Alisher Usmanov

English Football
#21

i might be wrong here but there could be an element of politics when selling shares too. Usmanov is as shady as it gets.

#22

People repeatedly criticise the Board for lack of ambition - Just think about our spending levels over the last couple of season. Wenger has been backed at board level with considerable support.

Everytime the current situation is expanded to ownership/board level it’s just papers trying to get clicks off stupid supporters who’ll always eat up their inflammatory click bait and false narratives,

Usmanov has repeatedly and public backed Wenger, last time was March 2016. Agrees Wenger should leave when he deems necessary too

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#23

People who criticise the board when they’ve spent as much as they have and backed our manager with a massive contract and everything he could ask for are just desperate to validate Wenger’s failures.

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#24

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#25

Thank god ANYONE but that slug has control of the club…and I really mean ANYONE…I’d even let Daniel Levy buy us than that Uzbek

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#26

Honestly this kinda goes along with my theory. You can’t barely spend any money for almost 20 years and then expect to just start compeeting with teams who have been investing in assets for the last 20 years.

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#27

I think you can. Football is about players, not money. Money is just something to get you players and Chelsea spending big money on Drogba and Shevchenko has no bearing on their success today (apart from it making them a bigger club but we can already compete with that). We could’ve fought for Costa, Willian, Kante if we’d wanted them.

It’s not like we have a League One squad + Sanchez + Ozil and we’ve got to spend 35m each on 9 positions to be able to compete with Chelsea. I think at the start of the season many thought our squad was quite close to Chelsea’s. I doubt anyone would have said they were 19 points better than us.

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#28

Shame whoever sold all the Chelsea Shares to Roman didn’t feel the need to be ethically correct.

#29

It’s in his interest for nothing to be Wenger’s fault and everything to be down to the board that he’s not allowed on and the majority shareholder that won’t sell to him.

It’s funny that if Wenger was backed by his dodgy money for the last 10 years we’d probably still think he was great and we’d probably not care about the ethics by now. I mean people look down on Pellegrini and Mancini but they still won titles with big money teams so Wenger probably would have too every other year.

#30

With Wenger’s continually declining ability to organise and motivate his teams or make good decisions I doubt it would have been at all straightforward for him to win a single title even with all that investment. Now that all his excuses have worn away we can see how poor a manager he has become. Under him even good players seem to perform like dog shit. 07-08 was the only season in the last ten when he almost got it right.

#31

Ultimately they have a better team because they’ve spent more over the years though. Yes we could have competed for Costa (we would have had to break our wage record to get him) but then do we not get Alexis the same summer?

BTW Wenger reckoned the cost of signing Costa for his transfer fee, wages, signing on fee, agent fees amounted to 100million.

#32

That’s true, I mean imagine is Usmanov forced through Wenger’s transfer targets like Suarez, Higuain, Mata, Mkhitaryan, Xabi Alonso and gave RVP and Fabgregas 300k a week deals. We’d have a ridiculously talented squad.

#33

Wenger is talking shit.

So they spent 30m on the player and 70m on the additional fees lol

#34

probably including total wages. not sure what that is though

#35

But that’s just such a silly way of calculating the value of a transfer. I’m sure Ozil had essentially cost us nearly 100m once his 140k a week 5 year contract is up.

So Wenger is just talking shit if he actually did say that.

#36

Absolutely. 30m fee is done and gone, the rest is spread out over 4-5 years. Which a business generating 350m a year can afford with very little hassle.

He really does talk a lot of shit about money while willfully pissing it away on the other hand giving 50k a week contracts to clowns like Bendtner and Denilson.

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#37

He is correct in including all fees (including wages) when determining value.

#38

Read the post above yours as to why it’s just not particularly valid.

#39

Just addressing your point about how to identify value. Why is it wrong to include wages?

#40

Because Wenger pointing out that Costa would eventually cost ÂŁ100m is just another example of him talking about how overblown and inflated the transfer market is. Our revenue is higher than it ever has been so if you earn more you should be expected to spend more.

And the wages are offset over a few years (and there’s also no guarantee you keep a player for the entirety of his contract either). So just take the player for his transfer market value, accept the wages will be spread out over the course of the contract and stop complaining all the time.