Transfer history under Wenger

I'm not entirely sure this deserves it's own thread, but it will be a lengthy post, and I wasn't really sure where to add it, so I put it here. If you can think of a better place for it, I can just copy/paste it. Reading over the last few days, it appears some are convinced we'll strike for a very expensive player in the £20M range, possibly a guy like Tevez, while others are convinced we might not sign anyone, or could go the bargain route. I decided to have a look at all the transfers under Wenger at Arsenal and see if that tells us anything. I had my suspicions, but a good researcher always sets about with a hypothesis and finds data to uncover a truth, he doesn't go looking for data to support his opinion. So, here's a summary of transfer activity since Wenger took over. The list does not include loan deals, it just looks at buying and selling. The numbers are taken from soccerbase.com's archive here.

1997-1998

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM        FEE
Wreh        Monaco      £300,000
Grondin     St Etinne   £500,000

PLAYER       TO          FEE
Shaw        Millwall    £250,000
Selley      Fulham      £500,000

Net: -£50,000

1998-1999

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM         FEE
Ljungberg    Halmstads   £3,000,000
Pennant      Notts Co    £2,000,000
Kanu         Inter       £4,500,000
Diawara      Bordeaux    £2,500,000
Luzhny       Dynamo Kiev £1,800,000

PLAYER       TO          FEE
Wright       West Ham    £500,000
Rankin       Bradford    £1,300,000
Day          Bournemouth £20,000
Huck         Bournemouth £50,000
Diawarra     Marseille   £3,000,000

Net: -£8.93M

1999-2000

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Malz         1860 Munich  £650,000
Sylvinho     Corinthians  £4,000,000
Suker        Real Madrid  £500,000
Henry        Juventus     £10,500,000
Lauren       Mallorca     £7,200,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Bould        Sunderland   £500,000
Crowe        Portsmouth   £1,000,000
Livermore    Millwall     £30,000
Anelka       Real Madrid  £23,000,000
Boa Morte    Southampton  £500,000
S Hughes     Everton      £3,000,000
Black        Cr Palace    £500,000
Gray         Cr Palace    £500,000

Net = +£6.18M

2000-2001

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Pires        Marseille    £6,000,000
Wiltord      Bordeaux     £13,000,000
Stepanovs    Skonto Riga  £1,000,000
Danilevicius Lausanne Spo £1,000,000
Edu          Corinthians  £6,000,000
Jeffers      Everton      £8,000,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Bothroyd     Coventry     £1,000,000
Overmans     Barcelona    £25,000,000
Petit        Barcelona    £5,000,000
McGovern     Norwich      £50,000
Weston       Cardiff      £300,000
Vernazza     Watford      £350,000

Net = -£3.3M

2001-2002

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Van Bronckh. Rangers      £8,500,000
Wright       Ipswitch     £6,000,000
Tavlaridis   Iraklis Sal  £600,000
Toure        ASEC Abid.   £150,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Malz         Kaiserslau.  £580,000
Demel        Dortmund     £194,000
Sylvinho     Celta Vigo   £3,500,000

Net = -£10.98M

2002-2003

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Cygan        Lille        £2,100,000
Gilberto     Alt Mineiro  £4,500,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Manninger    Espanyol     £960,000
Wright       Everton      £3,500,000
Upson        Birmingham   £1,000,000

Net = -£1.14M

2003-2004

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Senderos     Servette     £2,500,000
Reyes        Seville      £10,500,000
Van Persie   Feyenoord    £2,750,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Thomas       Charlton     £100,000

Net = -£15.65M

2004-2005

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Eboue        Bevern       £1,000,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Jeffers      Charlton     £2,600,000

Net = +£1.6M

2005-2006

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Mannone      Atalanta     £350,000
Diaby        Auxerre      £2,000,000
Adebayor     Monaco       £7,000,000
Walcott      Southampton  £5,000,000*
Rosicky      Dortmund     £6,800,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Veiria       Juventus     £13,700,000

