In the post Leicester City presser, Arsene Wenger made some powerful statements in what appears to be a continuing counter-attack against the mainstream media and their ever faithful echo chamber on the interweb who continue to slander and malign him for not “spending” in the transfer window. Speaking of Rob Holding, his most recent signing (note the irony) Wenger remarked that the young man had an “outstanding performance” noting :
“He’s 20 years old, he’s English and it’s a great reason to be happy. As long as players don’t cost a huge amount of money, people don’t give them any qualities.
“We have to be stronger than that and just acknowledge how good he is. “
Yet according to the Sage of Dublin in his pre- and post-Liverpool vituperations, it was “criminal”, it was “unfair” to play Holding in a PL game, it was like throwing a baby into the deep-end and many more over-the-top metaphors. Instead, Wenger should have bought a more expensive defender, especially after Mertsacker’s injury and using the Sage’s logic, he too should have been thrown into the deep-end given that whoever was signed would have absolutely no PL experience, a necessary rite-of-passage for any defender coming from outside of England. I only quote the Sage, despite my past efforts to document his rampant fear-mongering and duplicitous attacks on our manager, because he is the Pied Piper of Arsenal blogs with thousands following like little lemmings repeating and magnifying his many inaccurate prognostications.
How does fear mongering gain such traction despite the consistent success of Arsenal Football Club in the twenty years under Wenger’s management?
• Invincible – unbeaten over a whole season.
• 3-time Premier League champions.
• 6-time FA Cup winner.
• Average league position of 3rd.
• Never fallen below 4th in any year.
• Never failed to qualify for the Champions League.
• Never fallen in league position below Tottenham Hotspur, North London rivals.
• Never outside top 7 in richest clubs worldwide since 2007, average 4th position.
As a part-time stock investor, taking care of my small retirement portfolio, Arsenal would be a perfect long-term investment. According to the Forbes’ list of the most valuable football clubs in nine years the value of the club has more than doubled and so has revenues. Wenger, who is supposedly badly out of touch with the market, has doubled the worth of the club while taking very low risks. Contrast this with the spectacular show of “ambition” by Manchester United who in the past three years spent over £300 million on transfers to achieve another failure to win the League, not only finishing behind Arsenal but for the second time in three years failing to qualify for the champions league.
I deliberately mentioned stock market because that is where I see so many parallels with the coverage of football clubs by the mainstream media and their fellow travelers, the big bloggers. As a student of Thomas Herzfeld and Robert Drach, who wrote an investment guide “High Return, Low-Risk Investment” I long concluded no true stock market professional would have any truck with the nonsense written by the commercial press and bloggers like the Sage. Professional investors recognize the media as having a commercial interest in exploiting the emotions of their readers rather than producing sober data-driven explanation of why stocks rise or fall.
A stock market professional would quickly assess that the football industry and the transfer market in particular is made up of several powerful actors, some of them acting corruptly under the cover of normal business practice, with the aim of extracting maximum profit from the competing clubs. No other market is ripe for profit extraction than the biggest market of all, the Premier League. Great fortunes have been made, (Stand up Mr. Mendes and Mr. Raiola) and great fortunes lost (United, Chelsea and City).
Like any market, the driving force is ultimately greed. In this context “greed” is stripped of all the emotional baggage, and must be seen in the sense of making a profit. All the rational parties would want to profit from the party on the other side of the deal. Unfortunately there are some parties whose “greed” is subsumed by some short term political or public relations objectives (City and Chelsea come to mind). Arsene Wenger is a master of greed, selling Adebayor, Nasri and Kolo Toure to Manchester City at handsome profits when AFC was desperate for the money. On the other hand, he waited in the weeds for a long time when trying to buy Ozil and Cazorla, pouncing when their price fell. Most famously he bought Nicolas Anelka from PSG in 1997 for £500M and sold him to Real Madrid for £22.3MM two years later.
Greed to win the title or to qualify for the champions league often lures clubs into the transfer market to pay inflated prices. To justify these prices the buyers, with cheerleading by the media (Sky Sports deadline day) who often equate price with quality as a way of justifying the deal. In that department Manchester United is the recent gift that never stops giving with the likes of DiMaria, Falcao and Martial failing to justify their astronomical transfer fees. Will Pogba be the exception?
