Big bucks agent Mino Raiola claims that Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger is scared to spend big money.
The Gunners spent around £89 Million to bring in four players this summer, including £30 Million+ deals to sign Shkodran Mustafi and Granit Xhaka.
Manchester United on the other spend the same amount of money on only one of their targets, breaking the World Record fee for a football player.
Raiola was the man to thrash out that world record fee, and no doubt collect a World Record fee for an agent also, and he has now moved to claim that the Gunners were afraid to work out such a deal.
He said: ‘It’s not just a case of spending the money.
‘It’s shouldering the responsibility of spending that money and saying, ‘yes, this is my man’.
‘Arsenal have the money but do they have the ba***?
‘I respect Arsene Wenger. He has a philosophy that says these figures don’t match what I want to do, so that’s OK. Real Madrid?
‘The will of Zinedine Zidane was strong but we were not sure it was the will of the club.’
We were linked with a move to sign the French international, but it is difficult to justify such huge spending.
We did sign striker Lucas Perez however, in a £17.5 Million deal, but were also linked with a number of other stars for the role, all costing more than the Spaniard.
Islam Slimani was strongly linked with a switch as well as Alexandre Lacazette, and the former instead joined Leicester City, and has hit the ground running.
Slimani bagged two goals in his opening match-up, having cost the Foxes around £30 Million, while our striker is yet to bag a goal, or even impress in our striker role.
Our other named target Lacazette has also been in staggering form so far this season, scoring six goals in the opening four matches, and I can’t help but thing that Arsene Wenger was too stringent in our bid to add a striker.
Was Lucas bought because he was the cheaper option? Do we believe Wenger simply took the less risky option?
Pat J
Ozil and then Sanchez and then Wenger stopped buying Great players. Its hard to get excited about Perez and although Xhaka is a very good player that we needed, he still is not the one world beater per transfer window we were all hoping for.
Last year we could have gotten Sanchez’ best buddy Vidal for less than Xhaka, and this year we could have gone for a more prominent striker then Perez. Basically Arsene took a year off from transfers, almost a self imposed ban. In this day and age its hard to catch up.
That is absolute trash…
Xhaka is 22, was the bundesliga’s youngest captain in a CL level team. Switzerland’s best player by a country mile at the Euro’s and is a top-drawer prospect. Name me another player with his physical attributes that uses the ball with his passing range, vision and composure?
Mustafi’s duel stats were utterly insane in La Liga. The German’s know a thing or two about producing world-class CB’s and of all their immense prospects, he’s the one being fast-tracked for the first-team.
In Sanchez and Ozil we got two proven performers. The two I’ve mentioned have absolute world-class potential and for their respective positions are both nowhere near their prime.
And not only world-class potential but an ability to contribute straight away….
And when fans talk of ‘oh we only got them because there’s no-one else in for them’ absolute crap!! Do you honestly believe that David Luiz was Chelsea’s first-choice for CB?? Or Xhaka wouldn’t of been on other clubs target list if we hadn’t gone in hard and early for him? It’s a joke
Donyell Malen is a Raiola boy, Wenger sanctioned a 3.6 Million pound salary over three years for him at 16, even Chelski refused to sanction him at that price. These agents are like the hyenas that crashed wall street, they just overheat the market.
That’s too much money for a kid that hasn’t even made the step up yet. If it works the way we want it to well then it will be genius. But that surprises me, Wenger usually likes to be fair with what he pays one man compared to all the others, even if it means some getting more than what they deserve. Id be interested to know if any of our others are getting close to that, maybe Jeff or Kelechi, I had no idea an academy player could get paid millions. It’s doubtful that they clean boots these days.
Im not the biggest wenger fan..love the guy but dont understand him..but i just wonder if he had bought pogba and he didnt perform like he’s doing now at manu..how much of us that want him gone would stand up and say…he gave us what we wanted????.just curious…and its easy the say you would now..but you know good and well u would’ve been ripimg him apart
He would be completely ostracized in the same way he was when Ozil took a season to adapt for us…
But my prediction if we’d for some reason nabbed Pogba and Wenger sanctioned a 10mil agents fee (LOLZ!!!!)
