Tag Archives: FFP

Should Arsenal bid £31m for Diego Costa?

And so it begins. With three matches left on the schedule and two weeks left in the season, it is time to start kicking tires and assessing options. Champions League play is assured (we’re into the playoff-round, for what that’s worth). With the World Cup looming, there’s likely to be a compressed, claustrophobic transfer-window, what with players vying for spots in their national teams and managers wanting to make the most of the time they have. Despite Arsène’s protestations to the contrary, we’d be fools to pass up a chance to sign Costa, as in-form a striker as is likely to be available this summer. If only it were that simple…

Diego? Is that really you?

First, the financials. Apparently, Costa has a £31m release clause in his contract. Take that with a grain of salt. We’ve proven that we’re ready to take that plunge, whether it was with our pursuit of Luis Suarez or Higuain or with our signing of Özil. We may have upwards of £100m to throw around, but keep that figure under your hat as negotiations fluctuate according to what sellers think you can spend. Beyond that, the man would likely command something like £150k per week, if not more. Again, this is something we can afford—especially if his future performance matches his current one, leading to more wins in the Champions League and deeper progression to boot. Would this, however, distort the wage-structure at Arsenal? Would current squad-members come to resent the imbalance? After all, long-serving members such as Walcott and Wilshere would be surpassed, if not eclipsed, by such wages. However, if the man can bed in and deliver, I’d wager the difference in salaries that they’d be understanding enough to see it as the cost of business.

Next, the competition. Chelsea. Pockets deep enough to lose one’s soul in. Mourinho has been vocal in his dissatisfaction with his options. I’m not sure where the wisdom there comes from—strikers can be notoriously vain and fragile beasts, possessing massive egos in need of constant massage—and the idea that insulting Torres or Ba (and perhaps Eto’o) will motivate them boggles the mind. They’re in the squad. They’re your only options. Why not talk them up, if only a little, to see what happens? Sadly, money talks. Loudly. Mourinho, as I’ve suggested before, is a bit like Francis from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. For those not in the know, Francis (like Mourinho) is spoiled and petulant—and those are his positive qualities. That said, it’s already been widely and frequently reported that Mourinho is adamant on signing Costa (“adamant” here meaning that Mourinho will throw himself to the floor, kicking and screaming, if he doesn’t get what he wants). Given his voracious appetite for spending for the sake of spending, his short-term approach to winning, and his inability to deliver silverware without the best that money can buy, we’ll likely face a fierce bidding war for Costa’s services. So much the better. If we bid for Costa, we drive up his price. If we drive up his price, Chelsea pays through Mourinho’s nose. Manchester City have already run afoul of FFP. Chelsea can’t be too far behind. We owe it to ourselves to enter the bidding over Costa, if only to inflate the final fee, thereby handicapping Chelsea in other areas (if not signing the player outright).

Last, the player himself. Costa, as we all know, has been one of the most lethal finishers in Europe. This season, he has helped Atletico surge to the top of La Liga with 27 goals and five assists in 33 appearances. Not to be overlooked, he delivered ten goals and 12 assists in 31 league appearances last season, playing behind or alongside Radamel Falcao. Falcao has moved on, and Costa has been more than up to the task of replacing his 28 goals and one assist in 34 league appearances. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to argue against Costa’s quality. Even if we take into account the more-liberal scoring of La Liga, he’s shown that he can deliver the goods. He has contributed, via goals and assists, to 40% of Atletico’s goals. For comparison, Ronaldo has contributed to 39% of Real Madrid’s goals and Messi has contributed to 38% of Barcelona’s. For those still casting a dubious eyebrow, Costa has converted one less penalty than Ronaldo or Messi.

Speaking of penalties, let’s talk penalties. In Atletico’s trip to Stamford Bridge, with the game knotted at 1-1, Costa was brought down by Eto’o. He stepped to take the penalty. Two minutes, a warning, a skirmish, and a yellow card later, he converted. In the interim, there was a ludicrous amount of ball-adjusting (which refers, of course, to the spherical object he would go on to blast home). Along the way, he showed the kind of cojones that winners so often possess. Knowing full-well that Chelsea were sizing him up for a transfer, he took his sweet time in setting up the ball before taking the spot-kick. That he converted to all but eliminate Chelsea from the Champions League suggests a pair made of only the finest brass that money can buy.

