Is Olivier Giroud worth £130k a week?

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Last night is was announced that Olivier Giroud was on the verge of signing a new contract with Arsenal, paying him an astonishing £130,000 a week. The first thought is “Wow! That’s a lot of money” and it is.

But is he worth it?

In football, players are a stupid amount. They are all on too much money. But that is life. When TV revenue is as high as it is, and the TV companies are paying for those footballers on the pitch, the money will always flow down to those footballers. Every time a new TV is signed, agents up and down the country knock on the managers door of their clients and demand a bit of a slice of that pie. And more often than not they get it.

You only have to look at James Milner. He is on £150k a week. Raheem Sterling has just signed for Manchester City for £200k a week. When Manchester City signed Adebayor, they paid him £170k a week. Nasri £185k.

At Manchester United, Wayne Rooney earns a reportedly £275k a week. He has scored 49 goals in the last 3 years. Olivier Giroud has scored 58 goals in the same period. The previously mentioned Adebayor also got 58 goals in his 3 full seasons at the club.

Many Arsenal fans want the club to sign Karim Benzema. He gets paid around £240k a week. Olivier Giroud keeps him out of the French national side.

The money footballers get paid grossly high. Rather than compare Giroud’s £130k a week to that of the normal man (or soldiers wages) it should be compared to his contemporaries. You do that, and you realise that £130k a week is probably right for someone of his talent. A first choice international striker, playing for a top European side, scoring consistently.

It is not just footballers that have crazy salaries though. Lewis Hamilton is paid £32m a year (£615k per week) to drive a car round in circles. Top cricketers in the Indian Premier League can earn over £1m for just 6 weeks work – £166k a week. And then we have America, where NBA, NFL and baseball stars can earn into the hundreds of millions throughout their career.

Sport has become such a commercial vehicle, TV companies and sponsors are willing to pay billions to be associated with it, and these billions end up in the players pocket.

So is Giroud worth £130k a week? In the inflated, bloated, cash rich would of football, you would have to say that is his par salary.

I agree, it is sickening.

Keenos

Could Arsenal follow Swansea and subsidise away fans?

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Recently, Swansea City announced that they will be subsidising their away fans throughout the upcoming season, ensuring that they pay no more than £22 a ticket.

For a long time, we at She Wore have been huge supporters of the Twenty’s Plenty Campaign. A movement set up by the Football Supporter’s Federation and backed by most team’s supporter group’s to restrict away tickets to just £20.

Swansea’s move to subsidise their tickets is a brilliant move, and hopefully on that other clubs will follow. What is surprising (or not if you have half a brain) is how little it costs. Reports are that it is only costing the club around £300,000 a season. Taking into account that the Premier League has recently signed a new £5.1bn deal, which gives each club around £81m a year, £300,000 is peanuts.

Arsenal could, no they should, look at introducing a similar deal. Every club in the Premier League should.

Now I know what critics will say. Those people who when another club introduces something good, attacks them by saying “it wouldn’t work at Arsenal” and bring up a load of differences rather than simply say “good on them”.

What these critics will state is that it would not cost Arsenal £300,000 a season. It would cost a lot more. Swansea are never Category A for away games. Therefore, away tickets are cheaper. It has been reported that Swansea away fan’s paid an average of £33 last season. Meanwhile, Arsenal averaged £45.

On top of that, Swansea rarely sell out their allocation, often taking the lesser amount of tickets at away games. Whilst Arsenal take the maximum possible.

The cost for Arsenal to subsidise tickets for away fans would be a lot more than Swansea.

This is bollocks.

Yes, Arsenal would have to pay more in subsidies, and subsidise more tickets, but the amount it would cost the club would still be negligible.

My (albeit poor) maths show that tif the club decided to subsidise the away fans, mirroring Swansea to £22, it would cost around £1.25m.

Now in our mortal world, £1.25m is a lot, but in the football world, it is nothing. This season, Arsenal will make over £125m from Premier League and Champions League TV revenue. So it would be c1% of TV revenue going back to fans. £1.25m is a £25k a year salary to someone. It is Joel Campbell, or half a Flamini. It is nothing to the club, and even less once other revenue such as match day and commercial comes into it.

Arsenal could easily afford to subsidise away fans to the tune of £22 a game without it affecting anything.

