Transfer systems. Who should be in charge of Arsenal’s transfers? by Galen
Every football club have got a transfer system and a process. Loads of Arsenal fans have complained about our system. So I took this opportunity to look at our transfer system and that of other top football clubs.
The Presidential System. (Madrid, Barca)
This is a very latin American and Spanish systems. Clubs like Boca, River Plate Madrid and Barcelona have used this systems for ages. Its a very socialist system and there are elections for presidents. There is usually a manifesto and a campaign where the president promises that if he is elected as president he would go out there and sign Ronaldo or Bale or Neymar or Suarez. The down side of this system is that the club never takes into account what the manager wants. Like selling Robben or Ozil or Sneijder, etc.
Pellegrini had some words of wisdom about his time at Madrid. he said “I didn’t have a voice or a vote at Madrid. They sign the best players, but not the best players needed in a certain position. It’s no good having an orchestra with the 10 best guitarists if I don’t have a pianist.” Just brilliant Pellegrini!
The Managerial System (Arsenal)
In this system the manager is involved in all stages of the transfer. lets put it this way- he has the final say on any player that comes. He has the final say on transfer and wages. He keeps the budget under control. He is the BOSS. Mr Wenger and Sir Alex are probably going to be the last group of people to ever be under this transfer system. Wenger has total control of all transfer activities both incoming and outgoing. The problem with this system is that it is more like a one man band. If the manager makes the poor decisions in the window then the club is in trouble. Wenger once said in a conference. “The Manager is the most important person at a Club. That is why whenever there is a problem the manager gets sacked.”
The Director of football. (Man City, Spurs, Bayern, Dortmund, Milan, Inter, Juventus, Roma)
Loads of clubs are on this system at the moment. Most of the clubs in England prefer this system. The manager focuses on matters on the pitch -“Head Coach”- while the Director of football is in charge of transfers and off the pitch matters. Like every transfer system there are criticism. At Man City Txiki Begiristain and Franco Baldini (Tottenham) have been heavily criticised for burning transfer budgets. Most often there is always conflicts with the manager. The players are not usually what the manager wants and the leads to conflicts. Tim Sherwood was a big critic of this system at Spurs. Rafa Benitez had the famous Inter Milan rant. “You either back me and bring 3 players that I want or you speak to my agent and reach an agreement if there is no support”. A few days later Benitez was sacked.
The Transfer Committee. (Liverpool and Newcastle)
Instead of a Director of football there could be a committee made up of scouts or coaches who watch tapes and videos then they decide what the club need. This could be fantastic because you have got about 4 people making a decision. But this could also be a disaster if the members of the committee are not football men. At Liverpool for example the committee have been criticised because the members are business men. James Milner and Danny Ings for example are free goods.
The Balanced System. (Chelsea and Man United)
Like I said before, Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex will be the last guys on the managerial system where the manager had total control. In the balanced System the manager works with a director of football and chief executive. But they don’t dictate on the manager. The opinion of the manager is very important. Mourinho said the Shevchenko saga won’t happen again. Where a player was bought for a club record even though the manager didn’t approve. This is what Louis VG had to say about the transfer policy. “I don’t spend the money. I have explained how it works. I look for the players who fit in our profile and then I say to Ed Woodward, ‘okay, I want this player in the first position and the second option is that player and then we go to third when they are not available.’ “But he is negotiating, I am not negotiating. I’m not buying.”
Many fans have been critical of the Arsenal transfer policy. Which of the above policies would be best for Arsenal?
BY Galen Sona.
bring back david dein
The Arsenal Board and not just the Manager.Current system puts too much power in the hands of Wenger.
@Honest opinion
By the Arsenal board You mean? what if the board is made up of 20 people? isn’t that and even bigger problem?
the arsenal board is only made up of 7 directors, not 20 lol that would be mad if we had that much money in the boardroom the first £100 billion board in football history.
Wenger better deliver this transfer window, he needs to make two big signings, a DM and a super striker. I would love Vidal and cavani please.
Would settle with kondogbia and Martinez
The best system, is the Ivan system! #WarChest
we should take the daddy warbucks transfer system…
u know.. err adopt a ginger kid called annie.
just spend the moolah …what is this wartime rations
@muffdiver
It’s a hard knock life Muff…
During wengers early years I don’t think you could really fault the players he brought in and I’m sure he’d have liked to keep a few of them around longer had he not had to sell.
The next few years he bought mostly young players who he could develop mainly due to price and cheaper options. Priced out of his main targets even second and third targets having to settle for players who I’m sure for a man who knows top talent must have been disappointed with. Seeing other targets flourish at other clubs and coaching inferior players.
