Tag Archives: contracts

Theo Walcott: Another day, another contract saga

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Yesterday evening, as The Times and The Telegraph both ran with stories about how Theo’s representatives had rejected Arsenal’s latest contract offer thought to be in the region of £75,000 per week, the Twittersphere went into Arsenal meltdown. As the news slowly filtered out, everybody had their say; some more vociferous than others.

Theo is, according to reports, holding out for nearly £100,000 per week which will bring him on par with some of his fellow England internationals. If this is true, then Arsenal Football Club potentially have one of the biggest decisions of this transfer window with regards to the young Englishman.

I remember a couple of weeks back having a conversation with a fellow gooner (in the real world no less!) about how footballers use their weekly wages as a symbol of their own status in football. It is true that they can all buy whatever car or whatever house they want and so there is no way of distinguishing who is higher up on the proverbial football food chain. So instead, particularly at international level, footballers use their weekly wage as a comparator. Now, I have no real cold hard evidence to back up this line of thought, but from what I have learnt about footballers in the last three or four years precludes me to believing that this could actually be true.

I’ve heard many journalists that are close to Arsenal (e.g. John Cross) talk about how Theo loves the club, how he wants to sign and how many believe the deal can be done with no fuss. However here we are with three days to go and no signing from our nippy little winger. Koscienly and Vermaelen have both shown in the last year that signing a new deal can be done with minimal fuss, so why now, are we seeing the Walcott saga drag out? Perhaps it is in fact that Theo sees weekly wages as the litmus test for his status in Arsenal and football in general? Perhaps he feels that with van Persie gone he is now one of the biggest players at the club and so deserves a pay packet to match? I have no idea, but the general behaviour of 95% of footballers in today’s game when it comes to contracts has completely eroded my faith that there are still players that truly ‘love’ the club. How can Walcott if he is haggling over a figure that really will has little impact on his life overall. He’s already a millionaire. Footballers don’t ‘love’ clubs any more. If he ‘loved’ the club like I do, then he wouldn’t have an agent at all and would sign the first deal put in front of him.

Having said all of the above, sometimes it does take two to tango, and I can’t really look at Theo’s situation and assume that it is the dollar signs in the eyes of Mr Walcott and his representatives. Perhaps the club have been acting a bit blasé over the whole situation. Perhaps Theo is wanting to be taken a little bit more seriously from the club and perhaps they have been more focused on bringing players in (understandably) than getting Walcott tied down to his contract. I don’t know. What I do know however is that this is just one of a string of players who are challenging the clubs policy in relation to wages. I don’t believe for a second that we should be paying £200,000 per week to any player. I don’t even think any player in the world is worth £100,000 per week (£5.2million per annum). But unfortunately football lives in its own bubble which has been hyper inflated by external resources from sugar daddies. Much to Arsenal’s, and my own dismay, we now have to operate in a world where the top players are demanding to take home the top pay and Arsenal’s wage structure model is becoming sadly out dated.

There are some that believe that this particular contract situation we find ourselves in could just be a bit of last minute ‘who blinks first’ game-playing from Walcott and his representatives. If that is the case then perhaps we will see him sign a new deal this week. I hope he does. But it is truly a sorry state of affairs that these games even have to happen. As ScottyDavisAFC said yesterday on Twitter, whilst he has been at the club Walcott has conducted himself magnificently and can be seen as a real role model to players in terms of his off the field attitude. And at times his on the field activity has matched this stellar behaviour. In this regard, should a transfer be forced through, it will be a real shame to see a player go that I believe still has the potential to be a great star at Arsenal. His pace is something that has frightened the best in the world and at times – Chelski at home a couple of seasons ago – he has been unplayable. So should a deal to Manchester City or Liverpool be pushed through it will certainly be a blow to our attacking options. I believe, much like Theo does himself, that he is a centre forward in waiting at Arsenal, but the formation that we currently have does not allow for this transition. Walcott is a player that could thrive in a front two with someone like Giroud to feed from and runs in beyond the back four to latch on to. He has the instinctive finishing ability of a centre forward and his build and pace reminds me very much of Michael Owen at Liverpool. But Arsenal don’t play that way and so we may never see that potential realise.