Net = -£7.45M

2006-2007

Code: Select all

PLAYER       FROM          FEE
Song         Bastia       £1,000,000
Denilson     Sao Paulo    £3,400,000


PLAYER       TO            FEE
Cygan        Villareal    £2,000,000
Stokes       Sunderland   £2,000,000
Lauren       Portsmouth   £500,000
Larsson      Birmingham   £1,000,000
Muamba       Birmingham   £4,000,000
Aliadiere    Middlesbr.   £1,500,000
Henry        Barcelona    £16,100,000

Net = +£22.7M

----------------------------------

So there is the raw data. Anyone not listed, either coming in or going out, was acquired on a free or the fee was unknown. Here are my conclusions from this

1. People here call us a "selling" club, but I don't necessarily believe that to be true. Since 1996, we've only brought in more than we sent out, in terms of funds, twice, and that was a combined £7.78M over those two campaigns. We've cleared a profit of £22.7M so far this season, but that is bloated by the Henry sale and only two purchases. Surely that number will decrease.

2. Wenger really knows what he's doing. He's turned a profit on most of his acquisitions, and the Anelka business still really blows my mind.

3. Wenger doesn't spend more than £10-12M on a single player. Looking at the list, only three players have been purchased by Wenger for more than £10M

Wiltord, £13.0M
Henry, £10.5M
Reyes, £10.5M

Using that as a barometer, you'd think there is almost no way that Wenger would spend £20M+ on Tevez or Torres.

4. When making a big sale, Wenger hasn't been afraid to spend money. The Anelka sale netted £23M, and during that term, he spent £10.5M on Henry and £7.2M on Lauren. When Overmans was sold to Barca for £25M, he bought Wiltord, Edu and Jeffers for a combined £27M.

5. If any of the above numbers are incorrect, let me know, and I'll make the change. I put a * next to Walcott, because his deal could be worth a bunch more, but the money listed was the amount paid at the time, I believe.

I don't know if this is interesting to anyone else, but it certainly is to me. I think you can learn a lot about the future by looking to the past. Once a manager develops a track record, patterns are easily discernible. Fans waiting for the £20M purchase are likely to be disappointed, it's simply not Wenger's style.

Wheres Hleb?

Wheres Hleb?

I think his transfer was essentially involving an "undisclosed fee."

I think almost all our transfers are undisclosed fees if we can report them as such.

Hleb cost around £10m according to most accounts.

Wenger may have paid over the odds for him as it seemed at the time that a fee of £6-7m would do the trick, but Stuttgart demanded their valuation be met.

At least that's what I recall from reports at the time.

as are most of out transfers, so how this data was compiled is beyond me... i think much of these numbers are "theoretical" numbers..

As I said in the intro, I used soccerbase for the numbers, as it seemed like the most complete. There were lots of frees and some undisclosed amounts as well both coming in and going out, so it's probably impossible to have a complete picture, but I just provided what was available.

i understand that.. not your fault.. but i would say half of those numbers were "assumed" numbers on that site since as a club, we do not disclose transfer fees... obviously other clubs tend to give out numbers, so some of those may be accurate....

Are the numbers eventually reported at the clubs annual GM, and there fore should be possible to verify?

but the numbers sound right based on what i've seen on multiple media sources over the years.

and players sold at the end of a season should be counted for the next season for balancing purposese.g., Muamba, Aliadiere and Henry should be 2007-2008 activity (along with Fabianski). And Lauren was signed in summer 2000 along with Wiltord and Pires, so he's a 2000-01 transfer. You don't need to strictly follow soccerbases' format because it seems like if a player signs in June, their system automatically adds them to the previous year and that's not really how it works. Any signing/sale after the season should count for the next season because that's when they'll play. a 2006-2007 signing occurred in either summer 2006 or January 2007 ... and the same format for any other season: 2007(summer)-2008(january).

