For the gooners’, it seems to be B. The gooners also didn’t mind not taking a transfer fee and paying out the remainder of the guy’s contract as it serves a main purpose of removing a distraction from the dressing room while also removing an underperforming one, giving space for a new one to grow into.
For our case, it may not be that straightforward. Klopp has a strict budget, he needs to prioritise which holes in the squad he needs to plug. Unfortunately, he focused on the forward line given the departures of a few forwards in the squad in last season ( and I think there was already some signs that Mane is declining quite badly at LW). So what can he do to allow minimum staffing at CMs while keeping his powder dry for the forwards?
I think it might highly be Contract extensions for older players. Contract extensions for older players who are not so in demand and hence may only ask for a modest pay hike or if we are lucky, they may ask for a lower pay to be in the squad. From Henderson’s latest contract extension, he had an increment in basic salary which works out to be approximately an increment of 2 mil pounds a year. So from 2021 to 2025, FSG would only need to pay an additional 8 mil pounds in total in terms of basic salary. That figure can be easily covered by LFC’s revenue.
You’ve had a shocker in these last few posts. I’m not sure I’ve ever read such a bad take to be honest.
It’s like you honestly believe a team can win everything, every single season. Arsenal have been a laughing stock for years. And while they’ve been improving no one saw this season’s “success” coming. I say success in inverted commas cos they’ve won nothing yet.
I know which club I’d rather be a fan of, especially during the last 8 years. It’s not even a contest. Last season a couple of poor decisions were made. Darwin Nuñez wasn’t one of them but failing to strengthen midfield was.
How do you see next season going? Couple of players in midfield, one central defender and we’re good for another tilt at the quadruple.
The old ground has been pored over, many times. We know all the angles on what happened before. Money was spent. Was it enough? Was it spent in the right area of the pitch? Did we mismanage the midfield department?
Everyone has had their say, and then some, on issues related to the past.
That’s all done now.
The conversation should switch to moving forwards.
We all know we need to sort the midfield, and we can keep going further, depending on budget. What will that look like? What are the priorities? Who is available and how much would they cost? What difference will minor investment make to the budget?
These are the questions that are relevant now.
And also questions along the lines of DOF, who? And other people behind the scenes.
Aside from Aubameyang can you give a couple other examples where they’ve done this? I see players like Mustaphi, Kolasiac, Ozil, Mkhitaryan and Lacazette all going for nothing but weren’t they all at end of contracts?
Then you’ve got the likes of Guendouzi who had a couple loans before they got a very modest fee. Or Pepe who’s out on loan because there’s no buyer for him.
And didn’t they just give Elneny a new contract.
I fail to see this cut throat approach you’re talking about here. If anything it seems like they’ve spent a lot of money on players that haven’t worked out and have ploughed a load of cash into replacing them as they’ve all walked away at the end of contracts. Not unlike Can, Lallana, Moreno, Ox, Keita etc.
We are one club in world football which thrives on the underdog status. Klopp himself has lived off that tag for pretty much his entire career. I’m pretty sure I heard him say in one of his 1-on-1 interviews that his entire tactical plan is designed to allow us, a less skillful team, to duke it out with a more skillful team due to us using positioning, tenacity and fitness to make up for our skill shortcomings.
21/22 was a season where we were almost universally written off across the footballing world prior to the season start. If I went on TIA at the time I’m sure that included many of our fans. Klopp loves that. It not only gives him ammunition when trying to build resolve amongst the squad, but also allows him to fly under the radar a bit with opposition coaches thinking they can have a go at us rather than parking the bus.
We need the hard reset of a new season to get the players refocused. I know most fans will probably be disappointed with the lack of changes we actually make in the summer (its now going to be hard to move players now that we have such a huge wage bill and other teams not called Bournemouth are not usually stupid enough to take on a high wage player whose career had nose dived) , but for me the most important aspect of how we go next season is how Klopp and his coaches convert the hurt of this season into determination next season to make it right.
