EliteKiller wrote:We have lost a few players and the reason is very simple. We had a very unique policy on player salaries, even our very ordinary squad players were on massive basic salaries this created an over-inflated payroll budget which prevented us offering decent contracts to young players ...
Forget what you think of the player or who they play for but consider - Dele was started on 5k a week, TAA was on 11k a week, Greenwood was on 10k a week ... by comparison we had Wilshere on 90k, Ramsey on 80k, Campbell on 40k and that was back in 2014 ...
When we offered Gnarby an increase to just 15k in 2016 it's hardly surprising he left, he must have been insulted when he knew that some of the dross around him was on five times that money,
Our crazy contract madness at the end of the Gazidis/Wenger era left us with a massive budget for very few decent players, we had no room to keep our kids. Even now four years later the problem of overpaid average players still haunts us, it was a very costly strategic error.
EK, thats not strictly right though, because by 2014 Wilshere had been in the first team for 6 years, not the same as those from other clubs you have listed who were in their breakthrough seasons. Exactly the same for Aaron Ramsey who was in the first team in 2008. Joel Campbell in 2012 was on £10k per week - even though he didn't play for us until 2014.