And so we come full circle. Can we get him at £31m? If not, how much higher should we be willing to go to get him? On one hand, the money we’d spend on him is money we can’t spend on other needs. On the other hand, money we’ve spent on him might be money we don’t need to spend on those other needs. Eggs, meet basket. Basket, I see you’ve met eggs…

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This kugelsortierer sorts Arsenal's ambitions

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As we wring our hands and twiddle our thumbs and chew our nails, wondering who, if anyone, we’ll be signing, I thought it would be worth taking stock and assessing the bigger picture. What does this all mean? Arsenal, after all, has managed to balance its books, more or less, over the last decade only to see other clubs vacuum up talent (all too frequently, talent we have nurtured). However, the dilemma exists at a deeper level. I struggled to find a suitable symbol for it and finally stumbled on it in the form of a Dutch ball-bearing sorter, Keppler’s Kugelsortierer. It’s similar to a child’s piggy-bank that will sort coins by sending coins down a chute lined with slots so that the slimmest, smallest coins slot out first and the largest ones roll down to the end. The Kugelsortierer (“ball grader”) does the same with bearings; bearings with the smallest diameter fall through a matching hole near the top, the next-largest rolls a little farther before falling through the next-largest hole, and so on.

You can see the contraption there, and you’re probably starting to sense its relevance to the transfer-window. To make it clear, each ball-bearing represents a player, each slot and chamber represents one club or another, and the sorter itself is the transfer-market. With a sense of grim inevitability, especially for those smaller clubs, the transfer-window remorselessly sorts players according to the clubs to which they apparently belong. Should a player grow to be too big for his club, the sorter sends him further down the line. Should a club’s ambitions shrink, its players will be re-sorted accordingly. Of course, for those to the left of the sorter, this all works out just fine as the biggest and best players find their way to their destination. The end-result is that each league will end up with a small handful of powerful clubs and a larger assortment of hopefuls.

However, the system is not without its hiccups. Occasionally, a bearing will roll past its intended hole and end up at a too-large club. Conversely, a bearing will get stuck in a too-small club. Perhaps Fernando Torres is an example of the former; he might have been better-off at Liverpool over Chelsea. Maybe Gareth Bale is an example of the latter; a player who may have ended up at a club he is too ‘big’ for.

It’s a larger problem for the smaller clubs, whether they’re facing relegation in the Prem for fighting to win the Eredivisie; they’ll lose their best players to larger clubs. It’s inevitable. Heck, we took Giroud from Montpellier, a huge factor in them tumbling from first place in 2012 to ninth in 2013. Much as we lament the loss of various players to other clubs, we do have to admit that we inflict similar pain on other, smaller, clubs.

As we’ve discussed, Arsene considered signing Bale in 2007. Maybe this would have been an example of the kugelsortierer doing its job. Bale has arguably outgrown Spurs and is ready for somewhere bigger. Perhaps he should’ve come to Arsenal. Over the last five years, if not longer, Arsenal has been guilty of letting itself be that club that lets the larger ball-bearings roll past to end up in bigger slots. Van Persie. Fabregas. Cole. We won’t even indulge in the list of players we’ve “almost” signed. The question that then arises is, under the current system, how does Arsenal see itself? Where do we lie on the kugelsortierer? Sure, we were once at the very-left end and deservedly so. How far to the right, though, have we slid?

Back in January, I would have said we’d slid pretty far. Being linked with the likes of David Villa, a 31-year old coming off of a broken leg, suggested that we saw ourselves as a club with modest ambitions with talk of fourth place as a trophy. Now, however, we seem to be moving to the left. Our pursuit of Higuain, a prolific scorer for the world’s largest club (financially, at least), suggests that we have our sights set on goals that are larger than a fourth-place finish or finishing above Spurs. The idea that we’re seriously linked with Rooney further suggests that we’re eyeing a return to our days of glory and have outgrown our current stasis.

However, the larger problem still persists. Under the current system, a “small” club’s reward for success is to see its best players leave. Whether it’s Aston Villa’s Christian Benteke or Spurs’ Gareth Bale (or Arsenal’s Robin van Persie?), the current system will send the best players to the biggest clubs. The rich get richer; the poor get the picture. Whether FFP has the teeth to address this remains to be seen.

On one hand, I am excited at our activity in this summer’s transfer-window. I would lovelovelovelovelove to see Higuain join us and would lose my mind if Rooney does the same. On the other, I look forward to a system, perhaps under FFP, that would bring about a bit of parity through which clubs, regardless of size, can keep their best. It might be a little self-serving, but we’ve already proven that we can live within our means and win, falling behind only those who live beyond theirs. In other words, once the kugelsortierer is level rather than pitched, Arsenal might just end up as the club best-positioned to win the Prem.

Say what you will about our signings and ambitions over the last few years—we’re looking lively in the transfer-market for the first time in ages. Not only are we looking to maximize our position under the current system, we’re positioning ourselves astutely for the restrictions to come.

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