higher salary than Liverpool’s CEO.
Agree that it is collective screw up, but it starts with people doing their job properly and he was one of those who didn’t.
Dick and Arsene were the others. A lot of people who didn’t do enough for the club to move forward.
“I am sorry for this, but I still cant see why Gazidis is the villain of our current state. ”
I would add two more arguments to explain why Gazidis did a poor job:
1. He was responsible for the wage structure, which is the main reason for the current payroll burden limiting Arsenal’s maneuvering room in the transfer market.
2. He failed to shake up the recruitment department when Arsenal scouts missed out on hidden gems (remember the pathetic scouting report on Kante). Instead, the club relied on StatDNA, which led to the signing of mediocre or average players.
Lets be clear here.Arsenal have suffered the “ perfect storm” with the three stooges ,Kroenke,wenger & gazidis coming together.anyone of them operating on their own & the damage might have been rectified sooner but all three have run a shit show for the last 10/12 years where they relied on ffp,hoarded the cash & accordingly were shafted by uefa & fifa who didn’t have the balls to enforce it.hence the likes of Chavs,citeh,PSG nouveau riche have run amok .Also a weak & spinless board hasn’t helped.This explains our current disastrous situation which will take at minimum 3/ 4 seasons to rectify.will it be enough?
Where’s my comment?
I don’t know… 🙄
First pre-season game today, even though mostly for the youth and reserves. Still, it’s Arsenal.
I hope the coach gets his act together this season. Actually that’s a lie. I have no hope.
Entirely* for youth players
Thanks for another thought provoking post Tim.
I agree with Devlin in that I don’t think Ivan was the only problem. Ivan was in charge of the commercial revenues and did a poor job in that arena but he was a business man.
Arsene is still a legend and always will be but I don’t think there is much doubt that he was still in change of all of the football decisions and he deserves most of the blame for the lack of direction in the long term squad building and squad management plan and the relatively poor recruitment choices and poor management of our transfer and wage budgets. Dick Law may have been the one who actually sat in on some of the negotiations but to suggest that he made moves and decisions that were not directed by Arsene seems unrealistic.
Shard
Last season was a mess in a lot of ways and I agree the manager made a lot of mistakes and was he probably overwhelmed in some ways. I understand why you and many people might think we need to sack him now and cut our losses and change now rather then prolong the inevitable. . That said I think any manager deserves some time to adapt to a new situation and I don’t like the idea of sacking someone after one season.
My hope is that he is smart enough to realize that he overestimated the players on our squad and most importantly he overestimated his ability to reinvigorate and improve certain players that he counted on. I think he panicked when things did not go the way he had expected and hopefully he will take a reasonably honest look at what did go wrong and try to understand where he went wrong. First thing he needs to figure why he could not decrease the number of goals we conceded. Huge improvement is needed on that end of the pitch . My hope is that he will hit the reset button and start the season with a more realistic plan and does a much better job of reacting to adversity. If next year is anything like last season I will be on the bandwagon with you calling for a manager
I thought I typed this comment before but it disappeared.
I agree with jack Action and Devlin. Ivan was certainly at fault for the failure on the commercial side of the equation.
Arsene was the only football person we had and he was in charge of all of the football decisions for almost this entire decade . His responsibility was to build a coherent long term plan and manage which players to recruit and sell and squad management. Dick Law may have been the one who did actual hands on negotiating but I don’t think there was much question he was under the direction of Arsene who was the one making the ultimate decisions. Arsene did a masterful job for many years and will always be a legend and I am sure many people will want to avoid placing any blame on him. However I think the latter part of his reign was a mess. He stuck around at least 1-2 contracts longer then he should have.
Good read. The Arsenal needs to see this. I hope we get the Zaha and T deals over the line.
I have no hope left in Emery either…just waiting for the inevitable…hopefully some games are watchable in between…
I flat out refuse to believe what Dick Law says in the Goal interview about the clause.
As the OP points out, Liverpool got an awesome year and 75m out of Suarez while Arsenal were left with their dick in their hands, looking like a fool. I use this as a baseline to determine Law is playing pretty fast and loose with the facts to whitewash his record.
Also, as Shard points out, Ozil came for 42.5m, so Law’s reasoning that the original 40m+1 was only a conversation starter doesn’t really seem to hold any water. Also, clubs seem to be able to start transfer conversations all the time without such clauses and offers, e.g. going over and saying ‘I fancy that guy, how much he cost?’ There’s no explanation of why Arsenal would’ve had to resort to anything else than standard procedure.