According to Herzfield and Drach, next to greed the most important emotion in professional market positioning is despair. Just as greed can lure clubs into the transfer market at inflated prices despair can compel people to sell at low prices. Wenger is a past master at exploiting this human failing, waiting until the very last day of the transfer window to close a deal as the selling club is desperate for the deal to go over the line (Gabriel and Welbeck come to mind). very often many clubs are desperate to sell to not merely balance the books but more importantly to not default on their bank loans. It leads one to wonder whether AFC have Valencia over the barrel in the Mustafi deal with Arsene Wenger biding his time.
The media has a role in exacerbating these two primary emotions. In the last 10-15 years they were up front and center inciting regular investors to buy internet and housing stocks when the professionals knew full well they were overpriced and already bailing out. I recommend The Big Short on Netflix for a dramatization of how the pros made millions by shorting housing stocks which the media were cheerleading during the recent bubble.
It’s no different at Arsenal. The mainstream media all summer and now John Cross and the Sage of Dublin are whipping up greed in the fanbase with delusions that we can buy high priced players to compete with United, City and Chelsea for the title. If that doesn’t work they resort to fear mongering after every defeat. Sell Walcott, sell Chambers, just to mention the two scapegoats du jour. It is complete drivel when you consider 20-years of absolute consistency by Wenger and the 95% likelihood we will be in the top-four and the admittedly somewhat lower probability of competing for the title.
To be fair the psychological pressure is intense. Club football is a very charged subject and fans want (not need) the emotional satisfaction of winning the title. But whether they like it or not, professional football is a business run by rules that cannot be driven by emotion. It is vital to take advantage of the emotions of other clubs not the other way around. We certainly cannot be driven by the emotive caterwauling of the lame stream media and the likes of our Arsenal bloggers and tweeters.
Positively Arsenal 
Valencia have just closed a deal for deportivo defender Sidnei maybe their selling someone.
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Shotts
I think NOTH is the one who thoroughly debunked and explained to the sychophants that the Swiss Rambler is a dabbling financier and not an accountant!
I think his professional pride had been impinged upon, and rightfully so: SR is certainly no Expert upon the subject of Football (or accountancy)
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Diaby – ankle destoyed.
Vermaelan – mutant ankles which turned the player who all saw have a great first season in the PL into one of the mst highly rated yet injury ridden players of recent times – please refer to barceona, Roma etc. a player with clear issues but who’s pre-ankle knack quality is widely accepted (apart from the Arsneal Experts who will **** themselves off by saying gibberish like “Koscielny & Vermaelan didn’t work” when they did for almost a whole season give or take knocks and niggles, before Tommy’s ankles went kaput…
Wilshere – ankles hacked in every PL match. No protection. Actua;y he’s the cloeset refernce to Diaby as we all saw Diaby also hacked with repetition and zero protection from the officials (who are only on the pitch to protect the players…).
Ankle and knee injuries = not the same thing.
Though I’m no expert and so you can ignore my rambling. Falcao, Walcott and Chamberlain are just three players we’ve all seen struggle to rebuild their touch and control after big knee injuries. Fortunately the latter two ignored their ‘owner’ aka agents and didn’t gamble on quack surgery in order to faciliatate a gigantic and weird loan move on behalf of said master & owner, the kind of move the AAA laud…
…because we can observe the AAA for years now showing more respect to football agents then to football clubs. These people who say they are against Modern Football. Properly funny, no?
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I rather like Swiss Ramble and fair play to anyone who can be arsed to plough through all the stuff he does, I lack the stamina. He is sensible enough in what I have read to say tat he does not claim to “know” what the books of any club contain but that the accounts point towards X or Y.
If NOTH has already posted these I apologise but these are useful to understand where the man is/was coming from;
http://inbedwithmaradona.com/journal/2010/11/29/ibwm-meets-the-swiss-ramble.html
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieronoconnor
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The smallprint that claims he does not ‘know’ is helpfully ignored by those who act like his fans. Indeed they’ll take his work and shove it down people’s throats.