He would start nowhere near his fee suggested, same as ozil did. Spurs fans would be laughing saying they got a better deal with Sissoko same way they did for Eriksen. Pundits and fans alike would be on his back the whole way. Wenger would show faith, costing us a few bad results, our fan base would start asking serious questions. Half saying give him time, the other saying Wenger should be sacked for such a ridiculous deal, especially considering Xhaka is dominating the Bundesliga for Bayern as a mixture of Kroos, Alonso and Khedira in one package and we could’ve got him for a third of the fee…… Pogba would come good and carry every bit of the world-class tag. Sissoko shows why a relegated team wasn’t bothered to have let him go and laugh all the way at the 30mil based on a few great Euro performances as he’s an inconsistent little prat. Fans and pundits give Wenger absolutely no credit for the signing at all despite the countless big money moves that fail every year in the PL.
THE END.
Are we really questioning Raiola judgement on Wenger? Raiola has 0% experience in football management, sure, he is a respectful agent, but club management is whole different thing.
Even two of the biggest oil giant didnt put an offer on Pogba, because 110m on a single player is high risk investment. At the end of the day, Man utd “claim” they have the money. So no need to point out who has the balls to buy or not.
Mino Raiola said nothing new. Arsene failed to get the world class striker we need. We all knew that.
Anyway, Mino is the last man we should have listen about footballers value for money. Wipe all football knowledge, all he cares is about money. More higher you sell players more fees you’ll get. His top top “commodity” is yet need whole world to prove his astronomical price at ManUre.
Arsene tried, but our CB injury forced Arsene to prioritize CB before CF.
I actually looked at his client list… I thought it’d be more star-studded.
If the press was anything to go by Mhik’s, Lukaku and Zlats were enquired about by us. Quality players sure, but nothing to cry about in the fact we didn’t get them.
Raiola Imo didn’t say anything wrong, or what we Arsenal fans don’t know already.
How do U explain the whole summer needing a World-class Striker and at d end getting a (yet-to-Convince) one?
I have said here in d dis forum, Perez buy was just to get d fans off his back, all along, he didn’t plan to buy a Striker, Giroud is the perfect Striker for him, till welbeck recovers.
Wenger’s stubbornness & delusion is the problem of Arsenal nothing else.
We could have had Ibrahimovic or Abumenyang Or Higguain… If Wenger had the balls to spend… #fact#
Auba will only move to RM. Higuain went to juventus for £75m. May make sense to juventus, he is proven in their league. For us to pay £75m plus very high wages for a striker not proven in PL and 28 years old is a very big risk.
I think we are better with £84m for xhaka, mustafi, perez and holding. I am sure wenger wanted a striker who is an upgrade on giroud, he tried for suarez and vardy that we know about and possibly others, in the end had to settle for perez.
Thats bollocks. Players have value. A world record player is a player that is going to win you ganes and to be honest Pogba isnt that. He doesnt score or create enough to e considered a game changer. He has so far had one performance wheere he was motm, and personally I think it wa because it was his debut. Players like messi, bale, ronaldo, neynar, suarez, mayybe hazard and coutinho, magical players are wirth brraking the record for. So far he has made xhaka look like a bargain.
It’s a silly article as far as i’m concerned. Why spend so much money on dabbing and a hair cut? Besides, the agent is only looking out for himself. The more the player costs, the more he makes!
Lucas will score goals. We have a good attack but we just need to shoot more (hope you’re reading this Ozil).
Personally, I think Wenger had an almost near perfect transfer window. By all standards Mustafi and Xhaka are perfect signings. The only flaw in the signings is Perez. I think he falls below the quality we need for a top striker. Most of the prospective strikers we targeted when the window was still open have been in form thus far. Lacazette, Slimani, Icardi etc have all been getting goals for all their respective clubs and I think Wenger should have dipped his hands a little deeper into our funds to buy one of them.
Mourinho does not car about the long term future of manu, he is only concerned about short term success. If manu overpay for a player then that is an additional increase on their debts which will have to be paid off in the future, after mourinho has left the club. In other words it will affect manu future buying powers and mou does not care about that.
Wenger does care about the long term future of the club. It may be his last season but the money he is spending comes from hard earned cash reserves. He wants to get good value for the club.
Manu pay £89m for pogba. Arsenal pay £84m for xhaka, mustafi, perez and holding. We have strengthened the spine of the team. Holding looks a great buy and is home grown. Mustafi is looking good, we possibly overpaid for him but we were an injury to kos away from disaster so were desperate to fill the position. Xhaka is looking like a great addition to the team, his long range goal against hull shows that he gives us another goal scoring option and will keep opposition defences guessing. Perez we still do not know about but hopefully he will prove to be a good signing.
Pogba is certainly a good player but for a world record signing I would want a proven truly world class goal scorer. I think we have much better value for money.
With regard to Raiola’s comments, to quote mandy rice-davies, “he would say that wouldn’t he”.