This interview is just another example why one side’s account of things has to be taken with a grain of salt.
People involved at this level of management will never come absolutely clean about matters but rather attempt to paint themselves in favorable colors.
Clearly from Law’s interview one can infer someone ( players’ agent most likely) showed them the contract which if not illegal, at the very least would be unethical.
Especially for a club that has been hoisting itself above others on the values scale so to speak.
Does anyone think Wenger’s memoirs or a tell all, if ever written, might reveal where they got that information from?
Fat chance.
It was common knowledge that Suarez had a buyout clause. This was from 2012 before we tried to trigger it.
latest news during the coming months. Today, Luis Suarez could leave Liverpool for £40m.
Luis Suarez Liverpool
Liverpool are bracing themselves for summer interest in Luis Suarez after it emerged the Chelsea and Man City target has a £40m buy-out clause in this contract, according to the Mirror.
“We got information that showed us what was negotiated between Liverpool and the player , and in our internal conversations decided that the clause was meaningless……..”
Does that sound to you like a common knowledge thing or rather an actual wording of the contract only two parties should’ve been privy to, Arsenal not being one of them.
This is the liverpool owner john henry saying suarez had a buyout clause,
Watch from about 2 mins in.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eP1hL46SqoE
This just proves the point I raised.
One man’s account unverified might just be a story he tells to project himself certain way.
In this case a shrewd and uncompromising business tycoon.
I really do not understand the need some Arsenal fans have to collaborate with opposition attempts to undermine our team. Arsenal held a legitimate belief that if an offer in excess of£40m came in (for Suarez), Liverpool were contractually bound to negotiate. They were also led to believe that Suarez was prepared to push for a move. Thus, Arsenal’s legitimate expectation, was that an offer of £40m + £1 would trigger serious negotiations between the two clubs that stood a good chance of landing the player. Probably, not for £40m + £1, but in the circumstances, as an opening bid, then why not ? Now, what Arsenal hadn’t bargained for, was the Liverpool response of shrewdly playing the whole thing out in public, using ridicule and feux outrage to great effect, characterising Arsenal as scheming and parsimonious. In reality, no more so than anyone else, but the +£1 played out well for them; obviously with their own fans, and with a press who had formed a liking for putting Arsenal in a cocked hat, but crucially, with a significant element of our own, self-critical fanbase, who by sympathising with Liverpool, rather played into their hands. With the benefit of hindsight, we could have played the situation better, but it’s not the wholesale incompetence some seem determined to make out. Now we see the same tactics being employed by Crystal Palace with regard to Zaha, despite what is a perfectly legitimate opening offer from Arsenal – and why not, it worked for Liverpool. And that’s fine, it’s their prerogative to defend their interests as they see fit. Arsenal fans have legitimate cause to criticise many aspects of the way our beloved club is being run right now. But that doesn’t mean we should be so ready to line up with other teams, the press etc, who are keen to exploit this dissatisfaction for their own interests.
Seeing as we have here a clear example of nonsense being reported about our transfer business, which we have seen so many times since does anyone actually know that we have made an offer for Zaha?
By know, I mean know, not simply what one paper or blog or another may allege.
This whole transfer window speculation is dampening my anticipation for the forthcoming season, so much so that I feel that if we are going to blow our whole transfer budget on a known cheat and diver, I may lose interest altogether. Even more so, if in order to do so we give up one of our new young jewels, as one paper suggests,.
USA USA USA. The women were awesome.
I understand why some people don’t like VAR and there is no doubt it will growing pains but I think all of the calls it was used to make were correct calls and that is the critical factor. IMO
Cmon Bill, Morgan’s dive for the penalty was a game changer.
At least according to some viewers including some English ex-pro quoted in The Guardian who’s acid test for a dive is apparently and I quote: “ Would a player have gone down if holding a baby. I think it’s fair to say Morgan would not have fallen over with baby in her arms .It was a lame dive . A game changer.”
So funny though, from all the years playing and watching football / soccer I have never heard this particular analogy used to describe male players going down under contact. A bit weird this.
Here’s a few other acid test for women’s game:
Would she have gone down while cleaning her China,
Would she have gone down while serving her husband a soufflé .
17 to 5 in total shots, 10 to 1 shots on target, 8 to 2 corners , more ball possession, passes , better pass accuracy , ………. or as some have said VAR and refs gave it to the US team.
Madness.
Yeah, the barely disguised sexism against the women’s game is disgusting.