Personally. I’d be more interested to hear the thoughts of those who raise the finanace to build and maintain infrastructure have to say about the Arsenal then others.
I note that the gigantic corporation Sir Robert McAlpine and the leading pioneering consulatancy (that i maay or may not know and admire) Buro Happold Engineers essentially were happy to work for free in 2003 without any further promise of a fee as AFC were struggling to raise the wwonga at the time (the associtaion of the words finance and struggle provoke cognotive dissonance (see twitter on the tranfer window) who have chosen to believe in a religion of debt peonage.
There are many ways to run a buisness. An expression of a person’s own beliefs. is just that, noting more,, nothing less. A shame people try to dress it all up with bells and whistles attached and turn what may be humble thoughts into a freak show.
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< work for free for an entire year…!!!!
I blamed vengargggghhhhh! And so did the board! Tough cookies for some to swallow. They are still choking.
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I like the thought of Rich’s App. All I would say about people having to live by their future predictions is that the bookmaking industry seems alive and kicking, but the preponderance of adverts promoting pay-day loans and PPI checks suggests that most who try to back up their predictions with hard cash aren’t very good at it.
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Andrew and Fins: I would rather rely on NOTH’s prodigious memory and his very well honed bull-shit meter. Despite multitude of attempts at ACLF to make NOTH seem like a weirdo he was 99% right on Arsenal’s finances.
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Where is NOTH – he has been a stranger of late ?
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Perez…cant be any good…..his price is reportedly nowhere near £55m
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Nothing wrong with NOTH being a bit weird.
Just don’t buy one of ‘his’ paintings!
Problems with SR’s approach is that he doesn’t (or cannot) take account of AFC not listing wages of players, training staff and admin staff separately. No way would AFC do this when rival clubs offering more wages hovering around.
AFC use the financial notion that players cost, wages, re-sale value etc. are spread across the players whole contract – multiple years. this make year to year financial statements very hard to follow.
AFC’s property dabbling’s in the past (finished now?) have made true assessment of the football business side difficult to divide.
I am sure the financial heavyweights on the AFC PLC board have done all this obscuration quite as deliberately as possible. It is nobody’s interest other than those deep inside our club to know what our real financial fire power really is like. The AST, Swiss Ramble and everyone else can jog on and keep guessing at the tea leafs, that is is if Dorris the Tea Lady spills any.
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Rumours that AFC have under bid a buy-out clause and it’s been rejected.
Now I wonder why rumours like that would be spread?
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*leaves.
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What I don’t understand DC, and perhaps I am missing something others see, is what difference would it make even if Swiss Ramble’s or NOTH’s or Uncle Tim Cobbley’s analysis of the AFC accounts were correct.
What would that situation allow me to ‘do’ in relation to supporting Arsenal football club or enjoying the football they play to know, as example, exactly what the wage of player X was, or what services the payment of £3million each year to one of Stan’s other businesses was for ?
I can remember many an afternoon on ACLF when some bright spark would haul up a reference from page 28 of the 2011 accounts like a rabbit from a conjurer’s top hat with a cry of “AHHHHAH” !! – and thereby proof of whatever particular ( usually negative) theory they were pursuing that day.
Within minutes the magician would be deluged with counter references disputing the claim, other figures would be flashed up in response, and the enumerate mob would stagger off eventually so confused that no one know that the fuck the conversation was about in the first place.
Football and money are like oil and water, they dont mix. Stan I suspect knows this, it is a pity a lot of fans do not take it on board.
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I think that was the gist of what NOTH had to say. i.e.: the SR knows about as much aout AFC’s finances as he would about the price the of eggs, or, the alleged N.Korean weapons programme.
It’s all gibberish.
The people who know hw much money the club have, would be the people thatown the club and or work for it. Anyone else is blagging out of their Arsenal’s. Same as with any other company…!
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Psg not bad but pot 3/4 more important
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Ludogorets and Basel – that is fine
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Arsenal FC @Arsenal 8m8 minutes ago
We’ve been drawn against Paris Saint-Germain, Basel and Ludogorets in Group A of the @ChampionsLeague.
