From Mike : exactly
Hi Myles,
Incentive-based salaries at Arsenal would do a lot of good.
A few years back I was chatting with my cousin about Bendtner. We agreed that he was on far too much money for a young, unproven striker. Paying him so much so young was a huge error on many levels.
He should have been on 15 grand a week with an additional 10 for scoring and five for winning. Double his money if he does well.
But what happened?
The blind economist gave him a successful salary before success. Payed him as well as he thought he played. And now he’s still on the books but careers down the swanny.
Can’t say I’m upset about that to be honest.
But he’s being paid loads by Arsenal to be crap for other clubs.
System is fucked!
From Royston Reeves : win bonuses
Myles,
Swansea’s wage structure works for a mid-table club who are trying to become a top-eight club.
But if you’re insinuating it would work for a big club then you’re Myles off the mark.
Arsenal had a poor season by their standards last year, but still won 21 league games.
That would be over £100k of win bonus’ per man based on league fixtures alone!
Without having looked at the stats, I’d assume Arsenal’s total wins last season would be upwards of 30.
Even at £3k per win per man that would put every single player on a win bonus of nearly £100k (or more if it brought about more wins from better incentivised performances).
And if you stick an occasional win bonus on, you also give the wrong message to your players, illicitly implying that one game is more important than another.
If Wenger did that, everybody would quickly realise that all he cares about is getting his name on the Champions’ League trophy.
Playing for a big club should be an incentive enough to bring out 100% effort, and I believe (for all Arsenal’s flaws) a lack of effort isn’t the problem. If anything, players like Vermaelen and Koscielny try too hard, at times.
The whole team are let down by a manager who doesn’t understand that mirroring Barcelona’s formation and a strategy based on possesion football high up the pitch can only work if you press the ball intensively when you lose it.
Otherwise even Aston Villa will have you on the rack every time you misplace a corner.
If Arsene Wenger’s salary was mainly based on win bonuses, however, we might see Steve Bould getting more time with the defence.
We might even see Walcott banned from taking corners.
From Ray Burns : empty seats
My wife & I were not at the Villa game on Saturday and therefore our season ticket seats were empty.
Why? We both have flu and were feeling quite ill on the morning of the match.
We would otherwise have been there, as we have for almost every game since we took up the tickets about 20 years ago.
We are not fairweather suppporters but realise that Wenger has not had the money to spend ever since the new stadium was first mooted about 8 years ago and that his achievement in delivering Champions League every season is nothing short of a miracle.
In Arsene we trust.
From John Froud : 20,000 empty seats
Myles,
Thought you might be interested to hear that the Villa game went onto the ticket exchange very late on Thursday.
I put my seat up for sale at 10.00 am Friday and it sold straight away.
I couldn’t sell the Blackburn game though but this means the club did sell out and I got very lucky.
From Paul Risidore : 20,000?!?!
Myles,
Sorry, but to say the ground was only 2/3rd’s full at the weekend is nonsense.
Yes – I grant you that there were noticible gaps in the seats for the Villa game, but you are not being fair (to the Arsenal supporters) or correct in saying that the ground was missing a 1/3 of the fans.
From John Leaver: empty seats
Come on, my friend. 20,000 empty seats?
Never! Possibly 5-8000 at a stretch.
In our area we were remarking that the crowd was far better than we feared. Another factor you might wish to consider is that frequently there are far more than capacity in places such as Block 6, where stewards do not control the entry.By all means criticise the team, but don’t make yourself look ridiculous.
From Rhys Jaggar:
Laudrup might fancy Arsenal for its stability.
It’s obvious he’s not into the thought of being sacked for 1 season of failure, which may mean he’ll pass on Real, Chelsea and even possibly Barcelona.
Whether he’s happy long-term where he is right now, I don’t know.
But I actually think he’s a very, very good fit with Arsenal FC.
Huge respect for his playing career, still trains brilliantly, clearly shrewd in the market place, has huge class as a person. They say he’s on £500k a year at Swansea, which does suggest he’s not obsessed by money.
Arsenal would easily be able to incentivise him :
£2m basic, £0.5m qualify for ECL, £0.5m for winning a cup or Europa league, £1.5m for winning EPL, £3m for winning Champions League.
He’d still be on less than Wenger if he won the Champions League.
No doubt they’d renegotiate at that point.