Letting players run their contracts down.

This seems to be an all too regular occurence at Arsenal these days. Absolutely embarassing stuff from all concerned.

Walcott is in a similar position now, he'll be looking at his options I'd say and our best hope there is that he has no offers from better clubs, I doubt there will be too many, definitely not United or City anyway but Chelsea are linked.

What can we do though? If a player doesn't want to sign an extension right away and produces a great season at the right time, he'll always have offers from other clubs.

Only if we start winning will players be more inclined to sign deals earlier.

Pathetic position to be in constantly. Flamini, Nasri, RVP and Walcott all have or could leave us for well under their real value because we havent got things sorted out properly.

Terrible from a top football club.

Does this happen as regularly at top clubs like Barcelona, United?

Sometimes the club actively lets it run down with older players or duds, but I mean key players?

Never mind top clubs, even at 2nd tier clubs you don't see players running down their contracts like has been happening here in recent times.

We've sold players cheap for years now because we let them run their contracs down, Clichy, Nasri, Hleb, Flamini and now probably Robin off the top of my head have all gone for less than they are worth. The board could easily have gotten more for Cesc as well but they bent over to Barcelona.

There's no excuse, look at Everton for example, everybody knows they're skint but they make sure their prized assets are tied down to a long contract. Arsenal remind me of me on Fifa, every season I have a player with just 12 months left on their contract ffs.

Frankly, I find it ridiculous this never happens at another club. Tie Song, Kos, Wilshere, Szcz right now until 2017 and then in 2014 renew them again. Not that hard is it.
Pick the right moment to offer talks as well, I remember we came off the back of three defeats and tried to offer Walcott a contract. Do it when we are winning!
So frustrating.

Why is it happening?

Bad judgement? I hear Gazidis mention something along these lines, 'hard to always get it right'. Do me a favour.

Players not open to talk with 2 years remaining? Want to keep their options open.

This whole thing is really annoying me, absolutely disgraceful and embarassing.

Why is it happening? We win nothing

Bad judgement? I hear Gazidis mention something along these lines, 'hard to always get it right'. Do me a favour. Gazidis is a muppet.

Players not open to talk with 2 years remaining? Want to keep their options open. Take Robin for example, he can go City and get twice as much money as he gets here but can also challenge for trophies, the only players I'd say are truly loyal in the game today are Gerrard, Buffon, De Rossi and Totti.

This whole thing is really annoying me, absolutely disgraceful and embarassing. Amen

Nothing the club can do about it really though, they can't force the players to sign contracts can they?

Loads of clubs win nothing though, I don't see Reina or Agger running their deals down, Suarez is signing a new one soon aswell, yet Liverpool are in far worse nick than us.

Spurs are another example - Bale signed up long-term, he'll be gone within two years for big money.

Nothing the club can do about it really though, they can't force the players to sign contracts can they?

The club can stimulate them to sign contracts by showing ambition, instead of being passive.

We should/ve been targetting players like Agger, Cisse, Suarez, Ben Arfa, Cabaye etc from clubs a tier below us.

Agger is a prime example. He's seemingly sorted out his horrible injury situation to a large extent and would come into our starting XI. Yet we've allowed his situation at Liverpool to remain comfortable.

Obviously I'm not advocating that as a main transfer strategy, but we should be looking at these sorts of players more. We did that to an extent with Arteta last summer.

Pool won a trophy and was in a final last season anyway, despite the hilarious league campaign.

A direct consequence of spoiling our youngsters? with the chances of being in another team (and still feature of course) more likely to win silverware than us and with more attractive salaries they somehow feel they have completed a cycle here.

We desperately need trophies as is the only way to show they can "make it" with Arsenal and actually sign those long term contracts.

The blame lies with the board and the way the club is run from top to bottom!

When you give an upstart a lucrative long term contract with a guaranteed shot at first team football like we love doing at Arsenal you're bound to be fvcked over.

It's disgusting and down right immoral to give the kind of money that we give at Arsenal to some of the most average and dumb footballers in the world and as a result it's killed their ambition to strive for greatness as they begin to believe and tell themselves that the huge contract that they're given is a sign that they've made it.

I'd like to ask a serious question here, Who's responsible for contract renegotiations at our club? Why do we always seem to allow it to drag such a long period that it puts us in a disadvantage position? Why can't we give players a deadline for them to decide whether they intend to re-sign with us or leave so we decide on our own terms when they'll be sold rather than the other way 'roun?

We've been in this situation for far too many times and FFS it's embarrassing that we never seem to learn from it, who's in charge here and what the f@ck are they doing?

I can't the see board letting anyone run down their contract and walking on a free. It's getting pathetic and stupid this keeps happening though, with our best players. First Nasri and Clichy, now van Persie and maybe even Walcott. No other clubs have this problem.

A few years ago we saw it with the likes of Edu but that was very different.

How are you supposed to make someone sign an extension who doesn't want to sign one? I think we can all agree the situation stinks, but we don't know the ins and outs and "letting" is misleading.

I guess we could have sold Cesc and Nasri earlier than we did, but we made a 'deal' with Cesc for one more season and Nasri had his eyes on ManC's pot of black gold.

It's a complex, no-win, business.

its a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't. You are always taking a risk when you give players early extensions or let them run down. Case in point, Denilson. We are basically stuck with him because we signed him on because he showed potential. Then there is RVP and Walcott. RVP was so injured prone, that it was very tough to decide to give him an improved deal. You don't want to be tied down with a player on big wages who rarely plays (ahem diaby!). Walcott has been very inconsistent, so same deal essentially. You extend and take a chance, some times it works others it blows up in your face.