Muamba should be 2m with some kind of notation to an explanation at the end that it could rise to 4m. Same for Theo (the notation is there, but no mention of the 12m). Upson was 1m rising to 3m.

And 96-97 signings are Wenger's as well.

Yeah, I wanted to change the way it was displayed on a year to year thing, but when i went to fix it, I had something come up here at work and didn't have time.

still.. i'd say we have a net expenditure better than any of the other top five...and then some. i'd say wenger's a miracle worker. that or people mistake his golden eyes for myopia...

Question, you claim that Wenger doesn't spend more than 10mil on top players, but can't we theoretically assume that number would increase due to inflation and market trend? Or can we assume that wenger will look outside of the major markets and continue to find 10mil "top" players.


Interesting analysis though, thanks for taking the time to do it.

I guess you could figure for inflation, but Wiltord remains the most expensive transfer that we have detailed info on, and that was quite a while ago. I'm still hoping someone can point me to a detailed account with facts on the Reyes transfer. His documented amount was 10.5, but Grampus_Eight pointed out with escalators it's gone up, I just don't know by how much.

Looking at the big picture, Wenger just doesn't seem to go for established super talent, he tends to like undervalued guys who he feels he can get more out of. From a business standpoint, that makes perfect sense. It's common in baseball for savvy general managers to find players on other teams who are being used in roles that don't suit their strength, acquire them cheaply, get their best years out of them, and then sell them for a profit. Guys who do that are always one step ahead of their competition, and it seems Wenger falls into that category.

Thats amazing. Only a net spend of 22 million. Wengers a genius.

Judging by the data we'll probably make one 10 - 15million signing and +2 smaller players one of them probably that French right back with the dodgy hair.

its maybe a better source
http://www.transfermarkt.de/de/verein/1 ... sicht.html

Even though some of the biggest buys haven't been all that sucessful, Wenger is God in the transfer market.

His record is beyond belief.

He has saved us tens if not hundreds of millions of pounds in transfer fees. Just look at Liverpool's spending under Houlier and now Benitez.

In the last decade we've certainly had a net spend in the transfer market lower than Chelsea, United, Liverpool, Newcastle, Tottenham and Leeds.

Probably a number of others as well.

The club will have something around £26M+ to spend from player trading before even needing to use any transfer fees.

I've always felt and continue to feel that Wenger should be the highest paid manager in the league and should have been given significant awards of stock in the club...

He wears a magic hat!

Blimey we paid a lot for Gio. Remember thinking that was an odd transfer when he signed.

MDGoonah41,

I used the same soccerbase data that you used, but added the dates so that it could be easier to sort them by the correct season they were signed and added a few numbers that i already had on my computer that they didn't list. Some of the undisclosed sales like Bentley that were hard to find I just left them out because the money Arsenal got back from sales like that would probably be cancelled by the youth signings like Traore and Manonne that I deliberately left out. basically the undisclosed minor sales were balanced out by the minor buys.

-------------------------------

I decided to put it in a google spreadsheet instead, that way i won't have to keep coming back to this thread to update it:

listing all the transfers: senior and youth:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... POQuZ0P6Gg

just the senior transfers
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key= ... YeoZisLLeQ

wow, i can't actually believe that we got a £500,000 profit on Kaba Diawarra. That man was utter crap for us!

i can't believe we didn't get paid for signing stephanovs either!

Meatwad, excellent I played tennis this afternoon and had planned to work on this tonight, but you took care of it. Thanks.

Wenger really is a transfer genius.

Meatwad, excellent I played tennis this afternoon and had planned to work on this tonight, but you took care of it. Thanks.

Wenger really is a transfer genius.

Same here mate. Wimbledon fever!

Indeed. It was 99 degrees here in Maryland today, with awful humidity. I think I lost 10 pounds 8)

I just did a little math and - according to soccerbase.com - since Wenger's taken over Arsenal, his net spending is a grand total of £30,200,000.

