The problem Arsenal will have with off-loading unwanted players

 

 

• Arsenal chasing 29 players, while 8 are tipped to leave
• Why is everyone so dissatisfied with how their team performs?

By Tony Attwood

Personally I am not one of those who think that Arsenal need to off-load players in the way that some clubs do – we will, of course, lose a few players who are at the end of their contracts or who are not performing at the level Arteta requires, or have simply declined as might be expected because of age, but that is different from off-loading which suggests circulating a bit list of names with “Anyone want any of these ?” scrawled on the top.

Yet that is what some of the media is suggesting is happening, and the lists their journalists are coming up with are huge…

The Guardian indeed has commented that the level of “off-loading” going on in football this summer is somewhat large.  And that use of the phrase “off-loading” adds to the problem.   Because if, for example, Manchester U are said to want to “off-load” player X, which club is going to buy him, once the off-load phrase has been used?  They know their fans will act with disdain if the word is that their club is taking “Manchester United rejects” that ManU are anxious to ditch.    After all, just look at where ManU ended up last season.   (14th, a whole 32 points behind Arsenal in case you have forgotten).

 Arsenal don’t feature in the off-load list, possibly because it doesn’t have any off-loadable players or perhaps because the Guardian’s writer thinks that after three runners’-up places in a row they are not a challenge to anyone, and so can be readily dismissed as we contemplate next season.   

Given the Guaridna’s oblique ways it is hard to tell exactly who they put in their off-load category, but they start with these players who are being “off-loaded”

Manchester City: Jack Grealish,

Manchester United: Rasmus Højlund, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho,

Chelsea: Kepa who wins the prize for the bes-named goal-keeper of the season,  Dewsbury-Hall who sounds more like a country house than a footballer, and Raheem Sterling, who was returned to Chelsea with a note saying “we can’t do anything with him; you try”.

Of course, for several years Chelsea have been behaving as if the financial fair play and associated rules don’t apply to them, and in many ways they have been right since they seem to get away with each new wheeze they come up with.  (The latest of course is selling their women’s team to another company they own).

But of course, this is part of the Chelsea tradition, for they have the same approach to the UK’s laws of taxation laws, which of course didn’t apply to Abramovich when he ran the show.   

Anyway, what Chelsea have done is bought players at astronomic prices, and put them on eight-year contracts, so that their costs could be accounted for over those eight years, thus bypassing FFP rules (by writing down the cost over the said eight years).  They can of course still sell the players at any time they wish.

Now the League put a stop to that wheeze, but of course, it doesn’t affect the players Chelsea managed to sneak through the net before the rule was changed and you have to wonder why the League didn’t employ a creative thinker of two to go through the rules before they were implemented.   It’s what companies do when they change their terms and conditions so why not the League?   Too lazy I suppose.

But now because of the slipshod way the League works, Chelsea have played out their latest ruse of selling their women’s club to another company they already own.  Once again the PL management board is left looking like the idiots they are – people who in any other industry wouldn’t last five minutes.   And we can be pretty sure Chelsea have half a dozen other ruses up their sleeves which they can bring forth while ManC carry on threatening to sue everyone who gets in their way.

For now, however, Chelsea just want to get rid of Christopher Nkunku, who cost £51m, as well as Armando Broja, who has been on offer for a very long time, but no one wants.  He has been loaned to Everton, Fulham, Southampton (twice) and Vitesse, and still no one wants the poor chap.

Brighton of course don’t have such FFP worries, as they are the financial miracle workers and moving Evan Ferguson on having managed to get his salary paid by West Ham who took him on loan, played him for one match, and then gupled.  Maybe Chelsea need to buy some of Brighton’s player assessment team.

Meanwhile normally the media woldn’t dream of linking Liverpool with any ne’er-do-well schemes but even they have got their unwanted tenants, including Federico Chiesa, who gets so many injuries he is unlikely to get another club so he might well stick it out at Liverpool and enjoy the scenery.  (That bit about there being scenery in Liverpool is possibly untrue).

Strangely, the darlings of the media have two other players that they admit are not really doing it and need to be whooshed out the door, and they are Harvey Elliott, and Darwin Núñez,  He cost £85m and played just a handful of games last season.   Still I am sure it wasn’t Liverpool’s fault because, well, it never is at least according to the media.