Before I start, this is not a Bellerin hate post so don’t come in here with that energy. I honestly don’t have the patience for anyone who hates Hector Bellerin. He’s never done anything wrong at Arsenal and I believe that much of the anger and hatred he gets is just homophobia masked as football fandom.
Reports have emerged today that Arsenal are trying to move Hector Bellerin, Nicolas Pepe, and Ainsley Maitland-Niles. The reports go on to say that Arsenal are finding it difficult to move these players and I’m just here to say “no shit.”
The problem that Arsenal have had in the past and still have is that we pay too much salary. Clubs all over Europe would take Pepe, for example, but he’s on 140k a week. That’s more wages than anyone is paid at Marseille. In fact, only a few clubs in Europe can pay those kinds of wages. Even clubs in England balk at those prices, Sadio Mane was on 100k a week when he was at Liverpool. That’s less than what Bellerin makes right now. And Ainsley Maitland-Niles is on a prohibitive wage as well, 50k a week.
This is the double-edged sword of the Premier League. We pay high wages, which means we attract great players, but the wages we pay mean we struggle to move players. Arsenal are paying Jesus $16m a year in wages (nearly treble what he made at Man C). Right now he’s worth the money but it’s a gamble to pay that much in wages. Hopefully, Jesus stays healthy and continues to produce. If he doesn’t then Arsenal have a player on astonishing wages that we cannot move.
Which is the situation with Nico Pepe, Bellerin, and Maitland Niles.
Look, I don’t blame these players. Pepe didn’t give himself that contract, the old management team did. Maitland-Niles actually asked to be traded and Wolves were ready to give Arsenal 20m for him. We turned it down. Bellerin is a slightly different case: he was a player that Wenger wanted for the long term and so we gave him the kind of contract that would make it difficult for other teams to poach him. HE was producing, playing well, then he ruptured his ACL and hasn’t been the same since. When he returned from injury, his running was different: he ran in arcs rather than making cuts. And not only that but he was a player who got forward and supplied assists and used his speed to recover and defend. That’s kind of gone now.
Saying that “they should take a paycut” is a non-starter. You can say it, but it’s extremely unlikely to ever happen. Yes yes, “don’t they like playing football?” Sure they do, but they also have bills and family to think about. And in all cases they have extremely short careers, and even shorter periods where they can make good money. To get Pepe to move easily, his salary would have to be at least half what it is now and I would be surprised to see a man give up 7m just because he likes playing football so much.
So, Arsenal are in a beggars/choosers situation with these players. We can’t really expect any transfer fees in return and may even need to subsidize some players, like Pepe, just to get their wages partly off the books. Arsenal been a poorly run club for a few years – mostly the immediate post-Wenger team – so we have these messes that we spend years cleaning up. That’s just how it is.
We are very bad at this. And we’ve not improved our approach.
Partey is on nosebleed wages… 200k a week (£10.4m a year) a 6x increase on his Atletico salary of low 30s a week. No one else is going to pay him that.
Eddie Nketiah is a 6 figures a week substitute. How much do you think Saka’s, Martinelli’s and Saliba’s agents are going ask for when they renew?
At least Partey was going into his final big contract situation, and playing for the high flying AM who wanted to give him a new and improved deal……but Pepe?
He was making €34kpw at Lille and no other big club was showing real interest in signing him.
Napoli did but they don’t pay high wages, and I seriously doubt we needed to pay him £140 kpw to convince him London was the better place and Arsenal the better club for him.
Simply insane.
Mane was on £100kpw and their new boy Diaz is on £60kpw.
Diaz looks miles the better player than Pepe has ever looked in Arsenal colors.
I was against the Iwobi for Pepe + 40m trade from the start. I didn’t think it made sense, and we can surmise that Raul Sanllehi had his own interests in getting certain deals through.
But at least to some extent we can balance out the loss on Pepe with the bargain that Saliba could turn out to be (No thanks to the current management team)
Ha, funny you should say that because just the other day I was musing at the Pepe, Saliba transfer window, and how we still have 100m worth of talent between the two………only it is Saliba who’s worth 75 while Pepe 25.
Hopefully Saliba signs an extension but if he does it’s not going to be cheap this time around.
Clubs like RM could pay him double what Arsenal might offer.
Our salaries can’t be so out line with other Premier League clubs if we’re 4th or 5th in the wages table. If Mane was ‘only’ on £100k pw, then I’m amazed he stayed at Liverpool as long as he did. So Pepe’s £140k and Eddie’s £100k (and Ainsley’s £50k) are probably, ridiculously, in line with the type of wages ‘similar’ players are getting at other clubs.
I would have though Pepe was worth a punt by another premier League club, or one of the top Italian or Spanish clubs – he’s skilful and knows where the goal is (his first season stats with us were great). Similarly Ainsley is a relatively experienced and proven PL player, so £50k would be worth paying. Agreed, neither is likely to command much of a fee on top. But worth a punt.