In the same period of time, Spurs have a net spending of £99,067,500.

Incredible. I think this is where Wenger has proved he is better than anyone.

great posting, guys, good to see this all laid out. we should use this thread for reference whenever someone talks smack about the boss.

3. Wenger doesn't spend more than £10-12M on a single player. Looking at the list, only three players have been purchased by Wenger for more than £10M

Wiltord, £13.0M
Henry, £10.5M
Reyes, £10.5M

Using that as a barometer, you'd think there is almost no way that Wenger would spend £20M+ on Tevez or Torres.

4. When making a big sale, Wenger hasn't been afraid to spend money. The Anelka sale netted £23M, and during that term, he spent £10.5M on Henry and £7.2M on Lauren. When Overmans was sold to Barca for £25M, he bought Wiltord, Edu and Jeffers for a combined £27M.

Firstly, interesting thread.

Secondly, don't you think that your bullet point number 4 renders bullet point number 3 somewhat moot? The implication being that when he has money to spend he's more than happy to spend it. If (and it's a big if) the board were willing to give him the kind of money that would secure someone of Torres' stature, and Wenger considered it a sound investment, I'm sure he wouldn't baulk at the asking price.

And thirdly, TOURE FOR 500 GRAND!!! That's got to be my favourite transfer! 8)

From F365 the best and worst of Wenger-

http://www.football365.com/story/0,1703 ... 44,00.html

Even Wengers worst mistakes havn't cost that much money.
Tee hee guess who gets a mention?..... see I'm not crazy.

BTW never heard of Tomas Danilevicust.

yea...whos this danilevicust fella? with a name like that it's pretty hard to remain anonymous...

as I said in another thread, best bang for the buck ever, and possible sales of Kolo and Cesc (player who are worth 20 times what they were bought for) shows what a great man he is.

My hope for him after his Arsenal career would be to take over a championship team or a second division team anywhere in the world and make them top ten aspirants, he has the knowledge

regarding to the topics

i saw this at ANR

In the week there were some interesting articles - if you put them together. The Sun had Arsène Wenger spending £46m since the end of the Invincibles season and selling £54.5m worth of players.


However, Chelsea have spent £209.65m and sold £49.3m (+160.35m).


Man U have spent £117.5m and sold £25.5m (+£92m)


Liverpool have spent £98.1 and sold £19.5m (+£78.6m)


The Mail pointed out Champions League revenues for last season: Chelsea: £23,394,444;

Liverpool: £21,744,696;

Manchester United: £21,282,373;

Arsenal: £13,008,610;

A Times article analyses Wenger's buys including the five most expensive: Sylvain Wiltord (£13m Bordeaux) Jose Reyes (£10.5m, Seville), Thierry Henry (£10.5m, Juventus) Gio Van Bronckhorst (£8.5m, Rangers) and Francis Jeffers (£8m, Everton).


Marc Overmars, Emmanuel Petit, Fredrik Ljungberg, Robert Pires, Patrick Vieira and Thierry Henry - were hugely successful buys in footballing and financial terms.


"Yet, of Wenger's 50 or so buys, there are failures. Sylvain Wiltord scored 49 goals in four years and left for nothing; Luis Boa Morte, the Portugal winger, mostly flattered, while Christopher Wreh, the Liberian, and Kaba Diawara, from Guinea, barely registered. And can anyone recall Eric Chukwunyelu Obinna or Tomas Danilevicious?" Add to that Jose Antonio Reyes and Francis Jeffers.


A lot of Gooners I talk to down my gym and in the area a mile up from the Holloway Road [mostly lifelong fans born around here] are optimistic about the forthcoming season - and not too crestfallen over the Henry departure. But, as the above analysis illustrates, Wenger's transfer strategy to date this summer of buying potential is a high risk one - particularly given turnover is set to increase to around £200m, from £134m, and with around £15m more TV revenue.