Pack your bags Roy

[Arn]

I usually use what the whole squads cost to buy and not net spend.
That gives you the whole picture and not only a period of time.

You can't for example say that we should be able to compete with Man U because we spent more than them the last few seasons. The reason is that they already had a very expensive squad so they didn't need to sign that many players.

Their squad still cost £100m more than ours to sign.

Inter have a very expensive squad but the rivals closed the gap after signing players like Ibra, Robinho and Krasic.

[Craig_H]

That's interesting Arn, because for ages now, we've been dispelling the notion that rafa spent ****loads of money with the argument that net spend counts more than anything else.

I never once saw you arguing with that methodology.

Until now.

[dww]

Don't tell me, it turns out that you need more than one metric to make complex arguments and context can be important. Who knew?

[barnes10]

arn & craig, please dont spend the next couple of pages arguing the tedious, hair splitting detail of rafa v mourinho, net v gross or what i meant months ago vs what you're saying i meant.

[Arn]

That's interesting Arn, because for ages now, we've been dispelling the notion that rafa spent ****loads of money with the argument that net spend counts more than anything else.

I never once saw you arguing with that methodology.

Until now.

I argued a lot about it. Tomkins also use that almost all the time because it gives you the whole picture.

We had the fifth expensive squad IIRC before this season. Finishing fourth should never be a must for our manager until we have the squad to compete with clubs like Man U, Man C, Chelsea and Tottenham. Arsenal have more or less as expensive squad as us.

The other four have bought squads for more than £100m each than us.

Let our manager spend £100m and I will agree that finishing fourth is a must because then we are at the same level as our rivals.

[Craig_H]

To ignore net spend, is utter folly. End of.

[Galb]

That's interesting Arn, because for ages now, we've been dispelling the notion that rafa spent ****loads of money with the argument that net spend counts more than anything else.

I never once saw you arguing with that methodology.

Until now.

In fairness, Ive seen it argued many times (I think by Tomkins especially) that the value of the squad inherited is also very significant.

If you take over at a team that has consistently spent more than its rivals (say Team A), it stands to reason you're better off than someone taking over at a team that hasnt spent that money (Team B). Either because you have better players, or because you have players who bring in more money if you want to sell them.

So if the subsequent net spend for Team A and Team B are the same, you would expect Team A to be more successful. Team B is spending to stand still - it needs to spend more to catch up.

[Craig_H]

I'm not arguing that.

Arn seemed to imply that Inter's spending before Rafa should be looked at without the Zlatan money included, because it 'screws it up'. Net spend, is net spend.

[Neil Young]

I was certainly wrong in my belief that we'd get new owners in time, to enable us to attract a top manager. No doubts about that. I thought it would happen and it didnt, so i got that wrong.

I didnt mean for my previous comment to come across as harsh as it did though, i was in a bit of a hurry to complete the post, as i was running late for a meeting at the time of posting So i blurted out the quickest and easiest adjective, and in hindsight, it wasnt the best choice of word. 'Dismissive' over 'arrogant' would've been better.

Cool.

[Frenchie]

net spend smend....**** OFF Jowly face end of.... my dead granny could do a better job..

If he doesn't go and has 'the final say' on transfers and ingrains his hoof ball tactics throughout the club then I despair for us..

[CJ]

actually as someone whos job description says analyst i would present a number of figures and all explain them.

if i used net spend i would certainly point to abradoodle and girly ronaldo as distorting the picture. the closest i would think that we got to that would be selling Alonso. not sure that, that has such a distortion of the figures.

numbers may be absolute in most cases however the analysis of them is not always so cut and dried. There is interpretation of them also the presentation will depend on the point people are putting across.

so in their own way all are true but it depends on what you are saying as to how relevant they are.

[Exiled_red]

Cost of the squad makes interesting reading, by my calculations our current squad cost ~£132m to assemble including players out on loan, (most notably Aquilani and Insua) or ~£114m for the players currently available. Of that money ~£24m has been spent by Roy which amounts to ~20%

[Roboklopp]

Actually, as someone whose job description says analyst, I agree with Marsh.

[Roboklopp]

Cost of the squad makes interesting reading, by my calculations our current squad cost ~£132m to assemble including players out on loan, (most notably Aquilani and Insua) or ~£114m for the players currently available. Of that money ~£24m has been spent by Roy which amounts to ~20%

****in L.

[CJ]

Actually, as someone whose job description says analyst, I agree with Marsh.

not for much longer though in my case