Of course, another obstacle faced by the club would be the internal fighting between fans. If Arsenal decided to subsidise away fans, two issues would arise:

  1. Home fans would complain that they do not get a subsidy

The away fans are the heart beat of the club. A small group of fans who continually go above and beyond following their side. They are the ones who get a 5.30am train to Newcastle for a 12.45 kick off. Change their weekend plans at the last minute due a late scheduling change. Stand on the side of the M1 for 3 hours missing the game due to their mini bus breaking down. Return home at 2am on a Monday morning and having to get up for work in a few hours. Spend hundreds of pounds a year on rail tickets.

To home fans complaining, i would like to say this is a start, if clubs like The Arsenal can see that by reducing prices for our away fans has no real loss in revenue, they might think again about the home ticket prices, ok they will never reduce them as long as demand is as high but they might think about a needless increase to ticket and membership prices in the future. do not be selfish and complain about others benefitting because you do not yet benefit.

Many away fan’s also have home season tickets. Last year I spent around £4,000 following the club, home and away. It is an expensive hobby. Yes, it is my choice, but only an idiot would begrudge an away fan saving a little bit of cash.

  1. More fan’s would buy tickets and not go

In recent years, due to FA Cup Final credits, we have seen an increase in fans buying tickets and not going. Either attempting to sell them on via twitter (other social media platforms are available) or worse case scenario, taking the hit and not going.

One thing that stops this happening more regularly is the cost of ticket prices. Why pay £50 to buy a ticket for Norwich away just for an away credit and not go. It is something that many people can not afford.

However, reduce that to £22 and it becomes a bit more affordable. More fans will buy tickets just to get credits and not go. This will keep those with a lot of credits at the top, and reduce the amount of tickets available to those who do not have credits – often those without credits can only get away tickets to the expensive, middle of nowhere, on a Saturday morning games.

Whilst this is a bit more of a valid argument against dropping tickets, it is again something which should be disregarded.

Yes, some more fans will purchase tickets and look to shift them on, but this benefits those that they shift them on to (as long as they are charging face value) as the buyer then gets a cheaper ticket. So everyone benefits all round.

 

I applaud Swansea for taking proactive steps to reduce ticket prices. Anyone who puts up obstacles as to why Arsenal could not do similar need to take a long hard look at themselves. It is those people that allow the club a free ride, those people who will stop the pressure increasing on clubs and continue to accept the poor way that clube treat fans.

Well done Swansea, hopefully Arsenal and all other clubs follow suit.

Keenos

Should Arsenal fans be envious of rival’s transfer dealings?

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In recent days, Arsenal fans have cast the green eye of jealousy towards their title rivals transfer dealing. Our opponent’s movements in the market have once again raised a lot of questions of the board and the management. Even on this blog, we have questioned as to whether Arsene Wenger’s dithering could cost us a title challenge.

But thinking with a cleat head, should Arsenal fans be worried yet? After all, it is only the 14th July, there are still 26 days until the season opener against West Ham, and the transfer window does not close for another 50 days. Plenty of time to do our business.

What is seemingly putting the pressure on Arsenal is the actions of others around us. It seems every other club in the top 6 have made big movements this summer, meanwhile, we have sat on our thumb.

Is it true, however, that our rivals have done lots of good business this summer, and that Arsenal fan’s have every right to be jealous and criticise the board? Or is it, to put it bluntly, a figment of our imagination?

Starting with League Champions Chelsea, there transfer dealing’s highlight the ‘figment of our imagination’ statement above. So far their dealings include a young Brazilian called Nathan who they have immediately loaned out of a year, Asmir Begovic, who joins for £8m replacing Cech on the bench, and Falcao, a washed up old man who is replacing another washed up old man in Didier Drogba.

So Chelsea are at nett zero in their transfer dealings. Their starting 11 has not improved, and you can easily question whether the 2 new squad players are any better than those replaced. Begovic is certainly not better than Cech, and Drogba scored 13 goals against Falcao’s four in all competitions last season. Add in the experience and loyalty that Cech and Droba bought to the Chelsea squad and they have certainly gone backwards.

It is the dealings of Manchester United over recent days that seems to have got the back up of most Arsenal fans.

The acquisitions of Bastian Schweinsteiger and Morgan Schneiderlin signal intent, especially as it is being reported that they beat Arsenal to the latter, highlighting that Manchester United are back.

It is no question that Schneiderlin is a good Premier League player. One we have pursued for the last year, and expected to sign. He would have provided good competition to Francis Coquelin. But at £25m and £120,000 a week, would he have provided enough of an improvement to make him our 3rd highest paid player (and I am sure make the agents of Ramsey, Wilshire, etc knock on the managers door). The stats would seemingly say not.

http://twitter.com/KeenosAFC/status/579957276989091840

As for Schweinsteiger, he was one of the best midfielders in the world. 3 seasons ago.