What I do find interesting about the Liverpool and Manchester City rumours are that both of these sides adopt formations that make me wonder why Theo would want to join them. If he is looking to ply his trade as a centre forward long term, I can’t see how he would get anywhere near Manchester City’s front line. And at Liverpool, Brendan Rodgers has begun to develop a similar front three formation to Arsenal – at the weekend Suarez was flanked by Sterling on the left and Borini on the right. So where would Walcott fit? Surely not in Suarez’s position? And Borini has just been signed as a big money replacement on that right hand side? So surely that must mean that Walcott would be in the same position as he is in at Arsenal i.e. fighting for that right wing position? To me it is quite interesting to see why there is interest from these two clubs, but I guess if they feel they can get a top notch player at a reduced price, there will always be clubs looking to add to their squad depth.

Well, that’s about it from me today. I can’t really be bothered to do any more speculation on players. I just want to see how this transfer window pans out and then focus on supporting the players still at the club on 1st September.

Arsenal: flawed policies

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Yesterday the clubs top man – in job title anyway – was put in front of the Arsenal Supporters Trust and other supporter groups to answer questions from fans from everything from wage structure, Robin’s contract, right through to commercial arrangements and plans the club have to drive revenue forward for the future. Of course, CEO Ivan Gazidis could not talk through specifics on any arrangements, signings, etc, etc, but there was hope there would be some interesting answers to the questions that were posed.

I’ll not go into the granular detail of what was discussed because a) I wasn’t there and was getting my information from people who were that I follow on Twitter, and b) there will probably be a host of Arsenal bloggers that will report on the questions infinitely better than I can. What I do want to do however, is to pick up on a couple of the subjects that were discussed at the Q&A and lend my thoughts to what was said. Before I do though, I have to give credit to Ivan Gazidis for doing the session, as there are many examples in the Premier League where the fans do not have such a direct link to the upper echelons. What we heard may sometimes sound like spin of the highest possible political nature but at least there is dialogue between the club and fans. Just look at the McCleish era at Aston Villa to see how a club can ignore fan anger at their peril – swathes of empty seats.

Steering back towards the Q&A, and yesterday a handful of supporters were treated to an audience with the CEO. Like every good politician Ivan was well briefed and had all of his answers prepared well in advance of the session. His pre-Q&A interview on Arsenal Player did its job by heading off some of the questions at the pass, however, some fans managed to get a few questions in at the end by the sound of it.

My favourite quote of the night (from Twitter) came from an attending Gooner who said that Ivan talked for a whole hour and gave no answers. A consummate professional politician then.

One aspect that was talked about was Arsenal’s wage structure and policy on wages. As was expected, Ivan explained that the model that the club worked to was a flatter structure with emphasis on equal proportion of wages amongst the squad. In addition, the club looked to put more emphasis on paying younger players more. Ivan recognised that this doesn’t always work but the club have got it right on many occasions.

Here’s my gripe though: if you place a ‘flat’ wage structure and emphasise on youth, when those young players ‘come of age’ and reach the pinnacle of their games, the larger clubs that pay greatly inflated wages will always come in and offer more. To me it therefore becomes clear: as long as the club have their existing policy on wages we will always lose out on our better players. Sure, we MIGHT get lucky by finding one or two footballers who are loyal, but most people recognise that this is the minority rather than the norm. And if your best players are leaving every season how can you expect to build a team capable of challenging when there are changes to the squad composition all the time?

There was a chink of light, where Gazidis conceded that we would have to adapt the clubs wage policy for the top stars, but he said this would happen over a period of three to four years.