Yes we need to do a lot of work on the midfield. Central defence may again be an area we need to look at, and a decision will need to be made on Trent, but I think we still very much have the spine of the team but really need to get their heads right!
This summer will an interesting one to see. It’s no secret that FSG is running the club within its means to a point that LFC are very very far from infringing FFP.
If there is no CL, you will still get your couple of CMs and your CD. Just that the names will be very left field that even rival scouts have no idea who the potential like and you have to pray really hard they turn out like Andy Robertson and not Ben Davies. If there is CL, then there might be chance of getting Jude Bellingham and again pray hard there are some spare change left for another midfielder.
We can talk about what we want as in the end it’s a chat between some lads about footy on the internet. We don’t “need” to be talking about the future, players who coulld be bought as it has zero influence on the decision makers at the club.
Do you boo TV villains in the street thinking they’re real people?
I have 2 gooners supporting brothers and they told me different stuff from what you said about how Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Mustafi and Kolasinac left Arsenal and I kinda remembered them swearing at Arteta back then for reducing squad depth for nothing…So I went to do a check. Yup, other than Lacazette who left after his contract expired, the other players you mentioned had a mutual termination/consent to end their contract.
But you are right. The Arsenal top hierarchy did flush a lot of money down the drain but are still willing to do a cull with no transfer fees and still gave Arteta money to get who he wants.
Several of their senior players were allowed to leave for free after having their contracts terminated by mutual agreement. Mrky was done in Arteta’s first summer in charge, but he had already been sent on loan prior to that. That summer Ozil was left of out the premier league squad, but retained before cancelling his contract in the winter window allowing him to leave. They later did similar with Mustafi and Kolasinac.
Critically, these were all players the manager deemed he had no use for and so were bleeding the club of wages (big money in most cases) while preventing him bringing in players he could use. The club were very clear eyed it would result in steps back being taken at first to allow them to move forward, which is why despite outside criticism he wasnt improving the team he was never in any danger of losing his job. It was a brave decision that could have blown up in his face, but it has seemingly worked.
However, even at our worst we are no where near the level of having to do what they did. These are Klopp’s players and they are still here largely because the faith Klopp had in them. Where we are now is far more akin to what they experienced with Lacazette - a player who doesnt feature in the future plans, but is a good pro and so you both find a way to make the best use of the time you have left together before both moving on to the next chapter next year.
Well that’s the point isn’t it? Players have to leave and then new ones replace them. Otherwise we’d have 100 player squad. Or would you rather Origi and Minamino instead of Darwin and Cody?
He’s saying one of our primary issues have been not being aggressive enough in moving on players who couldnt contribute to the level needed. Without moving people on there was not room to bring in new players. Klopp has made that point several times. Arsenal have shown the benefit you get from taking some harsh medicine in the short term, but the question is how applicable was Arsenal’s approach to us given the difference in circumstances.
A new manager looking over years of bad strategy inherited an aged team of well paid badly motivated players in a club that had become toxic and needed bold actions to wipe the slate clean
A manager who has won everything there is to win with his own group of players
A am a strong proponent of the argument that we have suffered from allowing too many players on the fringes to stay for too long. Part of that is a staleness that can creep in once the pecking order in a group is established and goes too long without being meaningfully challenged. The other part, albeit related, is that without having moved on enough of these fringe players we haven’t made room both in terms of the squad or the wage book for new players who can come in and test that pecking order.
So much of our success has been built on the idea of day to day excellence in the way you conduct yourself. It is a lot easier to achieve when you’re on your way up than it is to maintain after you’ve reached the peak. Some players individually can do it, but in a group it will inevitably wane unless stresses are added. In football that invariably means new faces who at worst will provide the impetus for an established player to feel the need to prove themselves all over again. This is admittedly all pop-psychology with no actual insight into what has happened behind the scenes, but it fits as a viable explanation, at least in part, for what has happened. The question is, how does any of this belong in the owners’ thread?
you’re gonna need a lot more editing for any of these posts to make an inkling of sense