Hector is slightly different – £110k pw for a full back with ACL baggage is a punt. Definitely not worth paying a fee and it will probably require some wage subsidy to shift him, but he sounded like he did pretty well for Betis last season.
Well said.
if Capology is to be believed, then our wage structure is much improved from a few years ago, but still with room to be tweaked.
It makes sense for Jesus to be a top earner in our squad. The marquee signing, star striker, straight from the PL champions. His wages may be high, but you can see why. They’re still lower than the Ozils and Aubas of the past. He’s also 25, so the expectation would be you are paying him for his pre-peak and peak years. When he turns 28, then you have a decision to make, and you have to decide whether to take a risk (he does an Ozil), or cut him loose (ala Ramsey).
Partey at 200k is high, but he’s a key player. It’s also less than 20 other players in the PL. Given his importance to the team, I can swallow that.
Here in the US, it’s illegal to ask what a potential new hire’s old salary was. You’re not supposed to anchor to that, but to the market rate. So in that sense, former salaries are (and should be) irrelevant. If Partey used to make 30k a week and we offer him 60k, do we expect him to take it? Not if his agents are doing their jobs. They know his rate, they know what he’s worth, and they’ll make sure he gets it. You want to Partey, you have to pay.
(I really don’t like talking about Partey so let’s move on).
Pepe is an anomaly, and even talking market rates I think we are overpaying him. He had one good season. The old regime were throwing money around we are paying the consequences.
I could say the same about Tierney, who when we bought him was not a 110k pw player. He was a highly regarded prospect. But again, that’s old regime.
Ben White at 120k is higher than I would have expected, for similar reasons. But I guess if you spend 50m on a fee, you can’t pay pauper wages.
What you’re seeing for Odegaard, Tomiyasu, Ramsdale seems a lot more reasonable for their status as up and comers. This all changes in 3 years, when we have to sign extensions and they’ve become established players in demand elsewhere. We better have the success to match by then, or we’re becoming unsustainable.
Saka, ESR and Saliba will add 100k to their salaries once they renew (maybe more in the case of Saka). Gabriel too, probably.
But if you shift Pepe, AMN and Bellerin, that’s 300k a week that at the very least covers 3/4 of those renewals. renewals. Obv if we’re looking to sign 2 more players that disappears quickly, but it’s still important to shift those.
But compare that to our rivals. Capology again, Chelsea are almost double us. Man Utd even more (Sancho at 350k pw? Martial at 250? Rashford at 200?? Higher than City?!) Compared to them, we’re not doing badly, are we? Even Tottenham have a higher wage bill than us at the moment.
Again, it’s not about how little you can pay each player, but not overpaying. I think the new regime has done a good job there, from the looks of it. Get shot of the artefacts of the Sanllehi era, make sure success is commensurate, and you’re doing well.
Some insane context, Mbappe alone gets paid almost as much as our entire squad combined.
Mbappe and Messi (so not including Neymar) get paid more than Man City’s entire squad. Yes, Man City. It’s bananas.
And we’re the ones in trouble with FFP??
Well yes*, see, because we don’t have a nation state which can just give us a sponsorship worth a trillion dollars.
*arsenal are NOT in trouble with FFP. Read the Swiss Ramble’s thread
I haven’t read the thread – I’ll go back and do that. I was lazy with my words, going off of headlines. “Keeping tabs on” was the phrasing I’ve seen, which is obviously very different.
+1 Good shout. Swiss Ramble’s thread put paid to that rumor…which I suspect was floated to take the sheen off our blazing start to the 2022-23 campaign.
Hey Zed, nice analysis and useful tool there. I’ll have to remember that website.
I think all the clubs in the PL, especially the top 6, struggle with the issue of underperforming players on oversize wages. You have to pay what the going rate is in the market or players won’t sign for you and you lose credibility with agents and so forth, I would think. I’m not sure Arsenal are special in this regard, in fact I think it’s only recently that we became competitive in terms of wages with the clubs we are trying to join at the elite European table. All clubs make mistakes that then “kill you” (Edu’s words) because there’s nothing worse than having a 26+ year old player (already plateaued) on a $100k+ contract (won’t fly anywhere but England) who can’t contribute to your team. We can all think of several names on Arsenal that fit that description, but it’s worth remembering we are not alone.
The Swiss Ramble thread Tim references below was very helpful to contextualize our financial situation compared to that of our rivals. In brief, we’ve spent a lot but it’s Ok because before last season we didn’t spend much and sold a lot, for a long time. We also ate into our cash reserves that used to be like $250 million, now down to $18 million. The $150 million Bank of England loan has also already been repaid. Shifting big contracts, even on loan or buyout, helps a lot because it reduces the wage bill and something called player amortisation which I don’t fully understand but take to be the installment payments of his transfer fee. The sponsorship deals we have which are among the lowest value compared to our rivals are set to expire in 2024, plus the TV money keeps getting better, plus European football. My guess is that’s how Vinai and Josh think we will stay compliant with FFP despite the record high spend.
