We have wide players

Iwobi
Mkhi
Welbz
Auba (was played wide a lot last season)

It just turns out our wide options are not very good

Those wide players were never better options than Ox and Walcott

Mkhi and Iwobi both prefer playing in MF

Theo and Ox both preferred playing centrally too. Let’s be honest, our wide options have been trash for a very long time. You would expect that to be addressed over the next 2 windows.

I have no problem with Emery trimming the squad and reinvesting in younger players who may or may not make it with us. It’s better than throwing undeserved money at the status quo

Are we a worse team overall since they left? No.

He'll be taking a paycut if he goes to any of those sides, nor get in the first team, might be worth it for some trophies thouh

comment by Castor Troy (U8700)
posted 1 hour, 36 minutes ago
So you really think if Ramsey was on the market, he wouldn't command £50M?

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So why didn't clubs approach him last year, or the year before that?

Face it, clubs only want him because he's free.

I would've liked to have kept Ramsey for a reasonable wage. But he wants Auba level wages, which he doesn't deserve. Mkhitaryan is on similar and look how that's turned out.

Just blow the whole squad up and bring in new talent, from both the market and the academy.

comment by Sheriff John Brown - Wenger Till I Die (U7482)
posted 22 minutes ago
Don't think people realize just how much trouble we are in with our wage bill. We can't keep players at ALL COSTS. We cannot keep Ramsey if he thinks that wage offers in excess of what far superior players to him earn in other clubs are somehow denigrating or insulting. We need to start shipping off the vultures in the club and starting afresh to reward quality and consistency. We're still dealing with the abomination that is Ozil's contract which has only saddled us with a player in the worst run of form of his Arsenal career and no way to ship him off.

Wenger and Gazidis absolutely wrecked this club before they left and our accounts are in the red. Ramsey can fack off just fine.
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This! But the dribbling mess that is Castor will still not get it.

comment by Tu Meke Nketiah (U3732)
posted 7 minutes ago
comment by Castor Troy (U8700)
posted 1 hour, 36 minutes ago
So you really think if Ramsey was on the market, he wouldn't command £50M?

----------------------------------------------------------------------

So why didn't clubs approach him last year, or the year before that?

Face it, clubs only want him because he's free.

I would've liked to have kept Ramsey for a reasonable wage. But he wants Auba level wages, which he doesn't deserve. Mkhitaryan is on similar and look how that's turned out.

Just blow the whole squad up and bring in new talent, from both the market and the academy.
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Exactly, I'd rather give someone like ESR a chance than hand a peak (and still inconsistent) Ramsey an obscene contract and be lumbered with him for another 3-4 years. We've made enough contract mistakes as it is.

Quoting Ramsey goals last year is damning with the faintest praise.

5 of his 11 goals last year came against the worst Everton team I've seen in a while. A few more in the Europa, which we got knocked out of when we faced somebody decent.

Ramsey is injury prone and inconsistent. He is a good player, I like him, but he isn't worth making our wage bill even worse than it already is.

He can Fack off to juventus who also thought emre can was worth going for on a free. Has he even played for them?

Just to add, our handling of contracts in general has been abysmal for the last decade or so.

Just because I've made peace with Ramsey leaving on a free, doesn't mean I think the whole situation isn't an absolute farce. Because it is. We should've sold him when he started puss-pussing about being paid more than we were willing to give him.

Hopefully the new regime will see a better approach to player contracts. Unfortunately, there is an overlap with the likes of Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Ramsey etc. Until this lot fack off we won't see much progression on terms of our finances.

comment by Tu Meke Nketiah (U3732)
posted 12 seconds ago
Just to add, our handling of contracts in general has been abysmal for the last decade or so.

Just because I've made peace with Ramsey leaving on a free, doesn't mean I think the whole situation isn't an absolute farce. Because it is. We should've sold him when he started puss-pussing about being paid more than we were willing to give him.

Hopefully the new regime will see a better approach to player contracts. Unfortunately, there is an overlap with the likes of Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Ramsey etc. Until this lot fack off we won't see much progression on terms of our finances.
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I do really hope Ozil goes in the Summer. He has been a disaster in 2018. Mkhi should go too but don’t think it will be this Summer.

Castor, as Sheriff has mentioned, we are up shiiit creek with our wage bill. It's risen by 17.5% in the last year whilst we lost £40m of revenue.

One of the major reasons, it is believed, that the club withdrew the contract from Ramsey was because they didn't believe it was in our interests financially to keep him at the club. When you then add this to reports suggesting that Emery misjudged Ramsey's profile as a player, the incentive to keep him lessens.

Ramsey's a good stat-padder. He will go through patches where he will score a bunch of goals or get a bunch of assists, then he'll be anonymous again for a while. In some respects, it's kind of similar to what Giroud did for us.

But put the statistics to one side for a second. Ramsey has been very inconsistent for the last 5 years. Whether it's through injury, poor positional sense or being out of favour, he simply has not lived up to the hype.

He's scored some important goals for us - there's no denying that. But in terms of what you want from a central midfielder, does he really offer all the attributes we need? The answer has to be a no.

His passing can be slow and wayward, he takes too many touches on the ball and he tries to be extravagant at the wrong times.