Since the 2012/13 season, Schweinsteiger performances have dropped up massively. Arsene Wenger over history has always been reluctant to offer players over 30 long term contracts. The way Schweinsteiger has fallen off a cliff highlights why.

Since leading Bayern Munich to the Champions League in 2013, Schweinsteiger has been hit by injuries. Missing 50 games in 2 seasons due to them. Infact, over the last 4 seasons, he not playuerd 30 league games, and only played over 25 league games once (the Champions League winning year of 2012/13). His powers are clearly on the wain.

With the Premier League being a much more physically demanding league than the German – where often Schweinsteiger and Bayern Munich could cruise through games, it is when, not if, Schweinsteiger’s body breaks down.

Had they signed Schweinsteiger in 2013, it would have been a WOW moment. The 2015 Schweinsteiger is still a big name signing, but like Falcao last season, he is a player who’s best days are behind him.

Manchester United’s other big signing, Memphis Depay, is a bit of an unknown quantity. A young Dutch international, he clearly has talent. Where he is unknown is that scoring 22 goals in 30 games in Holland is very different to playing in the Premier League. Manchester United might have just signed the new Arjen Robben. But they might have also just got the new Afonso Alves. At £24.6m, he is a lot cheaper than a young British player whom we will come on to later but it is still a lot of money.

He could turn in to a world superstar, but the worry for United would be if he is to replace Angel di Maria. They would be losing a world class player for a player with the potential to be world class. Not quite the same.

There last signing, Matteo Darmian, no one can claim to know anything about other than what they read on Wikipedia. He is a good example of the rise of Social Media and the effect it has on peoples though process. Manchester United fans are holding him up as a great signing, solving all their defensive issues last year, despite having never seen him play, and probably never having heard of him up until a week ago.

The source of their information? Someone else on Twitter saying he is a great signing, solving all their defensive issues last year, despite having never seen him play, and probably never having heard of him up until a week ago.

Manchester City have not yet signed a player. To think, we as Arsenal fans are getting frustrated, envious, even saying we have fallen further behind the top 2 from last year, yet the team who finished 2nd have signed no one, and the team who finished above us are at nett zero. What is there to be envious of?

Of course, Manchester City are on the verge of signing Raheem Sterling. Now he is a player who I have wanted throughout the back end of last season when it became clear that he was set to leave. Talented and young, he could have provided the competition for Theo Walcott, and if he develops, he could become one of the best in the world.

But then we have the issue. And it is a big issue. Whilst I would have loved to have seen him in an Arsenal shirt, for £49m and £200,000 a week, it would be a no from me. He is good, but not that good.

When you think Depay joined Manchester United for half the transfer fee, and just £85,000 a week, and Paulo Dybala joined Juventus for £22m and a salary of around £60,000 a week, it highlights just how much Manchester City are paying for Sterling’s passport. Twice the fee, twice the salary, for a player of similar age and similar talent.

Would I want Raheem Sterling at Arsenal? Yes. Would I want us to spend £49m and £200,000 a week on Raheem Sterling? Hell no.

Going through our other ‘rivals’, Spurs have done next to nothing, bar take their spending on centre backs over the last 5 years past that of the GDP of a small country – every year they seem to spend £10m+ on a new centre back, just to end up playing Younes Kaboul. There other two signings are just nothing to shout home about.

Liverpool have been the most active club in this years transfer window. But they are to be compared to your mate who is the most sexually active, but only bangs mingers. There is no point having 20 notches on your bed post if their combined rating is only 20! And that is the best way to describe Liverpool’s transfer window. Six players signed, £38.8m spent, and their side is no better. Losing Gerrard & Sterling, replacing them with Milner and Ings. OK. The signing of Firmino has got some excited, but like Darmian, no one had heard of him a month ago, but now he is a world beater.

When you give Kolo Toure a new contract, you know you are in trouble. The issue with Liverpool is with the new stadium, money is not freely available. Will the Sterling money allow them to make more big signings (Like Lambert & Balotelli) or have the basically already spent the Sterling money before they have received it? Wait and see. But its nothing to worry about.

Here is where I sit. At this point, no other club has really signed someone who has made me stand up and think “WOW, I wish we had have signed him”. Meanwhile, Arsenal have had Petr Cech, who would be an improvement on anything our rivals have.