The Invincibles were born in the pre-Abramovich era and hence we were able to build an amazing team on a set budget. But the arrival of the first billionaire at an English football club put the kibosh on any team trying to retain all of its players without sending it’s wage structure through the roof. Even Man Utd had a problem with Rooney; easily solved with a few more shillings shoved in front of the strikers representatives.

For me this is the saddest thing about the RvP situation. As fans, I think deep down we all know that this is going to happen every year, and that with the clubs current policies we are bound to see it time and time again.

Cesc and Robin. So what?

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Hi all,

Yesterday there were a few Arsenal related comments made in the media, so like a ravenous polar bear that has gone the winter without food (thanks David Attenborough for Frozen Planet) I have pounced on them and now devour and completely over-analyse them.

Some player who used to play for us but now plus his trade in warmer ‘piqué’ loving climates spoke out about the Robin Van Persie situation.

Asked about it by various assembled press, Cesc Fabregas said:

“At his age, if he wants to move it will be his last chance and if he wants to stay he will stay and retire at Arsenal.

“We will see what he decides but he’s been very loyal to Arsenal for a few years. He is a key player, the fans love him.

“He is the role model of Arsenal, the star player and they cannot afford to lose him.”

At this stage I think it’s also worth pointing out that Cesc spoke warmly and fondly of Arsenal, saying he hopes Robin stays.

The headline for the particular article I read was ‘Now is the time to leave’. Having only briefly flicked on to this main media website for about 30 seconds, when I saw that image of Cesc and Robin, I furiously clicked on the link readying for a verbal onslaught of abuse to spill from my mouth in the direction of my monitor. I was ready to start disliking Cesc and prepped myself for some next day ranting via my soapbox here.

I should have known better. I hold my hands up. Oh ye of little faith i muttered under my breath whilst still at the office. I should have realised that what was actually said by Cesc would be factual, mild and on anything but a slow news week, completely pointless. I should have realise that somebody of Cesc’s class would not blow years of goodwill amongst Arsenal fans. I read the comments, re-read the comments and have just read them again and to be honest I don’t see what the fuss is about. Cesc has merely stated something factual. If Robin goes he should go whilst his value is at its highest and Arsenal can get the best ROI for him. If he waits another year for his contract to expire then he will be 30, will lose his own market value and probably won’t get the best deal. Conversely, if he signs up with Arsenal now he will get a bumper pay deal and will get a year or two extra on his contract. It makes perfect sense.

I guess the lesson I should be learning is to take everything any media outlet prints with a piece of salt. Before reading anything I should ask “how many click-throughs or copies will the truth sell?”, then read on.

In terms of the story itself, I haven’t really spoken about it very much mainly because I’ve always thought that it wasn’t really a story and Robin would sign his new deal any day now. After all, he loves the club, the club loves him. No brainer right? Then again I did have the same feeling with Na$ri and we all know how that ended up don’t we? I guess I need to look at the whole situation as simple: what is the best deal for Robin because that will be the one he chooses.

And yet as fans we don’t quite see it as black and white. We see shades of red in between. We feel, I feel, like Robin perhaps owes us a little bit. Yes he has been with the club a while and yes he has shown himself to be a world-class striker, but we have only ever seen half a season of this. Every year he has broken down through injury and spent long periods out. So in fact, where some see eight years at Arsenal, I see it as more like three and a half. With that in mind, I would have thought that he owes us at least five years before we can unequivocally call him a loyal player. Based on the fact he hasn’t managed one full season yet I am waiting for him to break down this year and when that happens, if he has signed a new deal we will probably know how loyal he is. Let’s face it, he’s not going to get any less injury prone is he?

I know this may seem like I’m getting on RvPs back (careful, it might break!) and I sound like a fan starting to lose patience or not respecting the guy that has been great for us this year, but I truly hope he is just playing the contract game to get the best deal at Arsenal, and that his head hasn’t been turned. Respect works both ways and I hope he stays with us.

Follow me on Twitter @ SuburbanGoonerChris