For all the goals he has scored, he has frustrated a lot of people too.

It simply isn't worth keeping a player like that on the wages he purportedly wants when there are more effective options out there right now.

This

Ramsey's a weird one because he's not disciplined enough for CM but not creative enough to be our AM. I'd like him to stay but he's not worth the huge wages he wants, so if Emery doesn't see him as a key player going forward then there's no point using a big chunk on the wage bill on him. I doubt he'll be more than a squad player for these top clubs and then sell him back to a PL club for a big fee in a year or two.

comment by Tu Meke Nketiah (U3732)
posted 22 minutes ago
Just to add, our handling of contracts in general has been abysmal for the last decade or so.

Just because I've made peace with Ramsey leaving on a free, doesn't mean I think the whole situation isn't an absolute farce. Because it is. We should've sold him when he started puss-pussing about being paid more than we were willing to give him.

Hopefully the new regime will see a better approach to player contracts. Unfortunately, there is an overlap with the likes of Ozil, Mkhitaryan, Ramsey etc. Until this lot fack off we won't see much progression on terms of our finances.
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Tu we could have got decent money for Ramsey, Wilshere, Ozil and many others if we sold a few years back but we've hung on to so many players until they have no value left.

Ramsey has been 10 years at Arsenal. Within 10 years he had a spell of half a saison consistency. Following rumours he wanted over 200K a week.

We lost a lot of players the last few years and moved on. Trust Emery to be prepared to replace him with hopefully a younger option.

End of the day he's not worth 200k per week.
We need to do everything on our power to try and somehow get rid of Ozil.

Getting Ozil off the wage will will allow us to get 2 actual top class players on £150k pw contracts.

Next stop should be trying to remove Mikhi as he's not worth the £150k plus we are giving him.

Letting Ramsey, Welbeck and Elneny leave will mean we will be saving almost 300k pw in wages.

Letting Ramsey, Welbeck and Elneny leave will mean we will be saving almost 300k pw in wages.
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I can see Stan big smile from here just as the thought his pockets will be filled with an additional £300K per week.

comment by 🇫🇷 🇫🇷 🇫🇷 Emery OUT 🇫🇷 🇫🇷🇫🇷 (U10012)
posted 59 seconds ago
Letting Ramsey, Welbeck and Elneny leave will mean we will be saving almost 300k pw in wages.
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I can see Stan big smile from here just as the thought his pockets will be filled with an additional £300K per week.
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All of Stan Kroenke teams are at the top of their leagues. Nuggets are the top of their conf. LA Rams are 3rd favs for the superbowl. Avalanche are there or there abouts.

Only Arsenal need a rebuild. Worst performing Sports team in his portfolio.

I have not been a fan of Kroenke in the past. But I don't blame for the current situation. We are paying CL wages to players who can't even qualify for the CL let alone challenging in it. We need to tear it down and rebuild whilst staying competitive. Its not an easy task.

This is the things that bothers me really. I’m no fan of Stan whatsoever but the fault doesn’t lie with him over a lack of investment.

He trusted Wenger. Wenger ran absolutely everything with no accountability and Stan continued to fund him without realising the damage Wenger was causing to this club. Wenger and Ivan together undid all the hard work of guiding us through the early Emirates Years and have put us straight back into the financial constraints that once held the club back. But the difference this time is that nearly every other club in the country has more money to spend than they ever have which is why it’s going to be incredibly difficult for us to compete again in the near future.

I compare our situation at the moment with one similar to a team that is relegated. We've had a drop in revenue from the Champions League and we are carrying those players on wages that would normally be paid to teams that get to final stages of the Champions League. My only criticism of Kroenke is that he left it 3 years too late to fire Wenger. At that time we had enough money in the reserves to make the changes that were required. Wenger blew it all on very poor buys.

Ramsey has been bang average for most of the season, I think the Liverpool game highlighted how ridiculous his demands are. The only Liverpool player on £200k a week (or even close) is Mo Salah, which he has just signed. Does anybody REALLY think Ramsey is worth the equivalent of Salah ? You must be his relative if you do. 😎

Arsenal have inherited a bonkers wage structure and incompetent player retention process from Wenger & Gazidis and it is going to be painful to sort out.

Ramsey being told to f**k off when demanding £200k+ Is a step in the right direction, if we can offload Özil with his ludicrous salary after so many lethargic performances then so much the better.

He trusted Wenger. Wenger ran absolutely everything with no accountability and Stan continued to fund him without realising the damage Wenger was causing to this club.
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I agree that money has been mismanaged badly and largely wasted on c.rap plaeyrs but I wouldn't say that Stan has "funded" our transfers, that was money generated by the club.
One very important thing which has changed though is that now, he took the club private and he doesn't have to publish the account anymore so basically free to do (almost) whatever he wants with the money available. If the rumour of the email sent is true, then I expect him to start behaving differently.

Generally owners only invest immediately after they acquire a club (Man City being the exception not the rule). After that its up to the club to generate its own revenue. Even Roman Abhamovic stopped 4 or 5 years ago.

Think of Ramsey wasn’t british there wouldn’t be such hype around him. Pundits always seem to rate him as one of best arsenal players since he’s been here. If he was foreign I bet there’d be much less in the media rating him as much