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Here is the draw in full…
GROUP A
Paris Saint-Germain
Arsenal
FC Basel
PFC Ludogorets Razgrad
GROUP B
SL Benfica
SSC Napoli
Dynamo Kiev
Besiktas
GROUP C
FC Barcelona
Manchester City
Borussia Monchengladbach
Celtic
GROUP D
Bayern Munich
Atletico Madrid
PSV Eindhoven
FC Rostov
GROUP E
CSKA Moscow
Bayer Leverkusen
Tottenham
AS Monaco
GROUP F
Real Madrid
Borussia Dortmund
Sporting Lisbon
Legia Warsaw
GROUP G
Leicester City
FC Porto
Club Brugge
F.C. Copenhagen
GROUP H
Juventus
Sevilla
Lyon
Dinamp Zagreb
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lots of reports this evening that Arsenal have agreed a fee for Lucas Perez of Deportivo, €20M release clause, with the entire payment up front.
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isn’t it odd that the media are going big on Arsenal getting easy CL draw, while claiming spurs and lcfc have difficult groups.
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Monaco, Dinamo Zagreb, Olympiacos… there is no easy draw!
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Spurs will love Moscow in early December
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seemingly Deportivo demanded full payment upfront as they have to give €6M to his former club PAOK, and also €3.5M to the taxman, which will leave them with less than half the fee.
Reports in Spain say the deal will be completed later today or early tomorrow, and that the player has already left La Coruna
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Telegraph Football @TeleFootball 47m47 minutes ago
Arsenal fans planning away trips: the ground capacity at Ludogorets is 8,808
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didn’t ludograts knock lfc out of the cl two years ago.
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That’s not a bad champs league draw girls and boys. Added to that we are getting more firepower on the frontline. This could be a very interesting year for the Arsenal.
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I’m laughing at the logic of some on the Perez negotiations. It all went wrong for them. Started as a tease for a whipping stick and now it backfired.
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Not a bad group for us. We have a good possibility of winning the group and, for once, not drawing Barcelona or Bayern Munich in the next leg.
Finsburry, I think Theo Walcott’s touch improved immensely after his knee injury. Lately he’s been dribbling and attempting moves which I’ve never seen him do before.
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David Ornstein @bbcsport_david 5m5 minutes ago
Arsenal have beaten Everton to signing of Deportivo La Coruna striker Lucas Perez. Deal agreed, #AFC meeting €20m release clause, 17.1m
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David Ornstein @bbcsport_david 4m4 minutes ago
Arsenal close to agreeing deal to sign Valencia centre-back Shkodran Mustafi. #AFC will pay fee in excess of £35m for Germany international
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well if ornstein is correct and afc sign both players at the reported fees, it would bring Arsenal’s transfer spend this summer to in excess of £90M – cheap bastards
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Common Potato@7:05 pm – As you know, the same characters on twitter who were on the verge of burning effigies of Arsene, Ivan, Stan and putting a torch to the Emirates are now beside themselves for a signing of a player who, before yesterday, none of them knew his name, much less his ability. It is mental. How do they retain any credibility? Hundreds, sometimes thousands of followers based on what? Absolute emotion?
If you are a serious student of the transfer market, any market for that matter, you would sit patiently, avoid the raucous noise of all the con-men, touts, agents, sellers and bide your time until they are desperate to sell. Greed and Despair are better predictors of the transfer market than the narrative about being being cheap, dithering, etc.
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well shotta on the reaction of those that did not know the name Lucas Perez only 24 hours ago, is a sight to behold, they have no problem admitting that their football knowledge does not spread as far as one of the lesser clubs of la liga, or a striker who hit 17 goals and 8 assists in that league last season, yet they are oh so willing, nay keen, to write the lad off cos they don’t know of him, and of course as Wenger would say, “he does not cost £55M so he can not be quality”.
I do find it funny that so many of the malcontents who blasted Wenger last season for saying Arsenal find it difficult to buy cheap players cos our fans get pissed off by it, are now showing that AW was totally correct, and while Wenger was talking about the £400K LCFC paid for Marhez, and we are getting a seasoned pro for £17M, it has not lessened the “fake” outrage.