Also, its worth noting that "contract year" performance phenomenon. Very common here in the US where a player going into free agency plays out of his mind in that last year, then moves to another team for a huge salary and does **** all afterwards. Flamini anyone?

The team has to take chances, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't, its that simple.

It is important though to look at the reasons why these players are not willing to sign a contract extension:
1. We never win anything.
2. We offer lower salaries than other clubs.

These two facts obviously influence each other. The salary structure at the club needs to change. When we can offer higher wages to key players, they will stay at the club for a longer time. Keeping your key players increases the chances of winning trophies, which increases the willingness op players to stay at Arsenal. It's a vicious circle.

see above, this is such a simplistic way of looking at this. Its not down solely to the players.

It is important though to look at the reasons why these players are not willing to sign a contract extension:
1. We never win anything.
2. We offer lower salaries than other clubs.

These two facts obviously influence each other. The salary structure at the club needs to change. When we can offer higher wages to key players, they will stay at the club for a longer time. Keeping your key players increases the chances of winning trophies, which increases the willingness op players to stay at Arsenal. It's a vicious circle.

see above, this is such a simplistic way of looking at this. Its not down solely to the players.

I am not denying anything you said, I actually agree with you. Extending contracts can be a bit of a gamble. But if the players are not willing to extend their contracts anyway, it stops right away. The willingness of players to sign a new contract is something you can influence as a club.

Why Gerrard not leave liverpool. liverpool not win so many trophies in last 10 years why he not leave them then? i think because they offer him huge contract.

why is just happening to us? dont tell me because we not win alot of trophies if we afford to give nasri 200k per week he will stay. i think the same with rvp.

Money is our problem not winning things. football about money these days.

What can we do though? If a player doesn't want to sign an extension right away and produces a great season at the right time, he'll always have offers from other clubs.

Only if we start winning will players be more inclined to sign deals earlier.

We can do plenty, if your doing something wrong and your competition is doing it better then you either learn from them or continue to get beat by them.

In this case I'm referring to Man U and how they handle their stars.

Hell we could be learning from Liverpool and Spurs at the moment, Bale 4 year deal and Suarez resigned .... pathetic really and this is what I'm saying "We" are better then those teams, time to start fking acting like it and quit the grovelling!

Why is it happening?

Can someone post Gazidis' Q&A transcript and specifically the bit where he says if we renew contracts too often then it'll mean we're not using our money correctly. On my phone.

Imo AFC let contracts run down because they feel they already got their money's worth. We normally buy cheap and sell for profit and failing that, buy cheap and let em leave for nothing cause noone wants to buy them when we want to sell. (Chamakh, Diaby, Denilson)

For some reason our players only seem to want to be injury free and playing well for us when they get to their last two years of their contracts. Maybe that is because it takes them a season or two to get used to the rigours of Premier League Football.

We don't want Galacticos or Prima Donna players that is not the Arsenal way. Our rivals expect more from their clubs. We only want it now cause we feel that we can afford it. We never used to expect big money to be spent. We are like more like Everton than Liverpool. Even Everton show more ambition in the transfer market than we do. We should be used to staff turnover in the first team at Arsenal by now, but every year we get bent out of shape trying to work out why our best players leave us.

RVP is just the latest player to outgrow our financial business model. He wants to be a galactico now. His form last season merits this and we shouldn't begrudge him for it.

He should go with our blessing as he does not dictate our club policy he can only make decisions that are in his best interests. He doesn't own the club he is just a fan like we are. Albeit one frustrated at the fact that we have been treading water for 7 years and he knows that if he wants to fulfil his ambitions in the remaining years of his career, he has to do it somewhere else.

He is not the first player to publicly state his love for the club and his disenchantment with our lack of ambition leading him to look elsewhere. I'm afraid he won't be the last. He certainly isn't saying anything we haven't heard or said ourselves.

Why is it happening?

Can someone post Gazidis' Q&A transcript and specifically the bit where he says if we renew contracts too often then it'll mean we're not using our money correctly. On my phone.

What's the surprise? it happens at every club, the difference is other clubs like Madrid and Man U actually show some bottle and demand commitment from their players not "Oh no we don't want to upset them" and let the run down their contracts.

It's the board and Wenger who are giving these players this leverage, notice how when Man U sell a star rogue player they always receive top whack money, is it because the players "don't want to leave?" no it's because they still have 2 or so years left on their fking contract!

Excuse my french.

Rooney pulled a similar stunt to United, and they caved and gave him a MASSIVE contract. Please don't act like they 'showed some bottle', they caved in after leaving themselves vulnerable.

And Gerrard wanted to leave Liverpool until the fans started sending death threats.

And Gerrard wanted to leave Liverpool until the fans started sending death threats.

EXACTLY!

Gerrard's level of loyalty is grossly overrated. He was set to jump **** for money before the threats were sent to his family.

He's as much a 'mercenary' as the next footballer to me.

Rooney pulled a similar stunt to United, and they caved and gave him a MASSIVE contract. Please don't act like they 'showed some bottle', they caved in after leaving themselves vulnerable.

And Gerrard wanted to leave Liverpool until the fans started sending death threats.

Sorry but Rooney signed, getting more money is neither here nor there that's part of negotiations.

RVP has basically cut all ties with club and fans with his comments, if it was for money I wouldn't bat an eyelid but it isn't.

He said "show me some ambition" we bought Giroud and Podolski and the windows only just started, he lied plain and simple and obviously never had any intention to sign, what else could AFC have done this quick to change his mind .... nothing!

Besides what's been said, we might already have the players on lower salaries with their original contracts. so if theo is on 60k with two seasons left, that's 3m a year. if we decide it's worth to take a risk with him and extend it now, and he wants 100k, that's 5m a year. so by waiting another year, the club saves 2m.

yes, wage structure is a bitch at the club.