Current news is Messi will NOT sign his new deal with Barcelona. Messi is currently a free agent….but with the wages he’s being paid you’d have to form out the thick end of £25m a season for him. Only City and PSG can really afford that. Maybe he wants to go to America - which would be a cop out.

Silent Stan could afford it Got to be worth it for the marketing alone.

Man Utd finished 6th as recently as 2019. Behind us.

We have gone backwards in the last two seasons and it isn't down to wages. Even with Özil on his monstrous wage, we broke our transfer record. We are still very competitive in the transfer market. Not so on the pitch, though.

They are in the champions league this year and we weren’t good enough to get a Europa place, I can’t contain all the glory we are experiencing.

If you can’t see how damaging it was for the club paying 350 k a week for Özil to sit on the bench then I’m speechless.

Not vice versa?

It will be very interesting to see if Leicester will still be in the right half of the EPL in a few years. They are going through a purple patch (albeit a admirably protracted one) but translating that to a permanent seat at the top table (or at least the Spuds kiddies table just below the adults) is another matter.

https://twitter.com/avfcofficial/status ... 42146?s=21

This is decent from Villa CEO, that’s how you communicate with your fans. Not all fans will agree with what you do but be open and honest and clear in your strategy

Nobody is saying that having expensive players who aren't pulling their weight isn't a problem. Cherry picking the ignominous end to Özil's Arsenal career proves nothing. All of the big clubs have flops.

And our form in the second half of the season wasn't that bad at all. So that is another non-argument.

But maybe not for the drama. Imagine the stink if he develops a taste for steak and pidney pudding and has to dropped ...

He's a merchandising dream for any team. Becks was bought to sell shirts at Real Madrid and he paid for his wage.
China is hungry for credibility. Basketball is huge there and they have been trying to get NBA players on the back end of their career to go there as well as nicking a young player or two. I can see a team there paying Messi an uber salary as a way to reinvigorate the league post Covid19.

If Messi goes to America I’ll be happy enough. It’ll keep him outside the news more than staying at Barcelona or joining City would.

On another site the first fake photo of Messi in an Arsenal shirt has already appeared.

Eh ? Who mentioned our form in the 2nd half of the season. Not me.

You said we weren't good enough to get a European place. I'm suggesting you need to qualify that, if the point at issue is whether we are a terribly run club full of poor, overpaid players. Pretty easy to understand, I would have thought?

In other news, the Harry Kane no show saga continues, while he's still hunkered down in Florida.

I said we didn’t qualify and errr we didn’t. It’s a fact we were not good enough. Like we haven’t done for some time in the champions league.

Take a look at the European qualification records of our rivals compared to us and consider if more qualification is needed.

That’s it Zed. They didn’t even superimpose Messi’s face on someone in this season’s home shirt.

that too, though we have so many to shift off

I might be the only one but £25m a season for Messi doesn’t seem that bad a deal. Imagine the shirt sales and merchandising deals, the marketing opportunities, the media coverage......it would probably pay for itself purely in the off-field possibilities and put Arsenal right back on the footballing map. It might even get us back in the CL (unlikely but you never know)

Game day revenue, merchandising alone would halve that fairly easily.

Morning socrates. Economically you may well be correct. But if Messi is open to moving to England, don’t you think other clubs would tempt him far more than Arsenal? City under Guardiola for a start, with them paying him even more generously. Okay, they’ve just signed Grealish so let’s say they’re not so keen now. How about their neighbours? In the Champions League, the country’s biggest club. With their worldwide fan base, and as big as Arsenal’s is United’s is miles bigger, they’d therefore sell way more Messi shirts.

The economic argument you give applies to Chelsea and Liverpool just as much as Arsenal, and aren’t they more tempting? At least Chelsea are in the Champions League. The only way Arsenal are in Europe this season is geographically.

Everyone here knows I’m not keen on Messi. But I appreciate what a wonderful player he was, especially at his peak. What I don’t understand is Arsenal fans clinging on to a hope he’ll join us, and I’m not saying you are socrates despite your last post. That picture I saw of Messi in an Arsenal shirt which Zed kindly posted here. It’s so ridiculous it’s laughable. There’s as much chance of a couple of supermodels offering a threesome to a homeless tramp in his cardboard box down the Embankment tube station.

Isn’t he hugely more expensive than that? I thought that he had agreed to drop his wages to ‘only’ £39m

Hi Bernard,

He won't join Arsenal in a million years, I'm just saying that the economics might actually work in the favour of the buying club if they get it right.

Messi will probably join PSG. They don’t appear to have any financial worries or constraints, just like Man City really. Bloated and obscene.

We're linked with Takehiro Tomiyasu - right back from Bologna, currently with Japan at the Olympics. 22 years old 6 ft 2 and Spurs have been chasing him all summer and had a £15m bid rejected. We've apparently moved to the front of the queue.

So that would be 5 right backs at the club if he signs!?

Still so much work to do before the window closes.

I had picked up the £25m a season based on his weekly wage being around £500k per week. But his yearly salary is posted online as 71 million euros!

Talk of Kolasinac's contract being cancelled so he can join Fenerbache on a free - joining his best mate Özil. If there is no other way to move him out of the squad then just do it, even if we are having to pay 50% of his wages for the next year.

Hi Rich,

You can never have too many right backs......just ask Gareth Southgate.

We paid 90% of Özil’s contract for the period he was there before 30th June.

If Kolasinac’s contract is being cancelled, wouldn’t that mean paying it off in full?

Isn’t it more than double that ? I read the new contract he’d agreed was still over a million a week. Can’t see Kroenke biting

Can just imagine the bed wetting here if Messi turned in a bad game. *%^@*** Arteta etc etc

Arsenal are basically paying 2 million for a footballer to play for another club. It’s pretty amazing.Read this .. amazing the way both clubs are bending over backwards whilst the player obviously refuses to compromise himself. It’s almost more logical to stick him in the reserves and wait for an injury crisis.

Kolasinac’s agent wants Arsenal to pay off the remainder of his Gunners contract so he can join Fenerbahce. The ex-Schalke full-back, who returned to the Veltins-Arena on loan in January, has one year on his €5.5m-a-year (£90k-p/w) deal.

Arsenal are only prepared to pay off €2.5m (£2m) of the amount owed to Kolasinac for next season. However, his agent is pushing for €3.7m (£3m) from the north Londoners, with Fenerbahce covering the €1.8m (£1.5m) difference.

https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2021/08/05/a ... ct-report/

No wonder Arsenal are short of cash. They keeping paying out fortunes for people not to play for them. Nuts.

If I was advising any player on leaving the club, you would be silly not to require a full payout or just sit down and wait. With the pandemic many clubs where you are heading will not be offering big wages, particular if there is no CL money.

We, Arsenal, are caught in the half way area of being trying to get back into the top 4 and being forced to pay silly wages to attract or keep players. In my view we are negotiating from the wrong angle. We should be paying a good wage but topped by bonuses for trophies or top 4 or a lesser sum for Europa.

Mustafi is now a free agent, can’t find a club and been voted “loser of the season”

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/footb ... i-24693341


we were paying him a hundred grand a week. people on the SGF thought he was ace.

Getting paid to leave? Hold on there ltg..lets not be too hasty on this. Just saying...

Performance related pay. Yes please.

Fully agree with what you say from the player/agent perspective. So would I in their position. We just have too many Winston Bogardes.

How much do you want?

I'll chip in with a fiver.

If I could do smilies that would get some.

Just to clarify, do you mean they thought he was ace when we signed him, or later?