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Jeremy Wilson @JWTelegraph 6m6 minutes ago
Arsenal have had bids accepted today for Mustafi (£35m) as well as Perez (£17m). Total spending on fees this window is now close to £100m
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Might be worth tuning into Wenger’s press conference tomorrow morning, he might have some interesting news for us all.
Not sure, but I think for any new signing to be available for the Watford game on Saturday, they would have to be signed by noon tomorrow.
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re my last post – that is not to say its not always worth tuning into a Wenger press call.
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just a thought, if we do sign Lucas and Mustafi in the next day or two, does that mean we will be deprived of the joy of making a transfer deadline day signing, oh God, not again.
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I don’t know who Qatari Grand Durbar don la Seine Royale FC have been signing of late, but surely AFC have a better set of actual Strikers then the Petro-Corp club?
have they not?
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afcstuff @afcstuff 51m51 minutes ago
Arsenal’s CL group dates:
13 Sept: PSG (A)
28 Sept: Basel (H)
19 Oct: Ludogorets (H)
1 Nov: Ludogorets (A)
23 Nov: PSG (H)
6 Dec: Basel (A)
afcstuff @afcstuff 13m13 minutes ago
Arsenal’s next 6 fixtures:
Watford A
Southampton H
PSG A
Hull City A
Nottingham Forest A
Chelsea H
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Sorry it’s the Qatari Grand Royale Durbar FC,
I get them confused by the other Anglo-Qatari Charity XI that play in Catelonia.
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Eds I hope not.
Been looking forward to the DDay meltdown and been enjoying all the build up (the Opinions of Experts are far more entertaining then spreadsheets and the unknown content of faxes no?) ever since he gaffer felt happy to use the word poker in an interview.
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Favourite transfer window memories?
a)
1-0 at home against the noisy neighbours, Levy watching his expensive ensemble collapse in front of him as Real Madrid renege on the deal they’d struck with Levy and sell Ozil to the Arsenal, a moment that won’t be surpassed for the sheer brilliance and hilarity. Walcott on the right, cuts back for Giroud, goal, defensive masterclass from the BFG and Kozza, game over!
b)
Venga on the Beach.
Possibly more funny then the above given the vitriol put out at this instance by those who claim to support the club and also know what they are talking about. Occasionally there’s another year of laughter at this memory as the same candidates wind themselves up again and let forth,
c)
“Who is Cazorla”
–
As any vaguely sane mind can appreciate, Arsenal have an appalling record in recent transfer windows. In addition these ruby slippers I have bought with don’t appear to be working. If I keep trying to click my heels together perhaps I’ll be teleported into another dimension?
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well fins some big arsenal twitteratti claiming afc still trying to sign a big name, even bigger price, forward – probably griezmann
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No echoes of the ITK who promised the desperate masses that their beloved Cesc was returning (nevermind that he could no longer run after rushing back from that bruised bone etc never mind the football eh?) and people lapped that one up.
In a way the cacophony and the screeching is mildly entertaining. Mildly.
Beautiful evening in London, perfect weather for a bit of cycling, or even a kick about…
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Eds,
The funny thing is that AW has probably said “I’d love to sign you” to Messi, etc.
So, really, it’s quite easy to construct any rumour about any leading player and AFC in order to watch those clicks rise. Even a half wit can play people as we saw last summer with Benzema who was only ever going to jail lol! That one was probably even more insane then the Cesc rumour. we are spoilt for choice here!
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Ornstein….and Arsenal Horse suggesting activity….for what it’s worth.
Keown suggesting in his Daily Heil column that Chambers will go out on loan.
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Positively Arsenal @Blackburngeorge 12m12 minutes ago Blackburn, England
The next move of the malcontent is to fill our heads with talk of deadline day madness, so that when it doesn’t happen we’ll feel aggrieved
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If these reports true, near a hundred million spent on transfers…..unless we sell, plus some reports suggested up to twenty million on infrastructure, including training, medical, sports injury facilities….clearly a tight fisted club with no ambition
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