Although during that period I think he did well only buying a handful of players who I’d describe as flops. Some may argue that he bought more than a handful of flops but a lot of the players were bought as promising youth.
In the last couple of years the old Wenger has returned money available and the quality of the players coming in has massively improved In my opinion he’s not bought a bad player sin the last three summers. Question makes over a couple like Nacho but he’s proved himself as a top player.
If he keeps bringing in top quality players then I don’t think anyone can complain. I’ve never known a man who watches so much football he’s aware of most players in most leagues he knows top talent and he knows the type of players he wants. He sees potential in people. He also studies the characters of players on and off the pitch and he likes intelligent players who can learn and adapt. Manager, coach, director of football, scout. I think the system works so long as he can get his primary targets and continued financial backing.
David Dein was the man who brought in all the top players to Arsenal in those early days. He was a master negotiator and worked extremely well with Wenger.
It was still Wenger who made the decisions on players just Dein was far better at negotiating deal’s than anyone we have there days. Although I think it’s harder these days most clubs have bigger scouting networks and a lot more awareness of players from most leagues tougher competition for players.
Arsenal MUST invest. Listen to Sanchez today, he wants more than FA Cup, and so should the fans and so should the board. If we dont match the ambition of our best players we risk losing them
How did you get a thump down for this comment. What wrong did u say. I want more than FA Cup. I belive with more investment in the right areas we have the squad and manager to achieve it. We need to win so that better players would want to come to Arsenal.
Easy some people including myself believe the squad is good enough. All we have to do is sort out our injury problem, which fingers crossed, we have.
Don’t understand this DM argument, why buy a backup DM if we have a boat load of back ups. Remember as BACKUP – Arteta, Flamini (Hopefully he goes though), Diaby, Chambers, Bielik, U/18 Captain Kamara – who is a beast. We also have the option of playing a double pivot with Ramsey slotting in next to Carzola/Wilshere. Ox has also expressed his desire to play in the middle of the park. Dont get me wrong I’ll love to have Vidal/Sideline/Kondogbia as much as the next supporter, but will it be a train smash not getting one?
Starting line up is great. Me like most people on here believe an upgrade on Giroud will be excellent, but that wont happen for less than 40-50mil (please don’t give my Martinez -honestly why is there such a big hype about him…?) With Walcott expressing his desire to play through the middle, Campbell coming back ( I still like him hope he stays) and young stars eager to break through like Akpom/Mavididi I don’t see it being worth cash.
The only real upgrade I see as a necessity is Petr, I would love him being the reason why we beat Chelsea – like Welbeck was this season 🙂
I would \n’t mind us buying the 10 u/15 players and Mr. Chelsea this season
I honestly can see us winning the title with the current squad and for the life of me I don’t understand why nobody sees it.
Usmanov or Henry
OooohLa!!! Now u come. I say the fans be in charge of transfers.
I dont understand that one poor decision and the manager gets sacked wonder why it isn’t applicable to Arsene Wenger for thumping the team received in different occasion. Arsenal must sweat when Coquelin gets injured and his replacement Mr. Mathieu Flamini (“the guy who ditched Wenger to sign for A.C Milan”) or Arteta who is slow or the No 10 who is jack wilshere the defensive midfielder along with CAM.
If Hafiz was in charge of transfers we would go bankrupt but would have cool players before that like Pogba, Hummels, Lloris, Suarez, Verane etc
@fred cowardly
If Hafiz were in charge, we might go broke, but we would mos def have a boat load of trophies to show for it…lmfao
don’t think wenger has absolute control of the transfers. reading between the lines going by the welbeck transfer and him saying “i’m not in the transfer mode yet” gives me two impressions. 1st ivan can be open to talk with clubs freely about players without going for a set target. welbeck being an example. he became available. it was discussed when things seemed progressive wenger was informed. that is my take.
then you have the “not in transfer mood/mode” stuff. arsenal for sure was out there looking around and inquiring. dybala was definitely wanted but he wanted to stay in Italy. wenger wasn’t doing transfer stuff but his team of helpers were out there still trying.
The point is that Wenger has the final say. If he doesn’t want the player there is no chance the player will come to Arsenal. Wenger has to watch the player for about 7 times before he approves.
@themadhurata
Wenger siad on signing Paulista ” I look at interceptions, defensive errors, winning tackles – what I call tackles is committing to win the ball. Set piece receptions. These kind of things. But the most important thing is through the eye.
It is difficult to watch all the games. But what I mean is that if the numbers confirm the eye, it gives you more. If a guy comes home and says ‘I’ve seen a good player’, you can statistically observe this player for five, six, seven games.
