Arsenal’s 1-0 loss to Manchester City in their last league game cost them an additional €1m for fielding one of their starters.
Mikel Arteta has been tinkering with his team in recent weeks as he looks for his best line up.
The Spaniard changed the team that beat Leeds United in their previous league game and it didn’t pay off.
When he was made the club’s manager one problem that he had to sort out first was that of the team’s defence.
He has signed some impressive defenders in the short time that he has been at the club.
He now has an abundance of options at the back and he could have started with any centre-back partnership that he wanted.
He started former Manchester City man Pablo Mari and that cost the Gunners €1m, according to Football London.
This is because the agreement that made his permanent transfer a reality states that the Gunners will pay Flamengo that fee every time he makes 10 appearances for them in the Premier League.
This will be the case until he makes 80 appearances for the club, by which time the payment will stop.
It is the nature of the beast. For decades now PL footballers have been paid millions if they play well or not even if they don’t play they are on guaranteed money with no performance clauses. Ozil was paid 9million quid for half a season despite not playing a minute. Auba 350k p/w Lacazette 200k p/w Pepe Willian Bellerin 120k p/w guaranteed. All the others on 50/100k p/w guaranteed regardless of form. Performance based contracts are way overdue.
It was paid to his club he was transferred from, it wasn’t paid to Mari. Arsenal had to wait until the end of feb before they played him again because they couldn’t pay it earlier for financial reasons.
So let me get this right, Arteta plays Mari who hasn’t played for a while, with Tierney who came back from injury with Holding who’s been out of the team for 2 or three games with Gabriel and Luiz on the bench. We lost the game and it cost the club a million euros, brilliant management of club resources
Sounds about right.