Why oh why wasn’t peppy booked for that…oh brown envelopes!!!
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I’m not sure I’d be taking 'Football Insider’s word for anything especially as the link to the wages posted in that article shows him as being paid £54K a week. Anyway, whatever he’s being paid it’s far too much and I hope everyone associated with this transfer is ‘embarrassed’ about it and ‘have vowed not to let such a mistake repeat itself’. A shocking waste of time and money.
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What’s the lesson to learn though? Don’t make a desperate end of transfer window loan deal when it is clear you have a problem? If he was a sure thing, he would not have been available that way. The error was made ‘upstream’ so to speak, we needed long-term midfield help earlier in the summer. Arthur was a gamble, no more or less. Gambles don’t always work out, that is why they are gambles. If there is a ‘vow not to let such a mistake repeat itself’, it has to be allowing the side to be in that position in the first place.
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He hadn’t kicked a ball since April. He’d had no pre-season and he’s got a poor injury record. In the 13 minutes he’s played for us he looked about as fit as me. How we ever thought he was going to fit into a Klopp team I will never know. Credit to him for trying to get up to speed with the junior lads but the outcome was predictable. A long term injury. As I said, a total waste of time and money and not entirely surprising.
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Even that late on in the window there were much better players available to buy, but we tried to cheap out with a loan. Similar to the Kabak & Davies window.
Hopefully we actually do learn our lesson. Had we pushed the boat out a bit for somebody like Mac Allister we would probably be in a much better position.
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Football Insider is an absolute con-artist. Not to be taken seriously.
Everyone at the club knew the circumstances around Arthur’s signing when we made it.
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In other news, football fans fall for clickbait “article” once again.
I wasn’t impressed with the Arthur move from the moment I heard it was happening, but I’m also not going to criticize the club too much. I have more of an issue par example when we permanently signed Aquilani, after the departing Alonso. This one, well, there was also the bad luck that he got a long injury. I knew he already had some issues last season and generally didn’t turn out to be a good move for Juve (neither did Pjanic for Barca, that didn’t make sense at all, it was probably done to try and balance the books a bit). Yes, we should’ve signed a midfielder soon after Gini left and this summer we “finally” have to solve it with a few.
I think the best case was he would start contributing December-January, I don’t think anyone at the club was under the illusion he would be match fit particularly soon.
I’d rather make that kind of mistake with a loan than with a purchase - as Zoran notes, Aquilani.
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At least we got 26 games out of Aqui.
- Yeah, but cost us £20m, £85k per week and on a 5-year deal.
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That’s back in 2010, right? In today’s money it’s what…200k?
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And at a time where both of those were more significant numbers. We were paying some portion of his wages for the next two seasons.
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Their were a number of good purchase options available though, not just any old shite.
Douglas Luiz and Mac Allister had favourable contract situations. Good ages, suitability to our system, better fitness records than Arthur and settled into the league. Neither would have broke the bank and both would have been an improvement on what is here.
Arthur was the cheap option but we’ve paid for it with the opportunity cost. It was a failure, a really poor decision.
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That goes to that error I was alluding to - Arthur was brought in as ‘cover’, and what we really needed was long-term help. The club was too rigid in selecting the best possible target (apparently Tchouameni), and should have been moving down a list in June. Maybe that was happening, but was fruitless. Arthur was the end point in that flawed sequence.
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Im sure we got a couple of loan fees and 7m when we sold him. 
Kabak wasn’t that bad a deal to be honest.
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Wasn’t that good either, he was painfully average.
Botman was available that window.
Possibly means we don’t get Konate though.
The Kabak and Arthur deals both seem to the club taking a short term loan because their number one target is not available.
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