Amortization is sort of like installments, which most clubs also do.
Pepe, for example, cost 70m but we amortize that over 5 years so it’s 14m a year. Let’s say we get to his final year and somehow we get someone to pay 20m for him: in that case our amortization would only be 14m so we’d actually book a profit on Pepe of 6m even though we paid 56m over the first 4 years!
Loaning players out doesn’t help with amortization, we still have to write down the lost value of Pepe, but we save on his salary.
The amortization thing pops up every few years and once in a while some smart guy comes on and says “actually Arsenal could spend 500m this summer, if we amortize”.
I find myself i complete agreement with this, although I feel most player’s wages are a scandal in general, much like billionaires’ wealth.
*in; *players’
Dont quite share your benign view of our salary activity, Zed. If you have to pay Partey 6x his Atletico wage to snag him, youre not doing smart business, “key player” or not.
I agree with you on a player of Jesus’ age, profile and position… not Partey. Not Pepe, not KT, not Bellerin. All the regimes have done this. ArtEdu shouldnt be congratulating themselves over Auba. They were the ones who gave him the deal. And then they significantly subsidised his wages on a free to Barca… which now looks likely to get a fee for him. We’ve paid a high financial price for the manager’s expulsions.
Swiss Ramble’s financial nerdout was most interesting— to me — in showing how completely we’ve changed the financial philosophy of the club. We’re way outspending everyone, to the tune of more than half a billion pounds the last 5 or 6 years. Even if not subject to FFP sanction, we’re storing up trouble for ourselves later.
We dont bring players through anymore. If we end up adding, say, a Tielemans to our midfield, Id rather have suffered Patino’s learning curve than re sign 30 year old Elneny. One can enhance his financial value. The other cant, even if, as Josh correctly points out, he’s cheap for what he does.
In mitigation, Swiss is understanding of the club’s inability to get meaningful money for the players it wants to sell.
What we have to do is stop players getting to Year Zero on their contracts.
I *think* the reason they are spending so heavily (and it’s mostly borrowed money, BTW) is because they know that we are going to be making a lot more money in the future.
Yup. “You have to spend money to make money” is an adage for a reason…
It’s fairly easy to bring the wage bill down if you torpedo your team, write off contracts, and spend big to bring in players who are yet to hit peak age.
All the same we’ve paid some fairly large wages to go along with the large transfer fees. We’re also not in the CL bonus range as of now, and certain players are going to renew while being in demand in the next few years, if all goes well.
I don’t think the wage bill management is anything to write home about.
I hope we can find solutions that suit the outbound players. At this point I’m not concerned about the money or the savings we manage from this. What’s a few million here or there in relation to what we’ve been doing?
the Kroenkes had us in the Super League. that fell apart and they reassessed what they were willing to do to get in the CL. they probably also realised by then that what Wenger managed to do all these years was not likely to be replicated. Hence the heavy spending. We may not be in FFP trouble right now, but a couple more years without CL and we’ll see the money dry up and player sales become the focus again.
So we will be seeing Isak in the premier league… but behind the prison bars of Newcastle, not in north London red. Im much happier that we found Jesus. Still, Im looking forward to seeing the kid. I love a tall, classic 9.
Seeing credible rumors of interest in Neto emerge. I tried to learn more about him and found a couple of different opinions from two accounts who regularly provide high level tactical insight, which I think can both be right.
@EBL2017 described him as a perfect addition to Arsenal because he is of a similar profile as Raphinha and we are lacking that type of explosive, physical winger who can dribble at his man from all angles and complements that with the ability to strike the ball cleanly at goal or for an assist. He is also switched on defensively, he’s only 22, and he is an Arsenal fan. He attributes his relatively modest goals and assists record to young age, injury, and playing in a conservative Wolves outfit with few goal scorers to play alongside him. He sees Neto as ideal competition for Saka and Martinelli.
@nonewthing agrees that Neto is a fine player but doesn’t like the purported fee because he doesn’t see what Neto contributes to the team that we don’t already have in Saka and Martinelli. He champions names like Olise and Hudson-Odoi, and Yeremy Pino (also linked) whom he sees as having the combination of the same physical explosiveness and ball striking as Neto, but with the added ability to link play with their passing and technical security. He notes that Hudson-Odoi is coming off a major injury so may have lost some of the massive explosiveness that made him such a high value prospect in his early career, but still believes he is worthy of a reasonable transfer fee and would add solutions from the wing that Arsenal currently do not possess.
Has Bellerin come out as gay?
It’s of no consequence either way. He’s a fantastic person/personality and he was a fantastic footballer. Now he’s merely good but that’s good enough for me to follow him. He’s clearly short of the standard for this Arsenal side but I wish nothing but good things.