“You send him again, he comes back and says he’s a good player, and the numbers confirm, you can say the risk is limited. Though there is always a risk.
from that you can tell wenger has got his scouts. But he needs to watch about 7 times to confirm those statistics with his eyes. then he can approve the signing of the player.
wenger also has his new shiny dna stats package company, who do all his analytical work on the players he wants for him theses days talk about sophisticated we have moved with the times, and the future is bright in terms of transfers and how professionally we approach them.
i think wenger makes the list of players he wants and then sends his negotiating team to sort out the transfer i.e gazidis and dicky law(who is very good as he is multi lingual and has many contacts around south america/spain very handy) to sort out the finer details(get a cheaper deal) of the deal, and broker terms and then it gets presented to the board(who give wenger and gazidis the budget to which they work with) for final approval.
this is a soundproof method as it goes through a few channels before being approved we are a classy club who does thing with finesse and sophistication, we are know as the bank of england club after all.
Wonder if he took time to watch eeeerrrrrrr,,, Park Chu-Young though….. That was money down the drain… Unless if it was for selling shirts……
can’t disagree at all with what you said. but i’m sure the scouts have some freedom to investigate. they will know what wenger is looking for and will have access to the software analysis stuff and some freedom and range to work with. ivan as well. in the case of players everyone knows, wenger and everyone is aware like grealish, barkley, januzaj, he will have freedom to inquire.
David Dean, bring him back
if not, adopt the chelsea/UTD system
We have the legendary manager for 2 more years, so let’s enjoy it while it lasts.
Wenger should remain in charge of Arsenals transfers.
Why? Because he has earned the right to after all the years he has been at Arsenal. It is different when it is a manager who has recently joined a new club because, they could take the club in the opposite direction in the long term. Just look at what Harry Redknapp did to Southampton and Portsmouth with his expensive signings.
Wengers case is different. He has already won many trophies with Arsenal, while spending less than teams like Liverpool and Spurs. The directors should have confidence in his judgement based on his history.
The only issue I have with Arsene is that he can take too long to make a decision on what player he wants. However, most of the time he has bought a player who is far better than the fee he was bought for. Sanchez has been the signing of the season!
Wenger just needs to find exceptional players for the DM, GK and ST positions.
Yo Galen 🙂
The thing is that
if the top four teams
aim to win the title 3 will always fail.
That is what has driven Arsenals transfer policy for 7 years.
The cost of winning is too high
while the odds of winning are too low.
So Arsenal has settled for top four EPL and top 16 ECL.
The owner loves this policy as he has
no interest in whether the team wins at all.
The CEO says we are right behind Arsene.
The Manager maintains that 4th is a trophy.
The board says when we win we say nothing
when we lose we also say nothing.
75% of the fans say Arsene knows best.
The players say next season we will win.
The other top 3 clubs say Arsenal are dreaming.
Arsenal last won the EPL 11 years ago
and this is now the longest stretch under one manager
that Arsenal has failed to win the title in our history.
Graham won 2 Premierships in 9 years at 4.5
Wenger has won 3 in 19 years at 6.3 so
Grahams record is clearly better than Wenger’s.
Because only one team can ever win the title in the season
transfer policy can help improve your team but only relative to the other top contenders who themselves have only a one in 4 chance of winning.
Fair enough if you rate Graham higher than Wenger but GG never won the PL. So 1 title in 1 year is a better record than 3 titles in 4 years? If that is the measure then surely our greatest ever manager was Joe Shaw who won the 1st division with 5 months in charge in 1934 – far better hit rate than George Graham.
the main key to wenger making our transfers work is that he is a genius economist, and this is his advantage over other managers, as he knows the true value of players and does fall for the hype of there inflated prices, due to stupid oil clubs big spending dirty money. i think we will move to a more balanced approach depending on the next manager whether he can control it as well as wenger.
i know klopp(i believe he will be perfecting his tactics maybe might add a bit more possession play to his game and management skills while on leave) likes to have big control in the transfers of his clubs so this might be a more smoother move for the club in future.
Klopp must come in or learn a few xtra things from a li’lle distance then come push us foward… I think we not very far off, all we need is a more hungrier coach, willing to stick it out there with the likes of Mourin loud mouth, who is more involved n passionate…. Wenger is becoming predictable and easy to read for modern coaches…… To tell the truth, I still can’t see why we should not beat Chelsea…
Ok I always believe that one man decision is wrong and risky, as we can se Wenger brought good player and bad player to this club as well, there is many aspects that we have to look at, but there is one think for certain if there is a committee of highly rated retired player plus manager to decide what they need and who they need then there should be one that is able to negotiated. With this system we are also sure that there will not be any misusing of power or conspiracy. I think Chelsea had been success in this matter even that’s hard to admit.