by kartiek » Wed Jul 04, 2012 5:38 pm
I agree with Benny here, we did show a proper intent to sign the lad and it seems that a more lucrative contract was what beat us in the end.
It seems that we're trying to reduce the wage structure by a lot. That's al good but the problem is that we have players who are earning much much more than those who are coming in to the new wage structure that FSG wants to implement. Aquilani, Cole, they're strictly OK players, probably in the same league as Gylfi, but they came in at a time where our wage structure was very different. This has to obviously influence the decision of a player like Sigurdsson who may not like being a half the salary of someone of similar quality/use to the team. No one would tbh.
Sigurdsson didn't join us because a) we paid him less, but more importantly b) we paid him much less than players at similar potential/talent as him.
Buy young policy also has a lot to do in enforcing the new wage structure as well. Younger players should in general be agreeable to lower wages. The only way for the new wage structure to get put in place is for us to sell off as many players on the old wage structure as soon as possible. That's why players like Aquilani, even if they may be useful to the team, are being dished out to buyers.